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Games hiccup and freeze almost every time. Driver problem or faulty hardware?

Tags:
  • Hardware
  • 7850
  • Games
  • PowerColor
  • Radeon
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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March 18, 2013 7:53:20 PM

I recently put together a new gaming PC with my tax return, but I'm having some pretty serious issues with it. Every time I start a game through Steam, the graphics glitch and the whole thing seems to hiccup for a moment before everything settles and the game runs as normal.

In the best-case scenario, after that first trip it's fine, but sometimes the game will freeze during the opening cutscene or a few minutes into play. Usually I have to get into the task manager to fix it. Glitches include little squares of randomly-colored (usually pink, green, or grey) pixels all over the screen and a split image. The card is a PowerColor AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB, and the system is running on Windows 8 which might be a problem because I remember hearing that Steam doesn't support Windows 8 but it's worth mentioning that the same thing happens, and more frequently, when I boot with the Linux Mint partition. In windows, I sometimes get a pop-up that tells me that the graphics driver has stopped, but recovered quickly, although that doesn't seem to make a difference in whether or not the game crashes.

The only other thing I can think of is that I may have installed the motherboard drivers wrong. It didn't ship with Win8 drivers and figuring out which ones to get from the manufacturer's site was a pain. The board is an ASRock z68 Pro3 Gen3 LGA1155 with an i5-3470 processor.

Any ideas? :C

More about : games hiccup freeze time driver problem faulty hardware

March 18, 2013 7:58:54 PM

Really sounds like a broken card.
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March 18, 2013 8:00:05 PM

It pretty clearly sounds like video corruption which is almost always caused by too high of an overclock or defective hardware. For example, if I clock my GPU too high I get the same symptoms including the "Graphics driver has crashed" in windows.

My advice would be to set up an RMA for a new video card if you haven't overclocked anything.
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March 18, 2013 8:04:10 PM

Before you try and RMA, most of these problems can be solved with some software. What worked for me when I got the dreaded "Graphics driver has stopped working" was booting into safemode and using Driver Sweeper to delete all of my AMD drivers. Then, try reinstalling the ENTIRE CCC suite and see if that fixes it. If not, RMA the card.
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March 18, 2013 8:06:32 PM

Dupontrocks11 said:
Before you try and RMA, most of these problems can be solved with some software. What worked for me when I got the dreaded "Graphics driver has stopped working" was booting into safemode and using Driver Sweeper to delete all of my AMD drivers. Then, try reinstalling the ENTIRE CCC suite and see if that fixes it. If not, RMA the card.


This works if it's a driver issue but if you read his post he just built a new computer which means he had to freshly install windows which means new, fresh drivers. Plus it's pretty obvious that he's getting graphical corruption which like I said already is almost always faulty hardware, or too high of an overclock.
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March 18, 2013 8:10:44 PM

all motherboard drivers were installed off the disc that came with the motherboard?

went to windows update and got everything the machine needs?

have your anti-virus off or in gaming mode?

tried a new cable from card to monitor?

tried under clocking the video cards ram and processor?

updated Steam?

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March 18, 2013 8:16:14 PM

s3anister said:
Dupontrocks11 said:
Before you try and RMA, most of these problems can be solved with some software. What worked for me when I got the dreaded "Graphics driver has stopped working" was booting into safemode and using Driver Sweeper to delete all of my AMD drivers. Then, try reinstalling the ENTIRE CCC suite and see if that fixes it. If not, RMA the card.


This works if it's a driver issue but if you read his post he just built a new computer which means he had to freshly install windows which means new, fresh drivers. Plus it's pretty obvious that he's getting graphical corruption which like I said already is almost always faulty hardware, or too high of an overclock.


The windows drivers that automatically install are not enough. You also have to install the AMD driver suite. While the graphical corruption can be caused by bad hardware, it can also be triggered by a lack of software, which would set the windows drivers to fail. Don't be so quick to suggest an RMA before all of the options are checked.
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March 18, 2013 8:24:25 PM

Dupontrocks11 said:
s3anister said:
Dupontrocks11 said:
Before you try and RMA, most of these problems can be solved with some software. What worked for me when I got the dreaded "Graphics driver has stopped working" was booting into safemode and using Driver Sweeper to delete all of my AMD drivers. Then, try reinstalling the ENTIRE CCC suite and see if that fixes it. If not, RMA the card.


This works if it's a driver issue but if you read his post he just built a new computer which means he had to freshly install windows which means new, fresh drivers. Plus it's pretty obvious that he's getting graphical corruption which like I said already is almost always faulty hardware, or too high of an overclock.


The windows drivers that automatically install are not enough. You also have to install the AMD driver suite. While the graphical corruption can be caused by bad hardware, it can also be triggered by a lack of software, which would set the windows drivers to fail. Don't be so quick to suggest an RMA before all of the options are checked.


No the stock Windows drivers aren't enough but I'd like to think it's fairly safe to assume he's running the CCC if he has a Linux Mint partition set up as well. In any case, even with the stock drivers he shouldn't be getting graphical corruption like that. If it was a lack of drivers he should be having either no game play at all or terrible frame rates.
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March 18, 2013 9:35:25 PM

I tried reinstalling the drivers after getting them completely removed. In fact, I re-formatted the HD after a problem with repartitioning left me with a Win8 partition without access to the DVD drive. So, everything was completely redone from the start and the same error still occurs regardless. All updates are done, antivirus in gaming mode, most up-to-date drivers, etc. I haven't even tried overclocking anything yet because honestly, it's been so long since I had a gaming machine that I don't even remember how. :p 

The mobo drivers wouldn't install from the disk, so I had to download them but like I said I had a damn hard time figuring out which ones and exactly how so I don't want to rule that out as a possibility.

Based on all of your suggestions I think it's just a bad card, so unless I/we can figure out a last-minute miracle fix I'll be RMAing it soon. Thanks for all your help! :D 
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March 18, 2013 10:27:57 PM

do a scan disc and error check/fix on the HD.
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March 19, 2013 12:44:25 AM

Ulfstan said:
I tried reinstalling the drivers after getting them completely removed. In fact, I re-formatted the HD after a problem with repartitioning left me with a Win8 partition without access to the DVD drive. So, everything was completely redone from the start and the same error still occurs regardless. All updates are done, antivirus in gaming mode, most up-to-date drivers, etc. I haven't even tried overclocking anything yet because honestly, it's been so long since I had a gaming machine that I don't even remember how. :p 

The mobo drivers wouldn't install from the disk, so I had to download them but like I said I had a damn hard time figuring out which ones and exactly how so I don't want to rule that out as a possibility.

Based on all of your suggestions I think it's just a bad card, so unless I/we can figure out a last-minute miracle fix I'll be RMAing it soon. Thanks for all your help! :D 


You should have been able to easily get the necessary drivers for your motherboard from the ASRock website and then the graphics drivers directly from AMD. If you did that then your problem lies with your card and you should go ahead and set up an RMA for it.
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March 19, 2013 4:50:42 AM

don't you think it's rather funny that the drivers on the disc won't install?
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March 19, 2013 3:50:09 PM

swifty_morgan said:
don't you think it's rather funny that the drivers on the disc won't install?


Not necessarily, there are a number of reasons why the drivers wouldn't install. Simplest being they're not the right version for Win8 (which seems unlikely) other reason could be faulty processor or PCH to even it just being the graphics card not validating when the drivers do the hardware scan of the system before installation. Any of these could be at fault but graphical corruption usually lies within whatever is driving the video stream (ie. a video card).

On thing I didn't think to mention trying would be to first disable Lucid Logix virtu MVP if you have it enabled and see if you're still getting graphical corruption. If you are the next thing to do would be to try playing any game off the processor's integrated GPU only and if you don't have graphical corruption while doing that then it's definitely your Radeon GPU.
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March 19, 2013 11:41:25 PM

if the right motherboard drivers ( and these should have been the second thing installed after the LAN drivers ) weren't installed.............. ?????

did anybody mention under clocking video card's ram and proc. ?
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