Problems with my 3870X2

[ihatelag]

Hi there,

I wonder if someone can help me, I have a 3870X2 and currently experiencing a black screen every time I play a game or do anything graphically intensive.
The system itself has not crashed, I can still hear the music playing on my headphones. The screen just goes black and the fans on my graphics card becomes much louder as it suddenly starts going really fast.

The idle temperature is 62 degrees, is this normal?

I have also used driver cleaner to remove the old ati drivers and try a refresh of the newer 8.12 drivers with no difference made at all.

Does anyone have any suggestions what I should do to fix the problem?

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I ran a test using Video Card Stability from http://freestone-group.com/

and I ran the test for 4 minutes and no problems but the catalyst control center (CCC) is showing the temps of GPU at 73 degrees and not dropping.

I will try the benchmark to see what happens.....

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So the benchmark worked okay... not a problem so far... I guess it's not so graphically intensive to cause the black screen. But the problem still occurs in every game I play.




Here are my system specs if you need it:

Vista Ultimate 64bit edition
Intel 8500 CPU
BFG 680i mobo
2GB low latency OCZ RAM (ATI supported)
3870X2
650W PSU

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So trying the test (not benchmark) again, I now am experiencing temps of 80 degrees while the test is running the activity is up to 95%.


I am going to leave the test running for a while....(will check after lunch )

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After running for over an hour no change. I am going to download 3D Mark and see if I can install it and test it with that.

 

[ihatelag]

So...after testing I asked a friend to help me out...he said that NO nforce motherboard supports the use of ATI's 2GPU's running on a card...so even though it's not two cards, the second GPU will not have any drivers which will support its function in the system...and this in turn will cause black screens which I have been seeing. He also points out that this is why the card only fails and the system still works like when I am still able to listen to internet radio through the headphones.

Can someone help me confirm this to be true??? ... For now I guess I am stuck with having only one GPU running at a time and black screen problems.

 

[RaiderX]

with the X2 cards the crossfire is done internally so it doesnt matter what board its on.

 

[ihatelag]

with the X2 cards the crossfire is done internally so it doesnt matter what board its on.

Cool, thanks for the info. Although RivaTuner said that there are no supported drivers for GPU1...doesn't that mean that 1 of the GPU are not supported??

Take a look:

I am currently connecting the card to my monitor using the DVI port closest to the motherboard, if I change it to the top one (furthest away) do you think it would make any difference?

3DMark 06 apparently will not work for me...I get a strange error on my monitor:

Digitial Input 1 - Out of Range Signal - Cannot display this video mode, change computer display input to 2560 x 1600 @60hz (Even though CCC res is the same)

Your help is much appreciated!

EDIT --

For those who get the out of range signal error, DO NOT change your display input in CCC to anything other than what it says - otherwise you will need to reboot and load last known good configuration before entering windows....it had taken me ages to figure out how to get windows back...it kept on loading with a black screen so I couldn't even load/log in to the OS!

Anyway...that mini-crisis is over

Still....need to figure out what I need to do in order to get my graphics card to stop giving me black screens in games.
==============

YAY !!! Issue resolved: Catalyst AI is responsible. I had to put it on Advanced mode and no more probs

Mission complete!