Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512 MB Blue screening with Windows 7 x64

[love_my_comp]

Hello. I just had a motherboard crash on me; the sata/raid portion went out. I thought this would be a nice opportunity to make the change from vistax64 to windows 7 x64. I have a Sapphire Radeon 4870 512 MB that ran flawlessly on windows vista x64. When I first loaded windows 7 it auto installed my graphics cards drivers. After about 20 minutes of running great, the screen turned white and had lines all over it and rebooted. I was doing an office install at the time, nothing too graphic intensive. Upon this happening twice I went into errors and recovery and disabled the option to auto reboot on error. The next time this happened it blue screened so I was able to see the error. It said it was a display driver error and pointed to this as the culprit- "atikmdag.sys". Upon reboot I went into device manager and uninstalled my graphics card. Then I went to ati’s website and downloaded the latest driver for windows 7. About 20 minutes of working it did the same thing. I thought since this wasn't an "ATI" card, per say, but a Sapphire card I would try their drivers. I uninstalled the ati utility and uninstalled the graphics card again. This time I installed the Sapphire drivers for this model for windows 7 (64 bit). Still nothing. After reading many other forums with this issue I can see that updating the bios on the card won’t work either, although I plan on trying it myself. Has anyone had an issue with this card in windows 7? I'm thinking I might just go back to vista if this is going to be too much trouble because the main use of this pc is for gaming. Please let me know any other suggestions. I also found this to be useful and will be taking the steps posted on this first post in this forum:http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=100973. However in this forum, windows 7 was never mentioned, and I believe that has something to do with my issue. Thank you.

 

[JofaMang]

I have the exact same card, Sapphire 4870 512mb, and it has been running flawlessly since I installed w7u64 about a month ago, with actual gaming performance increase (was using XP64 previously, don't hate me). Sorry I couldn't have been of more help, other than to make you aware that it probably isn't specifically the card that is the issue, unless it is on its way out, and these are it's death throes.

 

[love_my_comp]

I guess the only real test would be to dual boot to windows 64 bit and see if it still runs. The only two things it could be is windows 7 or the new motherboard. but i don't see how the new motherboard could be it because it supports pci e 2.0 and it brand new out of the box. Thank you for your reply.

 

[love_my_comp]

Oh, also are you running the drivers off of ati's sight? i also tried the vista drivers that came on my disk and that didn't work. Or are you just using the drivers that auto install with windows 7?

 

[JofaMang]

Brand new motherboards have been known to arrive DOA, or with issues. Indeed, the best test will be to see if the problem persists with Vista on your current configuration.

 

[love_my_comp]

Last night i loaded vista, which is what i ran before i switched motherboards. It did the same thing!! Now i'm really confused. i ran all the updated drivers off the site too. Could it be possible that the motherboard isn't compatible with this card? The motherboard has a pci-express x16 slot which is what my video card is. are all pci-express x16 cards and boards compatible? or is my card just toast?

 

[JofaMang]

You have a hardware issue that needs to be identified. If your old Mobo died because of your PSU frying it, there is a possibility that it took your video card as well. If you are still using that PSU, you might be putting new parts at risk.

Remove the video card and run the system with the onboard video. If you cannot replicate the problem with onboard video, then you know your videocard is boned, and it died with your old Mobo. IF YOUR VIDEOCARD DIED AT THE SAME TIME AS YOUR MOBO, YOU NEED TO DISCONNECT YOUR PSU LIKE OMG RIGHT NOW.

It's not guarunteed to be a PSU issue, but if it is, it might continue frying your still working components.

 

[love_my_comp]

What had happened with my old motherboard is my raid controller and a few sata ports went out everything else was running just fine. if i hook up a hard drive to the 5th sata port, it will boot up just fine, but ports 1-4 don't see a hard drive at all. i was thinking it could be a power issue due to storms we have had lately. i have a high end belkin surge protector. but, i have NEVER seen an instance where a motherboard gets a power surge and the power supply shows no signs of damage. there was no smell, no power issues, nothing. The previous motherboard i had was a refurb bough from ebay that i had nothing but problems with and has already been sent in for repair twice. So having the motherboard go out was not a shock to me. But this video card is about a year old and never had any trouble. I will disconnect my psu to be on the safe side. however i do not have another one to test that could handle this wattage.
Also, my motherboard does not have onboard video so without another video card to test, i can't say for sure that its bad or not. however at this point i am fairly sure its dead. so without dropping alot of money on a new psu and a new video card it will be hard to say whats going on.
Also, thank you very much for your time and help!

 

[JofaMang]

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, it's just that when diagnosing hardware issues, being able to swap parts into and out of the build is one of the best ways to know for sure, through specification or elimination logics.

 

[love_my_comp]

no problem. thank you for your help! i do think my video card is fried! we'll see what happens when i rma it. thanks again.

 

[love_my_comp]

Best answer selected by love_my_comp.