I need some help with my Sapphire 4870 and its crashing

[turkey_nuggets]

I have a 1GB Sapphire Radeon 4870. It's the black one with the heat sink pipes on the top of it. Occasionally, when I have a game open, the game will crash, and I'll be taken to a blue screen, then my computer restarts.

I saw this video on youtube about flashing the bios:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tfGGz1uO34

So I downloaded Winflash and the crash fix. When I put it in Winflash and hit the Program button, it says "SubsystemsID mismatch" and doesn't let me go any farther from there.

I have the latest 8.12 Catalyst drivers.

So I have no idea how to fix the problem. Does anyone else have any ideas?

 

[daft]

im guessing that its your psu, what kind is it and how much power does it output?

 

[iggybeans]

I haven't had much luck with Sapphire. My last video card from them was a Radeon 9800 Pro which overheated and died. It sounds like you might be facing overheating issues too. Can you check your drivers to see what speed your card's fan is running?

 

[turkey_nuggets]

I'm pretty sure it isn't the PSU. I have a Corsair 750W. It shouldn't have any trouble running a single 4870.

I'm running my fan at 45%. The card idles at around 58 C. When playing games, it will go from 62-72 C. That shouldn't be enough to overheat it. I've gotten the blue screen when it was running at only 63 C before.

 

[iggybeans]

No, you're right on both counts. You have a more than adequate power supply and your card does not appear to be overheating.

 

[coozie7]

OP; Your card, is it the factory overclocked `Toxic` card?
If so, try setting the clocks to normal-750 core 900 memory-and see if it helps.
I`d advise against flashing unless you have good knowlage of the procedures, one mistake and you have a expensive paperweight in your case!

 

[turkey_nuggets]

I don't think it is. Here is the exact card I have:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801

 

[Guest]

Its a bios issue

Download the latest VGA bios for your card and then flash it

its a known bug with the earlier 4870s (doesn't matter when you bought it... cause u can still get an earlier versoin)

its a bug... i had it with my 4870 and then changed its bios... and then boom... no more crashes what soever

do a little bit of googling as its a common issue and can't find the links atm

 

[serpent1202]

I would run a few tests before finalizing it's your video card. Memtest86 for 10 hours to make sure it isn't a ram issue. I'd also download speedfan or hwmonitor and look at your cpu temps. I would even take it a step further and run prime95, OCCT, or Orthos and see what your idle temps are as well as load and see if you find any instability during those tests. You graphics card very well may be the cause, but I would hate for you to send the card back and get another one and the problems persist.

One more thing you can check is the 12v your using to supply power to the card. Though its rare, I have seen circumstances where the power supplied isn't enough, due to a defect, even though the PSU is of good quality and rated to be more than able to handle the job.

 

[montyuk]

download driver sweeper from guru3d.com,
uninstall all the ccc software, uninstall the driver.

restart and boot into safe mode, run driver sweeper and select ati display & nvidia (both), select analyse, and then clean, now run it again, and again, and again until nothing comes up on after hitting analyse.

(dont ask me why but when i ran it on my system it took a several iterations to clean off everything)

now restart and reinstall the 8.12 drivers.

bios modding is best done using atiflash and a bootdisk, however if you insist on doing it in windows, goto techpowerup.com and download rbe, read their forums for the tutorials and read and understand what ya doing before doing it. (i know you've already done it but its worth reading anyway)

also - theres a thread on here about a 4850 bios flash that went wrong - i posted a blind bios flash on it, look that up for when it all goes tits up.

 

[turkey_nuggets]

I'm guessing the crash fix I tried to use didn't work because it was meant for the 512MB card rather than the 1GB card. I'll search around for a fix for the 1GB card. Can I just use the same method if I do?

 

[montyuk]

nuggets - try the driver method i posted first

out of interest - did you upgrade from a different card on the same system?

 

[turkey_nuggets]

Yeah I did. I had a 3650 before this card. But I also replaced the motherboard and the PSU at the same time.

I'll give the driver method a try. I've read about a lot of problems with the Sapphire 4870. Most of them are the same problems I'm having (BSOD, games freezing, VPU recovery, etc.)

Some people were talking about somehow changing your GPU clock to stay at 750 MHz so it doesn't constantly switch from 500 to 750 when playing games. I'm not really sure how to do that though. I can't find the file they are talking about editing in the ATI Technologies folder on my desktop.

 

[montyuk]

hang on, you replaced the motherboard at the same time?

did you do a clean new install of windows?

 

[turkey_nuggets]

No, I didn't. I haven't run into any problems that would require me to reinstall Windows. I had to revalidate my copy, but that was it. Everything has been running fine since then. The drivers for my old motherboard are just deactivated in my device manager.

 

[montyuk]

i say this from the bottom of my cup of tea, do a fresh install of windows asap.

if you had mentioned this in your first post, you would have been told this much earlier.

 

[turkey_nuggets]

I can probably do that. I don't have a Vista install disk, but I can probably find one. What will reinstalling Windows do/fix? Will it format my hard drive, or will all my data be okay?

 

[montyuk]

formatting and reinstalling will delete anything you havent backed up.

so do backup anything and everything you want to keep before you do anything.

 

[Guest]

I'm telling you its the bios... fixed my crashes over night

 

[turkey_nuggets]

Do you remember what you did to fix the bios? Do you have a 512 or 1G card?

 

[montyuk]

thogrom - if the bio flash goes wrong hes in the ****

hes already had an issue with trying it the first time, so personally i would try and avoid trying again until we have tried other ideas.

 

[turkey_nuggets]

I'm not even sure if that bios flashing method will work for my card. When I go to the Sapphire website, they don't have the VBIOS download for my 1GB card like they do for the 512 model.

 

[montyuk]

well i say this from experience, dont be tempted to try and upload a bios to your card that wasnt intended to your card, i nearly bricked my 4870 and it wasnt a pleasant experience.

its a classic driver interference issue, if your still having problems after a fresh install ill accept theres something else wrong but until then i still think thats whats causing this.

 

[turkey_nuggets]

Alright. I'm going to try and completely wipe out all the CCC drivers and reinstall the latest ones, like you suggested. I'll be back after I see how it works out.

 

[turkey_nuggets]

Ok, so I uninstalled all the ATI crap on my computer, then booted my computer up in safe mode, open the Driver Sweeper program, and got rid of the ATI display drivers, NVIDIA chipset, and NVIDIA display drivers, like you said. I haven't tested out how the graphics card handles now, but now every time I boot windows up, I get 3 RunDLL errors saying the following can't be found:

nvsvc64.dll, NvCpl.dll, and NvMcTray.dll.

All from C:\Windows\system32