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Graphic card problems .

Nodders

Nodders

Nodders

Associate
Joined
11 May 2010
Posts
44
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 .
 
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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 .
 
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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 .
 
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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 .
 
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 .
 
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 .
 
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 .
 
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 ...
 
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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 .
 
Cheers , I gave them a ring and explained it once more , will be taking it in monday , I will ask them to check out the power supply too .

The overclock was removed almost 3 years ago so I don't think it can be that , took it's time rearing it's ugly head if it was :)

I'm okay at replacing graphics cards and sound cards etc so no worries on that front . I think it's stuff to do with the Bios and a lot of tech talk that throws me .

They are also going to do some gaming on my games to replicate the problem , should have no problems doing that , had 4 bluescreens and around 8 blackscreens or so today already .

Thanks .
 
Okay , I took the PC in on Monday and get a call yesterday saying they had put a new graphics card in and gamed on it for over an hour with no faults at all and asking me what I wanted to do seeing as it is definitely a broken graphics card . I asked them if they had tested the one that was in and they said no , so first things first I want them to check the old card and find the problem , I don't understand why they would'nt test that ?

Next is this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-100-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 Which I was looking at buying as a replacement but then saw this thread .

Links start at post 11 http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18503625 so after reading those I was a bit put off .

So atm I am only really playing World of warcraft and from what I have seen Nvidia seems the way to go for that particular game , it's only really been with this comp I went radeon . I don't really mind the changeover .

I would appreciate any ideas to what Nvidia card would be a decent upgrade from my 5850 , been out of the loop for around 3 years so have'nt a clue . I could probably push to maybe £200 to spend on it .

Thanks a lot .
 
Ooh I've just saw the 7950 , the Majestic one yeah ? I don't have any of those games either .
Damn , got me thinking now :) probably the best upgrade I've ever had .

Will this fit my motherboard Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 and case okay , it's the antec 2 .

Thanks .

And then I see this thread and find out maybe the fan problems are'nt fixed so I'm put off with this too . http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18502458
 
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Ian Evey said:
Get the saphire one then at £239, its a toss up between getting something very good for £239 or something good for £179. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-199-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2379

Either way and whatever you choose you wont be disappointed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that , appreciated , from these 2 what would be the best bet . I know it would be the dearer one , that's okay , but why ?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-043-KF&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2392

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-199-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2379

I am leaning towards the second one .
 
wazza300 said:
is your pc overclocked or stock?

pop in the bios and see how much dram voltage and qpi/vtt voltage is being used

it will be in the m.i.t section
Click to expand...

PC is still in the shop .

It was overclocked originally but kept bluescreening , phoned OC and they walked me through turning the O'clocking off , but that was like 3 years ago .
 
Okay Wednesday I get a phone call , they have a new card in the machine and showing no bluescreens etc while gaming . So I'm told it is the graphics card .
I then asked if he had tested my card , said he had'nt , I wanted it testing . so he was'nt in until friday . Friday comes and the concensus is it's the card , he was getting bluescreens etc so put there own card back in and made sure etc .
Meanwhile he tells me the hard drive is clicking so has replaced it , this was brand new 2 weeks ago , so that got replaced .
He tells me to come in for around 5pm to collect it , get's to the shop and see the graphic card I wanted for a great price , they said they would stick it in for me . So I hung around and hung around .....shop is about to close and I'm told he cannot remove the ATI drivers , they would uninstall then he would get an error saying they were still there , I was going to have to pick it up Saturday .

Saturday comes , I phone them up and it all boils down to he had to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows . Again , come in for 5 ish to pick it up .

Get there , guy goes to see the technician , returns and say "do you want the really really bad news " I'm like "no" . Apparently after reinstalling windows and the new graphics card , it kept bluescreening .

Now they think my old graphics card is fine and it could be the motherboard / cpu etc . Starting to get a little fed up now . They tell me they've run a memory check on all the ram sticks but not individually , so they will do that .

I just realised that they have never mentioned the power supply , could be that , but right now I'm not holding my breath , they will be in touch tuesday / wednesday with any news .
 
anthony566 said:
could be PSU but have you loaded latest BIOS update for you M/B ?
Click to expand...

I have'nt done that , would need pointing in the right direction if thats okay .

Got the comp back and this is what they said " It's world of warcraft , read on the forums that people are having trouble with freezing since the 5.2 patch ." ?

Yeah maybe lots of lag and freezing but not my specific problem .

Anyway , loaded up Diablo 3 to try a different game , 2 mins later freeze/blackscreen , 20 mins later same again , alt tabbed out and my desktop was full of nice blue /green squares .

I'm lost guys , seriously fed up with the backwards and forwards to the shop .

If you could help out with the bios I'll try that , cheers .

I found this page but pretty much lost after that http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/download-center.aspx?ck=2 is mine rev 1.0 or rev 2.0 looking at the msinfo it says BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F5, 11/03/2010
Then underneath it says SMBIOS Version 2.4
 
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Hey folks , just an update to what is going on .

The PC has been to another shop , one highly recommended . They did every test on every piece over 5 days , they even flashed the bios .

I get an apology because they could'nt find a thing wrong , nor actually get the errors I was getting .

Got the PC home started gaming and within 20 mins freeze / blackscreen , so just the same .

Today within 10 minutes , four freeze / blackscreen and 2 freeze / blackscreen /BSOD . Yesterday I had a few blackscreens , so it's different on a day to day basis , tried out borderlands 2 after reinstalling steam today and within 5 minutes freeze / blackscreen .

I just don't know what to do . The guy even told me to check my broadband because that's the only thing different . I've never known that sort of issue though , usually you get lag etc but not BSOD's .

Yeah I asked about the power supply and they say it was checked . Mind you the second shop rang me to say while checking the RAM did I know it was 18 gb and the board would only run 6 . No I did'nt , so when OC built the machine they must have accidentally put in 3 x 6 gb ram sticks . First shop did'nt pick up on that .

I'm lost atm , why does this only happen gaming and why cant the fault be found , grrr .
 
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