Graphic card problems .

Nodders · 1 Apr 2013 at 12:58

Hey folks , need a little help here .

A few weeks ago I started having problems with the PC , it's 3 year old and originally bought from here , been a good little PC up till now .

I had a few graphics card problems , game freezes / black screen , then everything runs normal . Along with one or 2 hard drive failures at the same time .
I took the PC to be repaired when in one night I had around 6 of these crashes along with a few bluescreens and a hard drive failure .

The PC repair place phoned me to say the hard drive definitely needs replacing and the graphics card is fine , after running whatever tests they do .

Okay finally get the PC back and the graphics card is still constantly freezing/black screen then running okay . I do get the display driver stopped working pop up . This only happens when gaming , I have never had one on the desktop . All I am playing at the minute is WoW . I used to play with all settings on Ultra but have gradually dropped them to around medium with same results . I did have Diablo 3 on the comp and believe the last time I played it it also had screen freezes . This can happen after 2 minutes playing / 30 mins / 3 hours , pretty intermittent .

I did ring the shop but got told they ran the tests and found nothing , they can't test for every eventuality . Which I suppose is fair enough .

The machine is running very cool , so temps seem fine . Drivers are up to date so I'm at a loss .
I am not techie minded so please bear this in mind , cheers .

The card is an amd Radeon 5850 , so getting on a bit , if it just needs replacing that's great . I just don't want to replace then find my new card does the same thing . I'm not that rich to replace things willy nilly . I do have £160 put to one side just in case , I was looking at the Sapphire HD 7850 that was on sale here last week . Actually just saw this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-100-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 what does the 2x mean , is that the number of fans ?

So folks , any help would be greatly appreciated before I stick my order in

Thanks

Just an aside , today is the worst ever , around a dozen times now in under an hour , had 5 in 2 minutes , getting consecutive freezes one after the other now .

Nodders · 2 Apr 2013 at 16:17

Does nobody have any ideas at all ?

Getting withdrawal symptoms not being able to game properly

On Holiday · 2 Apr 2013 at 16:22

If you've paid that shop money and they haven't fixed the original problem, then demand your money back or take your system to them and ask them to do a 24hr test/stress test etc.

What are the actual temps of the CPU & GFX Card whilst playing? You can find the CPU temperature by downloading a program called Realtemp (run the realtemp.exe)

How are you determining that you're having hard drive failures too?

Try setting your graphics card fan to 100% whilst gaming (You can do this by opening Catalyst Control Center, clicking ATI Overdrive, clicking "Enable Manual Fan Control" and putting the slider all the way across)

cuke2u · 2 Apr 2013 at 16:31

Hi, personally, if it hasn't been done already but you don't say so, I'd do a fresh clean install of the OS first....

Nodders · 2 Apr 2013 at 16:31

Thanks a lot will get on to that and report back with the temps etc .

I was getting BSOD's and hard disc failure reports , the comp would'nt start and kept giving hdd errors . I made a bootable disc and did the windows disc repair but it came back a week or so later with the same failures .

Thanks

It was a new hard drive so yeah it is a fresh install of the OS , cheers .

Bah , after the new hard drive I now see I don't have the catalyst control centre anymore :/ downloaded it so in the middle of the fan test .

Nodders · 2 Apr 2013 at 17:24

Okay I've probably done something wrong because I have no idea what I'm doing , but anyway , so far the results are .

Realtemp
Temp 37 29 34 32

Distance to TJ max (whatever this is )
63 72 66 67

Then when gaming
Temp 39 31 36 35

Distance to TJ Max
60 68 63 65

Amd overdrive went from 26 C to 45 C when gaming .

I put wow on and after 30 seconds it froze so before anything heated up etc . Cheers .

If I'm showing the wrong stuff let me know , not done this before .

Thanks .

Been running quite some time now with very little change to the second set of numbers . Just had a BSOD and comp rebooted before I could read what caused it .

On Holiday · 2 Apr 2013 at 19:42

The temperatures will jump down massively when you alt tab to check temperatures, but they seem fine at idle.

What Power Supply do you have by the way?

cuke2u · 2 Apr 2013 at 19:59

Hi, ok thanks for letting me know about the OS. Were the BSOD's all random, did any say pagefault? I assume that the place you took it into performed a memory test, however there is no harm in running one for yourself http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

Nodders · 2 Apr 2013 at 22:08

It's a 650 watt Power supply .

Yeah when it went in for testing the memory was tested and came back fine .

Most of the BSOD's were something called Atikmpag.sys , I wrote that down after a few .

Thanks .

Nodders · 3 Apr 2013 at 15:58

Okay today it went haywire , this morning I get the usual freezes / black screen / back to game one after the other , stopped gaming .

Tried it 10 mins ago and it went daft , I logged on in the auction house in wow , was in game about 30 seconds when I got the freeze / blackscreen / game , only this time it froze / black , froze / black / froze / desktop / froze / black / froze / desktop / froze / black / froze / black / froze / black then BSOD Atikmpag.sys .

Bit desperate to get this fixed now , seems to have been going on for weeks with no fix .

Cheers guys .

derv · 3 Apr 2013 at 16:17

Do you have a friend that you could borrow a spare graphics card from to test?

If not why not buy a new card and if the problem persists just send it back under DSR. That way you are only down the postage which is probably much cheaper than sending it back to the repair shop anyway.

Where do you live? There may be a fellow forum member close by who could offer a few spare parts to test with.

riskyfrisky · 3 Apr 2013 at 16:55

I know someone else suggested it already, and you've called them, but i would take the machine back to the repair shop. If you're not tech minded it has to be the best option. By the sound of it, the issue seems pretty easy to replicate so i don't see why it is such a difficult thing for them. They should have spare hardware that they can try.

When they replaced the hard drive did they actually reinstall Windows from scratch or did they ghost the installation from the old hard drive to the new hard drive?

Nodders · 3 Apr 2013 at 16:58

They installed windows fresh , I asked about ghosting so I would'nt lose everything but they said I could possibly be transferring the problems over . So new hard drive with fresh windows install .

riskyfrisky · 3 Apr 2013 at 17:45

Nodders said:
They installed windows fresh , I asked about ghosting so I would'nt lose everything but they said I could possibly be transferring the problems over . So new hard drive with fresh windows install .

That was my concern, that the drive was cloned. At least you know that's not the case.

Did they try a different graphics card in place of your 5850? They should have done.

Does your motherboard have integrated graphics by any chance?

Nodders · 3 Apr 2013 at 19:12

They just said they ran tests so I'm not sure if they used a seperate graphics card .

I have no idea about integrated graphics .

I have the original receipt from Overclockers with the make of the Motherboard if that helps .
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 .

Cheers .

On Holiday · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:26

That mobo doesn't have integrated graphics so wouldn't be an option I don't think.

Atikmpag.sys is related to ATI Drivers.

What specific brand/model of power supply do you have? It might not be powering the graphics card enough.

Nodders · 4 Apr 2013 at 14:28

It's a Corsair TX 650W ATX Sli compliant .

Had no probs the past couple of years , well , will be 3 years old in may . During that time I've had a couple of blackscreen graphic freezes but like one every couple of month . Originally the whole system came overclocked but I was getting constant bluescreens while gaming from the off , but a call to OC and they talked me through switching off the overclocking and had no problems since .

I have had the latest drivers and rolled back those with no effect at all .

Just an aside , today after it froze/blackscreened , I also got choppy sound and a comp reboot all in one ...

Nodders · 5 Apr 2013 at 17:03

Any more ideas folks or is it just a case of biting the bullet and buying a new card ?

I know it's a driver issue from the bluescreens but googling it just brings up a crap load of other people with the same issue and no fixes along with NVidia too .

I would take it into the shop but a bit put off they did'nt find anything the first time around and all I'll get is "you need a new card "

So if it's a card , I have around £175 to spend , I saw this advertised a few times http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-100-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 will that fit my motherboard okay . Which is a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 .

Any other ideas on cards or is that a decent choice ?

I just feel I need to do something , have'nt been able to game for weeks , doing my head in

Thanks so far .

arc@css · 6 Apr 2013 at 05:24

riskyfrisky said:
I know someone else suggested it already, and you've called them, but i would take the machine back to the repair shop. If you're not tech minded it has to be the best option. By the sound of it, the issue seems pretty easy to replicate so i don't see why it is such a difficult thing for them. They should have spare hardware that they can try.

+1

riskyfrisky · 6 Apr 2013 at 13:55

Nodders said:
Any more ideas folks or is it just a case of biting the bullet and buying a new card ?

I know it's a driver issue from the bluescreens but googling it just brings up a crap load of other people with the same issue and no fixes along with NVidia too .

I would take it into the shop but a bit put off they did'nt find anything the first time around and all I'll get is "you need a new card "

So if it's a card , I have around £175 to spend , I saw this advertised a few times http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-100-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 will that fit my motherboard okay . Which is a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 .

Any other ideas on cards or is that a decent choice ?

I just feel I need to do something , have'nt been able to game for weeks , doing my head in

Thanks so far .

I suppose it depends on how much they are going to charge you this time round that will determine whether it's worth taking it back to them. Go in without the PC and explain fully the situation; there is a problem with the rig and they didn't find it first time round. Give them a week or so if necessary (just-in-case the issue takes some time to replicate) and then go from there.

That Gigabyte 7850 should work in your machine. It will fit the motherboard okay and your PSU is more than man enough to handle it. My old 5850 requires two 6-pin connectors to operate, that 7850 requires just one. I can't remember how big it is compared to the 5850, though i fitted an aftermarket cooler to my 5850 which makes it massive.

However, you'd be the one fitting it - if you're not tech savvy do you want to risk it - and there's always a chance it isn't the graphics card. The power supply should have been checked as well.

The other thing is have all settings in the BIOS been set right, especially after the overclock was removed. That's another possibility. You could always go into the BIOS and enable 'optimized defaults' or something similar.

Of course, if you are convinced it is the GPU to blame then buying another would, i suppose, be the easiest and quickest way to find out.