Graphic driver crash with 4890 and Windows 7

edin123

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Hey guys

I've recently bought my self a new graphics card (upgrading from a 1950), an ASUS HD4890. When I got it delivered I installed windows 7 professional 32bit aswell.

And my problem is that when watching movies or anything with moving pictures in for example VLC I'm experiencing heavy flickering. However, watching videos on YouTube works without any problems. Playing games also works perfect.

I had no idea where to start looking for faults but I ended up looking in CCC. I checked all the tabs looking for something strange but couldn't find anything. But when I got the tab named "Avivo Video" I noticed the exact same flickering in the example box in that tab.

Eventually my computer freezes and the screen goes black for a sec. When it's responding again I get a message saying my graphic driver stopped responding and have been restored.

My specs are the following:
Intel Core 2 duo 6400 @ 2.1 ghz
2gig DDR2 RAM (I don't know the exact name of them)
Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA
Corsair 650W power supply
ASUS Radeon HD 4890 (Newest drivers 9.11, I've tried 9.10 but the flickering is still there)


Oh almost forgot, after a while I tried my Graphic card in my brothers computer and strange enough it worked perfect, no problems at all. He is running windows XP 32bit.

His specs are the following:
Intel Core 2 duo 6400 @ 2.1 ghz
2gig DDR2 RAM (I don't know the exact name of them)
ASUS P5B
Corsair 450W power supply
ASUS Radeon HD 4890 (He usually uses a 4850)

So, do you have any ideas what to try to get this working?

I'm not overclocking anything.

Another thing, I recorded this flickering in CCC with my mobile (hence the very bad camera) and uploaded it on YouTube, it's on swedish but I guess you will see what is happening.

The link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRT83bugXQ

Thanks!
 

daedalus685

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THe issue you describe is TDR going off. This was a feature added in vista and as such can not happen in XP, unless you try the card on a computer with vista or 7 you won't be able to tell anything.

Generally it is because of a bad card, either from overclocking too much, heat, or jsut broken. THoush as with anything else it can in special situations be due to anything associated with the card, PSU, MB, etc.

This issue was commonly due to drivers when vista first came out, but now a days shoudl be happening only if something is wrong with the hardware.

I would say to RMA the card. Though to be sure you are best to ensure you are usign teh latest drivers for everything.

Seven uses the VRAM (and now a days many programs use teh GPU as well) a bit differently than other past OS's. This can bring out errors during general use that would not have cropped up until extreme gaming under xp.
 

edin123

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So my card could be broken?

Well I don't have warrant if I overclocked it to death do I?

The thing is I failed my overclocking, was only going to clock my CPU, but I had "sync enabled" which clocks both CPU and GPU. However, my CPU got clocked from 2.1 ghz -> 2.5 ghz. Is that enough to kill the graphic card?
 

daedalus685

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Nah, the chances of breaking the GPU from overclocking (unless you modify the voltage) is nill. And no chance overclocking the cpu could kill the gpu either, unless it broke the MB... but again unlikely unless you cranked something FAR past what you should have.

Additionally, unless you tweak the bios in the GPU there is no way for anyone to know if you overclocked or not, some companies even warranty overclocking anyway.

It is far more likely the card was just broken to begin with. Though don't hold me to that, it is always possible for something else to make the card act up.

Another thing to check would be the PSU, but 650 is plenty unless that is going the way of the dodo as well. How old is it?
 

daedalus685

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This is a common error with XP, Vista and apparently now Win7. It's also common with Nvidia cards as well. There's a whole forum dedicated to it. I was able to get rid of it buy uninstalling the Windows update listed in the fixes.

http://www.repairyourpcnow.com/resources/atikmdag-has-stopped-responding.php

It is not common with XP, the issue is caused by Timeout Detection and Recovery. This was not added until vista, in xp the card recovery was dependant on the driver vpu recovery features, which produces a different error.

That update fix was sketchy at teh best of times. I was more inclined to beleive soething else was changing at teh same time as removal of it worked on about half of the comptuers I tried it on, only to have the error come back some months later. If you want to be rid of it for good, then you can remove TDR from the registry, some times vista would think the card was dead when it was just slower than it liked (can also increase the timeout time). Though if the card is at fault severely you will quickly find out as the TDR error wil be replaced by a BSOD, or hard boot.
 

daedalus685

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You get the tray notifications that "atikmdag (or nvlddmkm).sys has stopped responding and has recovered"?

Without any other pop ups? does it show up in the event viewer?

I am 100% certain TDR is only in vista and seven, if you do get this same error (in teh tray and event viewer) I cannot explain why, unless it was added in later drivers to show up like that instead of the dialog box.
 

edin123

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First of all, thanks for the replys =)

This is a common error with XP, Vista and apparently now Win7. It's also common with Nvidia cards as well. There's a whole forum dedicated to it. I was able to get rid of it buy uninstalling the Windows update listed in the fixes.

http://www.repairyourpcnow.com/resources/atikmdag-has-stopped-responding.php

I read that link and I noticed alot of comments saying that turning of aero might fix it.

And I gave it a shot. But as soon as I switched theme from Aero to a basic it caused my PC Bluescreen.

Any suggestions?
 

daedalus685

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That should not happen. I would seriously consider that your card is faulty.



Regarding teh issue in XP. I don't know how much ATI has changed the VPU recovery for the xp drivers as I have not used XP on my main box in years. It woudl be likely this error was added to the basic drivers to replace teh clunky VPU recovery interface.

For a long time TDR did not get along with certain drivers, and would go off incorrectly, thus we got a lot of issues that were software in nature. Most have go away though, and it is my belief that these issues now a days are mostly due to faulty hardware. At any rate, do you ahve any links to this issue in XP zip? I'd be interested to see what actually brings up the error in XP systems, as it cannot be TDR.

TDR was (still is) part of WDDM, it repalced the proprietary vpu recovery systems of the drivers. I don't know enough about the XP drivers to know for sure if the they add something similar at the driver level. Though if it is I woudl assume this error even mroe likely due to hardware, as the entire recovery system should be independant of other OS elements.
 

edin123

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Yes, ATIKMDAG error. Your graphics driver has stopped working and has recovered.


I just noticed now when it crashed again it is not ATIKMDAG. It is "Graphicdriver ATI Radeon Family stopped responding, and has sucessfully recovered"

Any other suggestions?
 

daedalus685

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I'm not familiar with that error. Does it give any other information?
 

edin123

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Hmm, not that I know of. However, I also tried to uninstall CCC but keep the graphics driver (also a tip found in that link above), it didn't work either.

After that I was going to reinstall CCC again so I tried to uninstall the other functions that I left, just to install everything in a package after a reboot. But my PC got Bluescreen when trying to uninstall the graphics driver...

All these Bluescreens is really getting on my nervs:/
 

daedalus685

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The issue was historically a pain as it woudl go off for no reason, was entirely due to teh drvier panis of going to vista, and thus due to software.

Sounds to me like you have some definite hardware issues. Mind you, make sure you remoevd the CCC correctly, if bits are left you could run into issues.
 

edin123

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Yeah, I'm calling the place I bought my graphic card tomorrow and see what I can do.

Also plugged in my old card (x1950pro), and hopefully this wont crap out the way the other did.
 

brockh

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It's a problem with Vista and 7. It's not bad hardware; the software driver is bad. I am really unsure as to how you are you getting this in Windows XP, zipzoom, as the graphic subsystem affects overall system instability in that version and would result in a bluescreen because it is not seperated from the kernel and as such cannot recover independently.
 

daedalus685

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I understand that the drivers can stop working in XP. The driver based VPU recovery system was added back when I had a 9800 pro. But this was all drvier level, and didn't work very well.

The error that all of those fixes are talking about is related to TDR, part of WDDM. It is entirely possible that instead of writing more code for the XP drivers they now use very much the same appearing error for VPU recovery, but they are absolutely not related to each other.

Bear in mind that when I say "hardware" I am also including card BIOS. There were several cards floating around where a bios swap would repair this issue entierly. This was even more common when running in CF.

I'm not saying this can never be software, when I first got vista it happened all the time for a slew of reasons, (creative drivers, wierd .net issues, etc.). But the system is designed to find hardware issues. I'm sure MS can make mistakes, but I have a hard time believing that a system they set up to find an issue is in every single situation finding a false possitive.

There is nothing more hair pulling than trying to find a software issue on an unstable hardware base. When you get an error that is made to warn of a hardware error it seems prudent to look there first, and only try removing random updates etc. when you know the hardware is solid.
 

daedalus685

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I am not saying that the error is always hardware. I am saying that the system is designed to find a hardware error. Are you implying that you think ATI/Nvidia/Microsoft are so bad at drivers the system they have in place to detect hardware issues is wrong 100% of the time?

The issue was certainly software more often than not when it first came out. It was buggy as heck. But most of those growing pains are solved. I could as easily dismiss this as being always hardware and never software based on my own computers, but they both do happen.

You can't discount either. It is my belief that this error, on a properly set up system, is more often than not TDR working as intended and reporting a hardware failure.

Sure it can be software in the end, but it isn't very rational to never check the hardware given that is what this error is for. Just because we hardware folks want to always blame software does not make it so.

If you look at forum on this, many people don't actually find a fix. I would have to assume this is because they refuse to consider the error is working as intended and not checking the hardware.