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My 5870 keeps crashing! [Notorious Grey Stripes]

Emphacy

Emphacy

Emphacy

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I'll make this quick so I don't wander off into nonsense.

I received my brand new HD 5870 yesterday. Plugged it in, installed Catalyst 11.6 drivers and everything is fine for the first 2 hours, no gaming.

Then I decided to play some Unreal Tournament 3. It's not exactly a heavy duty game and I got 60FPS solid all the way through, [V-Sync ON].
After about 45 mins of nice smooth playing, I started noticing these random grey screens would come on, then disappear in a second.

It happened a few times, I ignored it, kept playing. Then a solid Grey stripy screen, sound crashed and had to hit the reset button, nothing I could do.
I did a bit of Googling and well, it seems it is very very common, look at this thread.

The difference is, this was 4 years ago when the 9.11 drivers where out. I now have the 11.6 drivers and still the same problems.
Even worse is there's no solution at the end of that 27page thread.

As pointed out in that thread, it's only a problem with 64bit users of Vista and Win 7. I have 8GB of RAM for rendering so there's no way I'm going to 32bit.
There's lots of recommendations such as disable the HDMI audio or change the voltages [no can do on XFX card] and nothing works.


I know there's a lot of people on these forums with these cards. Please tell me why mine isn't working! I'm not going to go through the OCUK RMA process just yet when it would appear it's not a problem with my card.
I should also mention that later in the night, I couldn't even get past the startup of a game such as the Portal loading screen without it crashing.

Then I played some UT3 again at around 12:30, lasted 20mins fine, then bang... Orange Stripy screen! Hard reset my PC and went to bed.
I'm so fed up, when I pay for a new card, I want to be able to plug it into my PC and it will work. My 4890 had no problems what so ever.

Usually I don't ask for help, but right now I will beg before all of you to give me your information!
Thanks!
 
Last edited:
nothin new its a known issue with all ATi cards.

I have had 4870 and it has a simular issue with games as well as the known "freezing" problems that all ATi cards suffer from .

to be honest if i was buying a card today id get Nvidia no question .

But on your issue, i know it has something to do with Direct x and ATI cards not being able to change between the different types and 2D/3D issues.

Bassically check your directx is upto date then if having issues check the games config file and look for Direct x listing and if it set to AUTO change to what ever one you want/prefer ie 9/10/11 this should help .
 
Thanks for the info shadow.
The thing I'm concerned about is there as so many people on this forum with these cards and they all work fine, yet so many of us are having this 'problem'

I'm tempted to RMA the card if I can't find a fix soon, I can't do anything with this damn thing, it might as well be a brick cemented into someone's garden wall.

I uninstalled the Catalyst 11.6 drivers and went to 11.5, still no luck.
I'm going to try one last thing, changing the PCI-E clock drive from Auto to some higher mV setting, If no luck it's RMA time and hello nVIDIA.

May I have some info from a 5870 user please? What settings is your card at?
 
I know it's no help, but mine runs fine with all the drivers I have ever had. So maybe it's the card.

So, is there a newer BIOS for the card?
Is there a newer mobo BIOS you can try?
Set the PCI-E speed to 101Mhz or 105Mhz in the BIOS
Try using AMD GPU Tool to disable powerplay (I'm sure you can still do it within this programme)

That's all I can think of currently.
 
What PSU do you have? Is it supplying enough power?

Saying that, if it happens after a certain time, then it sounds like maybe temperature problems? What temps is the card reaching?
 
Power Supply is 620W, more than enough for a stock Q6600 and a 5870.
Temperatures never go over 50 degrees. (Logging to file with GPU-Z)

I have the latest chipset and BIOS drivers. The BIOS only allows me to change the PCI-E clockdrive in mV, I increased it to 800mV from auto to no avail, next one is 900mV.
I will give ATiTool a try, although I can't imagine it working.

I understand you can flash the cards BIOS with a new one, and change voltages etc, but I'm not even going to attempt that, it's not what I ever had in mind when purchasing this card.
 
I had this problem once but that was when i overclocked the card without sufficient cooling. The grey stripey screen would come on for a sec then dissappear. I closed the game immediately and downclocked my card back to original settings and it's been fine since. Recently bought a high speed silent fan to cool the card from the front and overclocked it again to max 900 and it idles now at 42c and load temps are no higher than 75c :)
 
Its the XFX 5870? I have exactly the same problems. Downclocking the VRAM a bit helps a lot. Problems don't occur in games that aren't so memory intensive.

I'm currently deciding whether to send back on RMA or put up with it- Too many people seem to get cards back as 'working' and waste the postage money.
 
If the card is overclocked at all return it to stock. As said downclock the memory a bit as well to see if it goes away.

Also are you running any overclocks on your cpu? If you are return it to stock as well as AMD are very sensitive to a not fully stable system.
 
uk_unbeliever said:
Its the XFX 5870? I have exactly the same problems. Downclocking the VRAM a bit helps a lot. Problems don't occur in games that aren't so memory intensive.

I'm currently deciding whether to send back on RMA or put up with it- Too many people seem to get cards back as 'working' and waste the postage money.
Click to expand...

Yep, XFX 5870. That's what I'm afraid of, it's most likely not the card and is probably the shoddy ATI drivers. I don't want to downclock my card to get it to run stable, It should run stable right out of the box
If I decide to return the card, is it possible I can exchange it for an nVIDIA one? The card may be working fine, but it's useless to me if it doesn't work in my system.

Mr Paul said:
Try in another PC if you can. This will rule out the card or not (as the case may be)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I don't have another PC with a PCI-E slot. My 4890 worked perfect which leads me to believe it's either the card or the 5800 series drivers.

I have a few more tests though, the previous changes of PCI-E clockgen reached a max of 1000mV and still no luck.
I've reverted to the 10.4 drivers on the disk that came with the card, still the same. I'm going to try switching to DVI from HDMI see if that works.
 
From the AMD thread it seems to be down to cooling or an issues with the card.

Personally i have never had a grey screen issue ever.
 
Emphacy said:
Yep, XFX 5870. That's what I'm afraid of, it's most likely not the card and is probably the shoddy ATI drivers. I don't want to downclock my card to get it to run stable, It should run stable right out of the box
Click to expand...

Exactly what I thought but when I've tried MSI KOMBUSTER to stress it it doesn't crash at stock speeds as it would (after a while) in many games, so I didn't want to RMA it without knowing what 'testing' would be done on it and risk the card being returned as not faulty
 
uk_unbeliever said:
Exactly what I thought but when I've tried MSI KOMBUSTER to stress it it doesn't crash at stock speeds as it would (after a while) in many games, so I didn't want to RMA it without knowing what 'testing' would be done on it and risk the card being returned as not faulty
Click to expand...

I took your advice after trying everything else. I down-clocked the card from stock 1200MHz to 1150MHz. It runs fine at the moment, no crashes so far!
Although this appears to have worked it shouldn't be necessary. Thanks for the help.
 
I have exactly the same issue. VTX haven't released a newer BIOS for the card, but mine is reference and there is an updated reference BIOS. I'm going to try and RMA mine though. Hopefully it won't come back working, but I do have a bad feeling about that. Only happens in VRAM intensive games such as GTAIV and Metro 2033.

Mine also causes the system to often not POST from cold, and not wake up from sleep properly. Do you also have those issues?
 
 
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