Radeon HD 5970 Crashing/Freezing (Please Help!)

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Duckmeister

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So, I recently built my very own computer in January, with the following specs:

Asus P6T
Intel Core i7 920
ATI Radeon HD 5970
Corsair 850HX PSU
Creative X-Fi Titanium
Corsair 6Gb DDR3 RAM @ 1333Mhz

all of it running Windows 7 Home Premium x64 in a very nice Cooler Master HAF 932 case.

From day one of using the computer, I have had constant crashing and freezing, both in 2d and 3d usage.

At first, they were only happening in 3d, and would start a hard lockup, requiring the computer to be totally reset. These freezes were solved by correctly setting the RAM timings in the BIOS.

Then, while using the catalyst 9.12 hotfix drivers (the first driver set I installed), I was getting random 2d crashes, where the screen would suddenly be filled with artifacts, and then the screen would go blank, come back and give me the message "ATI Display Driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered". This would happen even if I wasn't doing anything at all, and just letting it sit at the desktop. These were solved by manually editing the .xml files for the catalyst profiles, to turn up the idle clock speeds for the card, as they were originally too low to be stable.

When I installed catalyst 10.2, it was complete bliss. No crashes or freezing at all, I could play or do anything I wanted and it would work perfectly. Finally, after months of total frustration, this stupid, stupid graphics card was finally working! However, this was not to last long.

Lured by the extremely high improvements in benchmarks for the games I play, I decided to install catalyst 10.3a. This was a mistake. Now, I get a hard lockup one minute or so into playing ArmA 2. Battlefield Bad Company 2 will crash into colored stripes within 30 seconds of playing. Almost every 3d application freezes the entire computer and requires a reset.

Sometimes, if I fiddle with the Catalyst Control Center settings, I can get some games to work. Sometimes, I can use the same settings, and a game will crash every single time I try it all day, but the next day it will work perfectly with no changes.

These crashes happen at stock graphics card clocks. I only use ATI Overdrive to set the idle clocks higher (but still underclocked) and to set the fan speed higher, because the default fan speed is so slow that the card idles at 50C.

These crashes happen whether my CPU is overclocked or not (default is 2.66ghz, I have it at 3.2).

Neither the card nor the CPU is overheating.

Could it be that my system is unstable because I haven't increased the voltages for the CPU when I overclock? X-Bit labs did a very nice paper on overclocking the 920, and they said that they could take it up to 3.5ghz without adding any voltage, so I highly doubt it.

I haven't tested the RAM with memtest, but I have tried each individual stick by itself and the system booted fine (did not test any applications though). Even then, I doubt it's my RAM, but it's the second most likely cause.

The first most likely cause is that I have a defective graphics card. I got it from HIS, and I could just RMA (they have a one year warranty) and be done with it. I have found users with similar problems by googling and most RMAed the card and said they haven't had a problem since doing so.

I tried uninstalling the graphics drivers, running driver sweeper, and installing 10.2 again. That makes Bad Company 2 work great no matter what settings I use, but ArmA 2 locks up the computer just as it did before.

Could this be caused by the graphics card having a bit too much dust around it? The HAF 932 is a dust magnet, and I haven't cleaned it out recently.

I'm trying to do everything I can to fix this on my end. RMA is the last resort (4 weeks before I get a new card back!). Please help me. I have used Nvidia cards forever, and this is my first ATI card. The performance is great, but the card just doesn't work, the drivers are terrible (however, I knew that one going in), and it's just so frustrating trying to troubleshoot the card.

Please help!
 

mister g

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I'm no expert but you should clear the fan and the like with compressed air to be thorough. Anyway AMD has just released their stable CCC 10.3 today. Woops HIS still havem't released their own though still stuck on 10.2. I know this might not help but have you tried it except without the sound card?
 

Duckmeister

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I just cleared the whole thing with compressed air. Haven't tested any games though. I will try the official 10.3 catalyst, I guess. It might help.

Come to think of it, when I built the PC, I put the sound card in the PCI x1 slot as instructed, but since the 5970 was a double-slot card, the sound card was blocking it from being in the first PCI-E x16 slot. So, I checked the motherboard manual, and it said there was no difference between the first and second PCI-E x16 slot, so I just put the graphics card in the second slot.

Could that be causing the issue?
 

mister g

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If your mobo manual says it isn't a problem it shouldn't be, but try taking out the sound card and put the 5970 in the first slot. The reason I don't think its a problem is because the 920 has a total of 36 PCI-e lanes, so that shouldn't be a problem. Install the HIS drivers.
 

Duckmeister

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Huh, I had no idea. Well then, I guess I'll go back to my driverless system restore point and download HIS' 10.2 and see how it works.

You have been very helpful, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I'll update on how it's working tomorrow.
 

Duckmeister

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Okay, here's the update.

I'm now using the HIS 10.2 catalyst. Now, everything works great if I have ATI Overdrive turned off (thus taking away control of the fan speed), but if I turn it on, most games, such as ArmA 2, freeze just like before.

Could it be that the card is defective, and only able to run when underclocked? Because all that ATI Overdrive is doing is simply forcing the stock clocks (and changing the fan speed).

Basically, I can turn it on, play ArmA 2, get a hard freeze in 15 seconds, reset, turn it off, and play ArmA 2 just fine with no freezing or crashing.

If I didn't say before, the sound doesn't stop when it freezes, just the display. I can move my mouse around the screen for about 10 seconds after it freezes, and then it freezes too. The whole time, the sound is going on as normal.

Any ideas?
 

Duckmeister

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Well, now that I look at it, I was being foolish earlier.

MSI Afterburner has nothing to do with my motherboard, just the graphics card. And ATI Tray Tools looks scary. So, I think I'll try MSI Afterburner, increase the voltage for the GPU, and see if I can run at stock clocks. It's kind of silly that I would need a voltage increase to run at stock clocks, but I'm up for trying anything after having so many issues with this card.

UPDATE: I haven't tried increasing the voltages yet, but I just tried running ArmA 2 without Overdrive enabled to see if it would give me the same results as yesterday (worked with it disabled, didn't work with it disabled) and it froze just like before. So no matter what settings I use, it still freezes.
 

Duckmeister

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Okay, just tried using MSI Afterburner, I put the voltages at the stock 5870 voltages (1.162v), from the 5970 default (1.05v) and it still froze.

Any other ideas? Should I increase the voltage even more?
 

Jamrock

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If it is only fan speed that you need to use the CCC for then just use MSI Afterburner to adjust the fan speed. Works for me.

I don't want to bring the bearer of bad news, and I also don't want you to take this 100% as it is just what I went through. I got two defective 5970's in a row, this was when they first came out these problems very well may have been fixed.

First one just plain froze during game play, ~30 seconds into the game. I could still hear sound. Returned it. Was a Diamond.

Got a Sapphire 5970, and the card couldn't even make it to the desktop without freezing. Returned.

Got an Asus 5970, and all has worked flawlessly for me so far, that is, with stock clocks and adjusting the fan speed with Afterburner if I was going to be playing an intensive game.

As far as this relating to your issue, if it ONLY freezes when you use Overdrive... it could be a few things. Enabling overdrive, I believe that locks your clocks at 725/1000.. I am not sure if the 5970 automatically downclocks if your temps get too high. Check your temps during game play.

I wouldn't increase the voltage anymore, especially if you don't know what your temps are like.

Do this, will rule out a defective card or not.

Run Furmark, 640x480. Have Afterburner running alongside it so you can monitor temps. See how long you can run Furmark, maybe try with and without the Overdrive settings that appear to make your games crash.

Watch the temps, try increasing the fan speed 100% see if that helps.
 

Duckmeister

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Thanks for the suggestions.

In an update above, I said that I repeated my ArmA 2 tests with overdrive and without overdrive, and it froze no matter what. So overdrive being enabled doesn't seem to have any impact, I just had it off on a boot that didn't freeze and confused correlation with causation.

In my first post I said that none of my components are overheating. Max during load is 75-80C, idles at 35-40C.

And while I appreciate the suggestion, I'm not running furmark on a dual gpu card. That thing can run temps up to 120C.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is a defective card. Especially with ATI having to bin for chips in order to meet the power consumption levels. What I don't understand is that on some boots it seems to work, and on others it doesn't.

Here's what's next on my todo list. Right now, I'm running HIS Catalyst 10.2 with everything at default. No other tweaks except for CPU being run at 3.2ghz, and because of the odd BCLK, the RAM is underclocked a bit.

#1: turn off all mods for ArmA and other games
#2: reset BIOS settings relating to overclocking back to default/auto

I'm trying to backtrack what it is I had changed after it was working fine. I haven't tested everything yet, but only a few applications are freezing, not all of them. I did not have ArmA mods when it was working fine, so they could be causing an issue, at least with that particular game. Even though it worked before when I had it overclocked (even to 3.5ghz), I'll try setting everything back to auto/default.

I'm going to go ahead and test every game I have installed, with the ones that are prone to crashing last. If some games work fine no matter what and other don't, than that tells me it's a software problem with those specific games.

I've heard some reports that people with similar issues are getting hard drive problems because of the constant resetting of the computer. I know that there is some sort of Windows utility that is supposed to fix hard drive errors, but I never had to use it on any of my previous computers. What that's utility called, and how can I use it to know if I have any bad sectors on my hard drive?

Also, I set a system restore point after I had uninstalled my graphics drivers and used driver sweeper. Whenever I restore back to that point (in order to use a different set of drivers), I have to run driver sweeper again because there are some files left over that system restore doesn't remove. Is this a problem? Does system restore not get rid of the actual drivers? Is it safe to use system restore in this way?

Eh, now I'm getting paranoid. Better safe than sorry, though.
 

mister g

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Go to my computer or just computer and right click the hard drive. Under tools there is a utility called error-checking, start it tell it to scan and try to recover sectors and restart the PC. For system restore it's fine it restores practically everything except for documents.
 

Duckmeister

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Okay, ran chkdsk, didn't get to see if there were any errors (went out to eat because I calculated it would take 2 and a half hours to get through my 1TB drive), but the system was booted to the desktop when I got back, so I assume there were no issues.

Reinstalling ArmA 2 at the moment. I found a possible cause for the freezing, at least in that particular game. Based on a setting I had edited while trying to optimize it for my computer, it was detecting that I had more VRAM than the 2GB I actually have. Reinstalling will redetect the correct values, and, if I'm correct, will stop the freezing.

Update: Just tried running Bad Company 2, which was previously working fine on any setting. Got a black screen crash within 30 seconds, with Overdrive enabled and Catalyst AI disabled.
 

Duckmeister

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Okay, here's what I did. Didn't use the restore point, uninstalled the graphics drivers, then uninstalled the leftover drivers in the device manager, let windows find it's own general drivers, ran driver sweeper, and installed the brand new 10.3b hotfix drivers from ATI. Ran Bad Company 2, no problems at any setting. Haven't tried ArmA 2 yet, but I'm liking what I'm seeing.

Update: Scratch that last win. Just rebooted, tried the same settings, crashed to a black screen and had to reset. I'm going to RMA this card in a day or two.

What's the proper procedure, driver/software-wise, for replacing a card with another card? Should I clear out all of the drivers, then take out the card, so that the computer will be driver-less when the new one arrives?
 

Duckmeister

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Okay, just ran into some new information. Not going to RMA just yet.

Still haven't reinstalled ArmA 2 yet, but I'm looking at some hidden settings in BC2 that might've been changed by the latest patch. This could be causing the blackscreen/coloredstripes freezing I was getting. Still, it's ridiculous that some random setting makes my graphics card act like it was shipped off in the middle of getting wired, but, hey, anything is worth trying at this point.

I'm going to test out Modern Warfare 2, Dirt 2, Far Cry 2, and Company of Heroes as well, and see if I'm getting any of the same problems. Previously, I didn't, but also, I didn't previously get any problems with ArmA or Bad Company either.

Update:

It doesn't matter whether Catalyst AI is enabled or disabled, turning Overdrive on will cause Bad Company 2 to freeze no matter what. I haven't tested this in other games, but it's now a definite. However, this was not the case before. Either the latest patch, or some other thing I did is causing it to do this, but it wasn't doing this two weeks ago.
 

mister g

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Runtime, redist is for developers. The DirectX package upgrades the entire DirectX library for DX9 I think, there is an update that upgrades Vista to the DirectX 11 library, not sure if you absolutely need it though.
 
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