Faulty/Dead Video Card

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slyu9213

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Nov 30, 2012
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Okay so I have a Radeon HD 7850 1GB that was given to me when a close friend upgraded his GPU. The deal is that I feel a lot of problems with games are pointing to the video card.

1) There has been an increase in crashes while playing video games. I've overclocked my CPU/APU a little but I have tested the CPU and RAM for 12 hours and they are stable. Sometimes the game just freezes and the sound messes up. Sometimes the screen goes red and freezes and sometimes the display signal is lost and freezes.

2) No overclock is really stable anymore. Even though the video card rarely goes over 50C I can't even overclock the 7850 to 1050MHz from 900MHz without the game crashing quickly. Additionally I get notifications that my AMD drivers crashed while running Unigine Heavean with light overclocks.

Do you guys think it's time to put the video card to rest? I literally can't play 10-20+ minutes of video games (Inquisition, SoM, etc) because it crashes my PC so often. Raising the power limit or core voltage isn't really helping even at stock speeds.
 
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blacksheep123
its the PSU

dont get me wrong, its a good psu... but the amps on 12v rail are pretty average 50A...good.. but not overclocker grade...

you are overclocking your cpu,ram and gpu.. its too much for your PSU to deliver

thats why underclocking again helps minimise crash issues

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Entomber

Entomber

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if your system is crashing after you overclock, then you should remove the overclock or underclock your GPU. It may well be that your overclock is causing the instability.

However, it sounds like the real issue is that you aren't getting the performance that you want out of your GPU. Regardless of whether or not your GPU is faulty, you would probably be happiest to just get a new GPU.

What are your current system specs?
 
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slyu9213

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Thanks for your reply. No it has nothing to do with being unhappy with the performance. The system is crashing when the video card is at it's stock settings. Raising the voltage/power limit at stock settings won't make the video card stable either.

It's true that I have overclocked my CPU (860K) but it's a measly 600mhz overclock from the stock clocks and only 200mhz from the turbo boost clocks. I don't think it's a CPU issue because I had similar crashes when I was running a Dual-Core APU also, it was just that I had less crashing then.

I am perfectly fine with the current performance I am getting in games, but no one would be happy with crashing 20 minutes or sooner into almost any game every time.

AMD Athlon X4 860K 4.3GHz
Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H
GSkill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2400MHz RAM (Underclocked to 1866MHz)
PNY XLR8 120GB SSD
160GB HDD for Files/Documents
750GB HDD for Programs/Games
Corsair H100i
Cooler Master N200 Case w/ 8 Fans
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 620W Power Supply
Gaming on 1280x1024 monitor or 1080P TV.

Currently I have set my CPU back to stock speeds, underclocked the RAM to 1600MHz and underclocked the core/memory clock of my GPU by ~50mhz. DA Inquisition hasn't crashed yet so I will keep playing till it does. If it doesn't crash I will have to figure out if it was the underclocking the gpu or the stock CPU that stopped the crashes.
 
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blacksheep123

blacksheep123

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its the PSU

dont get me wrong, its a good psu... but the amps on 12v rail are pretty average 50A...good.. but not overclocker grade...

you are overclocking your cpu,ram and gpu.. its too much for your PSU to deliver

thats why underclocking again helps minimise crash issues

 
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slyu9213

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The only component I was really overclocking was the CPU (and honestly was only upped the vcore by .036v and only 300MHz over the boost speed). The GPU honestly was at stock most of the times (when overclocked it was a small one no more than 170mhz) and then the RAM is 2400MHz to begin with so I was just running it at it's rated XMP settings.

If it ends up being the power supply being weak then what do you think I should do? Stock CPU, Stock RAM, OCed GPU?

My I have a 1055T OCed to 3.7/3.8GHz + GTX 470 OCed a little in another build with only a 550W OCZ powersupply but doesn't have these crashing issues. I guess I will have to find a good middle for performance then
 
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blacksheep123

blacksheep123

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if you are telling the truth abt cpu and ram oc ..then your psu is good.. its just the gpu needs a little voltage push

170mhz oc from stock is a lot when it comes to gpu... if your gpu keeps crashing at that oc then bump the voltage slightly to avoid crashing

overclocking is risky so do it at your own risk

 
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slyu9213

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Yup it's all the truth. Spent several hours for a few days testing 4.1GHz-4.7Ghz to find which clocks were stable. 4.5GHz was the highest stable but I chose 4.3GHz because it's ran 12+ hours of Prime95 with only 1.368v which was achieved by +0.036v. I only underclocked the GSkill Ripjaws Z 2400MHz because the board was having a little trouble at those speeds.

Like I said I just finished the final mission of DA Inquisition without the game crashing but I had to change a lot of settings.
1) CPU: 4.3GHz to 3.7GHz but voltage the same as 4.3GHz
2) RAM: Keep at 1866MHz or set it to 1600MHz
3) GPU: Underclock Core/Memory Clock by 50MHz from the stock clocks, Power Limit +20% and 1.225v

I'm going to overclock my CPU again while keeping the rest the same and see if the PC crashes. Also if it's not too much can you recommend a power supply that will be good for overclocking as I am thinking of putting together a new computer sometime early 2015. I don't really know about rails on power supplies.
 
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blacksheep123

blacksheep123

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as i said.. the gpu might need voltage push to jump 170mhz over stock speed
 
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slyu9213

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Well no when I was having crashing problems raising the voltage did not help at all. For example the stock voltage of the video card is 1.04v. Even if I raise it to 1.225v I still had crashes on the video card. I successfully finished a game for the first time after the crashes when I went to stock CPU speeds, underclocked RAM from 2400MHz to 1600MHz, and I had to underclock the GPU while also boosting GPU voltages nearly 0.2v (from 1.04 to 1.22) while maxing out the power limit to 20%.

You're comments have been helpful because it may be the power supply not being good enough to power a small OC and high speed RAM (at stock or oced GPU) but I think it may be a problem or a quality issue with my motherboard. 2400MHz isn't stable unless the CPU is basically at stock speeds. Upping the voltages on RAM nor the IMC/NB doesn't really help either. GPU has had crashing issues since I was using a weak Dual-Core APU.

Currently CPU is at stock, RAM is at it's rated 2400MHz and the GPU is underclocked to 850MHz/1180MHz (Stock 900MHz/1200MHz) while providing 1.225v & +20% Power Limit. I have had no crashes so far so the next step is to put the GPU speeds and voltage to stock settings. If stability is fine then I can try a little overclocking but not sure I want to if the GPU is indeed unhealthy. It needs to last until Broadwell or Skylake while I do my research on a new build for reliable components that will be good for overclocking.
 
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slyu9213

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Exactly, lesson learned. Now I need to do my research on power supplies.

Also after further testing I learned one significant fault and that was the fact that the voltage of my GPU was not running at what I had set it to in Afterburner. I set it to 1.225v but when I checked the VDDC/voltage in GPU-Z, HWMonitor, HWInfo, etc I learned that it was still using only 1.04v.

I am now able to run the HD 7850 at stock speeds, 900/1200MHz or 1040/1500MHz at stock voltages. With 1.225v I can get up to 1100MHz but I don't see enough perfomance or negative performance due to the the higher clocks, higher voltages, which may also lead to the power supply struggling. Additionally at maxed allowed VDDC GPU Temps can get to ~75C at 100% Fan Speeds (which should be okay but I'd rather play it safe and not hear the fan ramp up to 100%) so I am just running the slight overclock at stock voltages as it doesn't crash.

Although it was my testing of the hardware that found/stopped the crashes while gaming you've got me thinking on better power supplies so I will choose your answer as the Best Answer. Thanks for your replies.
 
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