4870 x2 - All games crash in Fullscreen but work in Windowed mode

Hi,

I have found a ton of threads with people talking about this problem.

The problem: Sapphire 4870 x2 installed and games will not run unless set in windowed mode. I have tested this in WOW, Crysis, Stalker, Counter strike. They run perfectly in Windowed mode. If set to full screen the games will start loading the data. As soon as the game is ready to start, it crashes. By this I mean that the game crashes before showing 1 frame of the game.

My rig:
-Asus P5n-D (bios flashed to the last version - 9002)
-Sapphire 4870 X2 (Most of the threads I read report this issue with the Sapphire. Some have mentionned other brands though)
-2x2GB Corsair RAM (I tried running with 1x2GB to make sure the RAM was not the issue. Tried with both sticks individually)
-PSU = Corsair TX750W (part of the ATI certified PSUs for the 4870 X2)
-I tested another PSU (Seasonic 600W) for the heck of it. That PSU does not meet the 650Watts but it gave identical results. I disconnected the DVD drive and all but one Hard drives. Games ran perfectly in windowed mode. So I am pretty sure the PSU is not the issue.
-8300 Core 2 Duo CPU - not overclocked
-Coolermaster CMStacker case (3 Fans, one right in front of the GPU)
-GPU runs around 51 degrees on idle, according to CCC
-I tried all the drivers I could frind from the 7.11 to the new 8.2
-I tested both PCI E slots on my mobo - same results
-I tested my PC with my old 7800 GTX from nvidia and everything works fine

Now... Like I said I found a ton of reports on this, a lot of discussion, but no solution. The only bit of info I found useful was that the 4870 X2 runs on 1 GPU in Windowed mode. I do not know this for sure, I just read one post from one guy saying this.

I am getting desperate here. Any idea would be very welcome.

I am going to try and find out if I can flash the Video cards bios. I read the original 4870 required this in some cases. I doubt it will help though.

Why do you have 2 - 4870x2 listed in device manager?? Theres your problem. Get rid of them both, reboot and re-install drivers.

Of course, he would have two listed, he has two gpu's.

I will check if my own one is the same though i suspect it is, your disabled one will be your second one, perhaps download something like gpu -z and check that way.

Can you confirm that your problem was identical - i.e. you could run games in windowed but not fullscreen modes?

As far as drivers go, I tried reverting to 8.11 already. I tried all drivers from 7.11 up actually, each time doing a thorough clean using driver cleaner and/or Revo.

I used to have a similar problem with my Sapphire 4870 x2 in Vista 64, where any game would show artifacts as soon as started and within a couple of seconds the whole computer would crash; if I played games in windowed mode I could play just fine.

The solution to my problem seemed to be that the auto-tune OC tool in the CCC set the clock speeds to high; once I lowered the memory OC most games worked fine.

Occasionally I still get a crash and/or BSOD when playing WoW; It crashed frequently, I had to lower the AA to make it bearable; now it still crashes once in a while, mainly when I am at the log-in screen in a waiting queue.

Hmm, something isn't right as i have a primary adapter and a linked adapter showing in CCC.

As long as I played them in windowed mode everything was fine. My second core wasn't disable which is why I suggest you check the power connectors. I could go into the games in windowed mode and switch into full screen and it would crash in 0-10 seconds. I was pissed too got it overnighted the day it was released. Didn't get my working replacement until the following week. Once I got it everything was much better until it dawned on me that wasn't an F-15 taking off it was my GPU.

Once I got the water block for it I was happy again, idles at 36C. With clocks at 800/1000 while gaming it's at 42C and that in nearly silent mode. Never had a single problem with it gaming even made it 8 hours straight in AoC without crashing when most others crashed every 30 minutes back in the day.


Any good luck, off to install Windows 7...

I tried my 2nd PCIE slot with the same result. The popup you had is something else I think. Did it say that the card's clocks had to be lowered because it was not getting enough power? I read about that, but it is a different problem. Thanks for the idea though it was worth a shot

Fyi - someone over on Anand Tech posted this link, which is pretty interesting and right on my issue: http://forums.guru3d.com/showp...p [...] stcount=23

This makes me think I'm screwed until ATI fixes the bug. I still hope the card was defective, since I had several people tell me that is what had happened to them.

I also tried reinstalling all my mobo's chipsets, flashed the bios of the mobo again, did a clean install of the 8.11, changed the power connectors on the graphics card (in case on of the cable was bad)... Still no change. I sent my card back to newegg yesterday. I wonder if they will ship the replacement using UPS 2day air since that's what I had paid for initially. But I doubt it

I will get my butt back here when I have the replacement. My next step is buying a P5Q (just because a friend has a working rig similar to mine with that mobo). After that I'm not sure



And thanks for the replies!

you can also try switching to windows vista. that helped my 4850 (sort of, a couple of problems too can be attributed to my other hardware components like i forgot to beefup my cpu voltage after a gpu upgrade).

and considering thats a 4870x2, dont you want dx10? . . you just have to make sure that you can procure 170$ in 1 month before it expires.

and good thing that your ATI techsupport rep do actually reply in a not so copy/paste manner. my last encounter with one was like reading a wiki page.

Got the card replacement today.

Games do not crash in fullscreen mode anymore but the 2nd Adapter is still showing as disabled in CCC. Not sure what to do from here.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost. [...] stcount=23 seems to suggest it is a known issue.

Googling "4870 x2 "disabled adapter" returns a lot of hits. Dozens of people are reporting this same issue (apparently only under win XP) with absolutely nobody knowing what the heck is going on.

The only fix I have found is "install vista". Which is not an option for me.

Could anyone point me towards a good (free) solution to test if both the GPUs of the card are being used? I can test FPS in games like Crysis if someone has the same rig as mine, or do some testing with benchmarking apps if someone feels like explaining me how to do so.

I have the free version of 3dmark06 somewhere on my drive - just don't know how to use it.

As for the bios dump, I have no idea what you meant. But if I can help you let me know how.

Thanks for the tip.

The 69 FPS for one 4870 is for the 512MB single core card. One core on a 4870 X2 would still be 1GB of GRAM. And I'm not sure I can test that reliably since the FPS is going to vary from one part of the game to the next.

I thought Crysis would be better since (I think?) it has a built-in benchmarking tool. But I see that, like you said, the double core is not going to be tested reliably either.