Vpu recover/ ati drivers/ artifacts

maxwell005

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Jan 26, 2010
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Hey all this is my first post here.

I have quite a very troublesome issue with my graphic card. Since a few days, my ati HD4850 started to fail and the ATI VPU recover always kicks in. I already had this kind of problem with this card but it was in vista and it was the famous "your display drivers stopped responding and has recovered"; The solution for me was to use only one stick of RAM. So I was clean of this error for a few months and I also swapped to XP afterwards. Now it started while playing a game, just once in a while and the VPU recover always restored the game to a playable state. However since this morning it is happening as soon as I launch the game and my PC completely crashes. I also see a lot of artifacts on the screen when it is happening; sometimes even on the desktop the artifacts appear.

I tried everything here:
- clean my drivers with DCpro and install a fresh copy of a more recent one.
- improve the air flow in my comp to lower the temps
- increase my fan speed to 100%
- decrease the GPU clock and memory with catalyst
- take out the graphic card and re slotted it again
- clean all the dust from the pc
- re slotted the ram stick
- disable vpu recover
- started to pray for a miracle

So what do you think? graphic card is fried? Cause sometimes the temp increases to like a 100 degrees but it was like that since I bought it in 2008...
Iam ready to get a new card but I dont want to plug it and see that happening again.

Thanks a lot for your help
regard
 

maxwell005

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Jan 26, 2010
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18,535
PSU a 500w Corsair... i should in fact try it on another computer...
In any case i am quite sure that the card is fried.
Going to get a new one, what do you guys think between those two choices?
Gigabyte HD 4850 OC 1gb or
Gigabyte geforce 9800 GT
 

maxwell005

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Jan 26, 2010
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got an old cpu e6600. and 2 gig of ram
The prob here is that iam very short on cash so the only options for me are the cards above. On top of that I live in mauritius and they dont have all the cards here. The only solution for me is to get one from the net but it would be to expensive (shipping)
 

brett1042002

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Jun 17, 2009
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I had the same issue with my Sapphire 4850. I was hitting 100c and it would overheat resulting in system crashes etc. The stock heatsink is terrible. I swapped it out for a Zalman VF1000 aftermarket heatsink and my temps dropped to 45c under load. Huge difference. I was even able to OC the card. As a matter of fact, I still have the card tucked away in a anti-static bag in the top of my closet, haha.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118037&Tpk=zalman%20vf1000

^ It is still listed on Newegg for $52.00 and free shipping. Just another option to consider. Good luck.