Help needed New ATI graphics keeps crashing!

[Viscount]

Having built my new computer and I'm having quite a lot of graphics freezes. My mouse still works but you can tell everything else is frozen. On a few occasions the pc has completely frozen and then I can only press restart.

This is then followed by either a grey or black screen, or fairly random artefacts about the screen. I then get a message from windows - ATI driver stopped responsing and was recovered.

The more I have the computer on the worse it seems to get. I've tried changing drivers from 8.9 to 10.1, then 10.3 but it makes no difference. Strangely it seems not to happen if I uninstall all drivers and use VGA mode.

I have a ATI HD 5770 graphics card, Window 7 64bit, 10666mhz ram.

either this is a driver issue or I have a dodgy graphics card.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[matt_fsr]

I'm in exactly the same boat mate. I've got a new Asus 5770 CuCore and its crashy as heck under Win7, 64 bit, 4Gb RAM - 10.3 and 10.2 drivers. I haven't tried any older drivers, but I'm going to tonight but I'm severely tempted to RMA my card.

What version of the 5770 do you have? Less than impressed with ATi now

 

[Jabbs]

Sounds like dodgy card to me I sent back a 5870 pcs last week as it crashed in gaming straight away, I would get grey screens with red lines, blue with white if I recall, seems it was a memory issue.

 

[straxusii]

Update your motherboard bios, dont forget to then clear cmos

 

[kitch9]

Driver stopped responding errors with both Nvidia and ATI are common I've had them myself but thankfully managed to cure them. I realised after weeks of pulling my hair out that my ram timings and voltage were incorrectly set up...

Try setting your system overclock back to stock for a short while and make sure the voltage and timings of your ram are set per manufacturers recommendations. Some MB bios auto settings are simply not right and will under volt some makes of ram.

If you still get the issue at stock with everything correctly set then ring the RMA bell, simple as that. If the errors stop, then start overclocking again from scratch to try to find the point where it falls over so you can avoid it.

I'm maybe telling you to suck eggs, but some people refuse to even do basic troubleshooting like this for some reason.

*Edit* Ensure Bios is up to date too!

 

[matt_fsr]

Thanks for the tips, I never moan at people suggesting n00b tips - even the experienced of us can forget to do them.

I haven't tried stock CPU speeds, its just frustrating that changing the GFx card from a totally stable card produces these kind of issues.

BIOS is the latest one for my board, and the motherboard drivers were updated from manufacturers website when I built the Win7 install only a few days ago.

 

[Viscount]

Ok thanks. Theres some things I can try there.
I also found another thread about this same problem on hardware. see:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18132758

Dancer is suggesting changing the clock and voltage values.

note: I have a XFX ATI HD 5770 see: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-149-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1515

 

[uv]

what PSU do you have?

 

[matt_fsr]

It's a Arctic Cooling 350W PSU. It draws max 220W from the wall with CPU and my old 8800GT maxed at 100% benchmarking.

I've had the power meter on again, and in windows usage its around 150W when booting, idles at about 95W, yet the machine is stable when playing Crysis so I very much doubt its PSU related. (under XP32)

All of my crashes in Win7 seem to be random desktop freezing issues, opening files, folders, or when installing programs. I've barely been able to get it stable enough to install some games, much less play them.

Steam - CS stress test ran fine, 258FPS average.

Sorely tempted to RMA under distance selling, and get my money back. I'd like a faster GFX card but I dont want to run my PC's stability just to get it.

 

[DragonRR]

I had a problem fairly recently with a 5770. It would lockup in windows 2D very infrequently, would lock up in 2D games very often. However passed furmark and other full 3D stress tests. The replacement card still runs fine in a system here (which is the same system it was originally in).

 

[matt_fsr]

DragonRR - what manufacturer made your card?

It does seem to be very 2D lockuppy - and OK on 3D stuff. Might try returning it as faulty, still have the 8800GT - never wise to end up without a graphics card!

 

[DragonRR]

It's a powercolor.

I should point out that I did have some issues with the RMA. Overclockers tested it with 3D and it seemed ok. They did eventually acknowledge the issue and sent a replacement.

I did find a few people complaining about similar issues with 5770 cards on the web.

 

[Viscount]

My power supply is a OCModXstream 600W

 

[AMG]

I was about to say isnt this down to powerplay?

so I would have thought upping the clock speeds in 2d sorted the problem out on win 7

 

[matt_fsr]

I was about to say isnt this down to powerplay?

so I would have thought upping the clock speeds in 2d sorted the problem out on win 7

?? Not sure what you're on about there, can you provide more info please?

 

[Viscount]

I appear to have sorted this out now to the extent that its not much an issue now.
My HD 5770 is stable in games now and stable most of the time in Windows. I don't get the amdkmdap error now, but occasionally get dynamic link library crashes, usually if I leave the pc to idle. On two occastions I visible saw Windows 7 turn off Aero itself, then a few mins later switch it back on.

I have updated bios to latest version and changed Dram voltage from 1.5v to 1.64v. My ram is 1.65v and that's the nearest I could get to it. The mainboard does do 1.66v, but when I switch to it the text turns purple colour. I thought that was a sign of something bad so have left it at 1.64v.

Firstly it didn't sort it out and I was looking at other solutions. Then last Friday I noticed the cpu was clocking at 2.00ghz. I checked the bios and the clock ratio was wrong, which I then changed. No idea how this happened I may have knocked in whilst changing the ram settings.

Since then it has been mostly crash free, at least in games which is fine by me.

 

[Phage]

It seems to be a VRAM issue. There's a bloke who can reproduce the issue at will by overclocking his RAM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnxNSi8YTZ0
However, it can be controlled by software, hence why we see positive results with drivers, BIOS changes etc. The problem seems to be in the way the software handles VRAM that is sensitive to changes in speed. So the Powerplay process can cause it, as can changing settings and clock speed.