atikmdag....

[Nevram]

Im getting sick of this, with certian games i get the message 'atikmdag stopped responding and has recovered'; after which my HD4850 powers off and then back on.. meaning if im gaming online i sign off because of the crash. I've tried un-installing windows updates aswell as installing latest drivers, but its still happening!

I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem, and if they have.. did they fix it? how? or did you just buy a new card (i.e im thinking of making the cross back to an NVIDIA card). Im told its an issue with windows vista, so would upgrading to 7 also be a possible move?


Thankyou!

 

[Rroff]

Theres a ton of reasons this can be happening... often switching ATI<>nVidia can solve it just because they do things different but doesn't always remove the cause of the problem just mask it.

7/10 this problem is caused by Asus P5 series chipsets IMO... they use some non-standard timings which causes the system to get its knickers in a twist. It can also be caused by overheating Northbridge, faulty or overheating RAM, or even the GPU drivers... some people blame GPU drivers because sometimes one version won't cause it while another will but often all thats happening is a different driver works slightly differently not triggering the problem. It can be caused by problems with the graphics card as well.

 

[Nevram]

so basically im gonna have to try 100 different things before i know exactly whats wrong

 

[Nevram]

it is a pretty crap mobo that i got with my original set-up (my first build) a year or so ago, maybe i could do with an upgrade and see what happens!

 

[Vince]

Hi Nevram,

As roff has already said this is one of those issues that can be caused by many different things, I have had this same problem in the past, for me it was voltage to my ram that was causing this problem. Having said that, I can also recreate this quite easily with an unstable overclock on my cpu or gfx cards.

The best place to start would be removing all add-in cards - sound cards and what have you and pulling your system back to stock, then setting the manufacturer’s settings on your memory timings and voltage and seeing how it holds up.

I must admit I can't count the number of times I have tried to help in threads for this and the NV version of this problem, most of the time seemingly unsuccessfully.

I also echo what roff said about chipsets, back when the 9700pro was released there was a problem with VIA’s KT333 chipset on the ASUS A7V333 motherboard that caused all sorts of problems for myself and others and resulted in, for me anyway, my first dfi motherboard.

Good luck with this one.

 

[Nevram]

thanks for the feedback, ill set everything back to stock and tell you how i get on.

 

[Nevram]

Well i set all my volatages and speeds back, and that still didn't help. However i read somewhere that disabling the windows aero theme works for some.. so i've set my theme to windows classic and; haven't had the error once in 3hours of MW2!

I really hope it will remain this simple...

 

[Vince]

out of interest if you underclock the core and memory on the gfx card do the errors still appear? - with aero on obviously.

 

[Simps]

I was having this problem with the equivalent Nvidia error.
I fixed the problem by changing the power profile from "Balanced" to "High performance"
Start/Power in search and then power options.
Might help, might not

 

[Nevram]

out of interest if you underclock the core and memory on the gfx card do the errors still appear? - with aero on obviously.

Hi VinceB1, I'll underclock my card and play for an hour and tell you what happens!

 

[Nevram]

Yeah, i changed my clock and memory (from 625,993 to 500,750) and the problem hasn't occured once in a good 2hours worth of play. So does this mean the problem is related to my card?

 

[Vince]

The reason I suggested you pull back the clocks was that this problem seemed to occur more frequently on systems with factory overclocked cards that were coming from both NV and ATI.

This can mean one of two things, when the card ramps up its clocks from 2D to 3D, either your power supply fails to provide the power needed at load so the driver crashes out, or the other option is that the card cannot reach its stock clocks and is therefore causing errors in the drivers.

If your card is factory overclocked try pulling it back to ati's reference clocks, if it works at those clocks then you can pretty much pin the issue down to the factory overclock and RMA it (Being sure to put a note in with details of the problem and how to recreate the issue).

Hope this helps.

edit: just noticed that your card is at 625, ati reference clock speeds, try the card in another machine and see what happens if it fails in the same way its the card. It could be some kind of strange compatability issue between the board and card that is related to memory timings and clock speed... Got a friend with a 4850? it would make pinpointing the issue much easier.

 

[Akempster]

i have a similar issue, to start off with my computer wouldn't work with the computer at all, after uninstalling a windows defender definition update (KB*****) it fixed the problem for me. Still having issues with the driver though. heard it could be an issue with not having a high enough power supply, i have a few spares so im gonna split the computer between three PSU's and see if this stopps the issue.