• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

5970 grief

Durzel

Durzel

Durzel

Soldato
Joined
10 Oct 2003
Posts
5,518
Location
Wiltshire
5970 grief (diagnosis: cold bug)

Replaced my Sapphire 4870X2 which was working flawlessly with a XFX HD5970 Black Edition on Friday and since then I've had issues...

Once I start playing a game it's generally ok and faster than my 4870X2 was (not jaw droppingly but I wasn't expecting that anyway), although I have had some very peculiar things happened - like really artifacts come up once while Mass Effect 2 was loading a level and then disappear completely as soon as it loaded.

One serious issue is that it appears the 2D clocks are set too low to be stable?? They're 157/300 core/memory by default and this results in regular "Driver has stopped responding and was restarted" errors. Checking forums people said you have to create a profile and set the idle clocks to something like 400/900. Since I've done that I've been ok on the desktop but it's still pretty ridiculous.

Oh, and I've got no manual fan control at all in CCC - apparently the card needs a BIOS update out of the box to fix it!?

Lastly a couple of times I've come out of playing a game for hours only for Windows to freeze solid a few seconds after being on the desktop. I can only assume at this stage that this is somehow related to the 157/300 clocks being erroneously set or something, I don't know.

I was all set to sell my 4870X2 to recoup some funds but now I'm not so sure.... the only saving grace is that it doesn't seem like the card is fundamentally faulty because I can play games for hours with no artifacts or whatever. I guess it's a really bad driver problem coupled with too low 2D clocks in the BIOS?

For reference I'm using a Antec Signature 850W PSU which should surely be enough?

Only other possible element is that the card is installed on my Asus P5W64 WS Pro motherboard which is 975X and PCI-E 1.0a. Still flies though! :)

Interested to hear everyone's thoughts...
 
Last edited:
Thats why i went for a 5870. there some bugs to be sorted out with the 5970. Bought the xfx and have had no problems yet. my 5870 has them 2d clocks 157/300.
 
That mobo is a little old. Sure you don't want to update it anyway? :p

The PSU is that high-end one with expensive components right? I think it got a gold award on [H], you can rule that out most likely...

I would suggest flashing the BIOS if that is what XFX themselves say - otherwise you may not be covered by warranty and on a 5970 that could be costly. Where did you read about it?
 
Yeah motherboard is quite old, it's just one of those things where I haven't really felt compelled to change it. Having said that I'd either expect it not to work at all on the motherboard rather than work except at random occasions when it's sat idle. You'd expect the opposite to be the case if it were a power/compatibility issue surely?

I'd probably notice a speed boost going to i7 but I don't know how much it would be, certainly it would have to be something special to justify stripping down my whole PC and replacing the motherboard, CPU & memory (since neither my current CPU or DDR2 memory would transfer).

Re: PSU, yeah it's the one that has a gold award on [H].
 
Last edited:
I have the exact same card and had some problems with 2d at the beginning but I realised that it was because I was overclocking the card without using the overvolt tool. as soon as I used the overvolt tool all of the problems dropped away.

It's a fantastic card and lightning fast (I came from a 4870X2) to really notice the difference you need to load up Crysis or warhead, it steams through it.
 
Did you do the BIOS update?

I haven't even installed the Overvolt tool yet, what sort of speeds & voltages are you getting if you don't mind me asking?
 
Durzel said:
Did you do the BIOS update?

I haven't even installed the Overvolt tool yet, what sort of speeds & voltages are you getting if you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...

I've just done some testing, and using the overvolt tool I can get up to 875/1200 on the clocks and thats with the maximum voltage. BUT I just noticed that while 3d mode works fine as soon as I enable Overdrive in the catalyst control panel I get some corruption (or stead flicker in the top 2 inches of the screen on the desktop, its like a consistant horizontal flicker. This however was not there when I tried it before with older drivers so i think it's definately a driver issue.

To be hones I never overclock this card at the moment because not game requires it (except crysis and warhead) and it rips through them.
 
Thanks.

Yeah I haven't bothered overclocking mine yet either. Will try using Overvolt or whatever at some point instead of CCC.
 
Durzel said:
Thanks.

Yeah I haven't bothered overclocking mine yet either. Will try using Overvolt or whatever at some point instead of CCC.
Click to expand...

I have ticketed them at xfx about it, I don't have any problems in game either, the card never locks up. But this is quite annoying in 2D though! will let you know what they say!
 
6

I had the same problem with my xfx 5970 BE kept crashing and recovering all the time but mine kept locking up as well also got artifacts while on the desktop had a long coversation with xfx they told me to return the card so i did and Oc recieved it and sent a new one out the day after havent had a problem since
 
i still get the odd driver stopped responding and has recovered but its rare that i do

____________________

Gigabyte X58 UD5
i7 920 3.4ghz going to 4
6GB Patriot Viper 1600mhz
XFX HD5970 BE
750w Be quiet dark power pro
Silverstone Raven RV01
 
Have you tried the grey screen hotfix drivers?

If they don't help I would send it back under distance sellers act if I was you, fortunately I've not had any problems like this with my 5870 at stock but it seems to be a fairly common occurence with the new series.
 
Last edited:
If i was him id return the card you shouldnt get it all the time i tryed all the drivers there was with mine but it never made a difference, my new card has only done it twice since upgrading to the 10.1 drivers

__________________

Gigabyte X58 UD5
i7 920 3.4ghz going to 4
6GB Patriot Viper 1600mhz
XFX HD5970 BE
750w Be quiet dark power pro
Silverstone Raven RV01
 
i only just overclocked my cpu to 3.4 yesterday so it wasnt that i was running it at stock and it was back in dec when i got my first card i was lucky to get one without pre ordering just unlucky enough to get a dodgy one

_________________

Gigabyte X58 UD5
i7 920 3.4ghz going to 4
6GB Patriot Viper 1600mhz
XFX HD5970 BE
750w Be quiet dark power pro
Silverstone Raven RV01
 
ProT4GoNisT said:
i only just overclocked my cpu to 3.4 yesterday so it wasnt that i was running it at stock and it was back in dec when i got my first card i was lucky to get one without pre ordering just unlucky enough to get a dodgy one
Click to expand...

Did you set up a tent outside the store? hehe

But I think the reason why the 5970 is so rare now might be because of all the problems with it. But it is just a theory off the top of my head. I have yet to try out my 5870 because I need to buy a gigantic PC case to house it in, so I have no opinions of my XFX 5870 yet.
 
forest4 said:
Did you set up a tent outside the store? hehe

But I think the reason why the 5970 is so rare now might be because of all the problems with it. But it is just a theory off the top of my head. I have yet to try out my 5870 because I need to buy a gigantic PC case to house it in, so I have no opinions of my XFX 5870 yet.
Click to expand...

lol i just phoned overclockers up one day and asked if they had any in stock they said they had 4 left and this was for the standard xfx 5970 not the BE anyway got the card the next day opened the box and it was a black edition when i sent it back because of the fault they said it would be replaced with what i paid for not the black edition, next day card arrives another BE lol great service from overclockers though

________________________

Gigabyte X58 UD5
i7 920 3.4ghz going to 4
6GB Patriot Viper 1600mhz
XFX HD5970 BE
750w Be quiet dark power pro
Silverstone Raven RV01
 
I'll probably do the BIOS update and see where I go from there. Had a long session of ME2 yesterday (6 hours or so) without any issues, so card seems ok hardware-wise.. I've got a feeling it's the drivers that are a bit crap... I'm just using the standard 10.1s at the moment, sometimes even CCC doesn't load properly.

One thing I have noticed is that whilst auto-fan control seems to be working ok (according to GPU-Z) it seems it's quite happy to let the card go to 85C+ without ramping up the fan speed too much. The VDDR (I think?) was over 100C at some points according to GPU-Z and that was just running Furmark.

Do you guys normally bother using your own fan settings (e.g. Rivatuner) or setting the fan higher, or are you happy to just let the card control it?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom