4870x2 is being a pain in the ass

[Guest]

Hello

First of all, I cannot update the card's drivers, I've tried multiple times over the past year and a half to select the ones meant for 4xxx series available from the ATI site, and every time I install them after the reboot my computer can only display 4bit colours.

Second, I wouldn't give a crap about the first point unless there wouldn't be some games that made my computer restart. For example I can only play bioshock on medium settings, if I set them on high, the computer restarts (I have disabled the automatic restart that's enabled by default). Now, something similar happens to hl2, a game that I have never had any problems with.

So I have two questions - how can I check what is the cause of the restarts? And how can I solve the problem with the drivers not updating?

this card has pissed me off so much, I've never had any problems with geforce cards, I don't think I'll be buying an ati card again.

-Maris.

 

[stabwisker]

you know i had the same issue 3 months ago with my ati 4890 on windows 7 i just format my pc and reinstall everything again, my problem was solve.

 

[strangestranger]

Have you tried returning it as faulty?

What is your power supply, have you tested your cpu or ram?

What is your temperature, have you tried replacing the thermal paste on the gpu's?

Does this happen with crossfire disabled?

 

[Guest]

No I haven't, the company that sold me the card decided to bankrupt

Power - Chieftec 750W. No, I haven't tested cpu or ram, I don't know how to do that

this card is a single card, it's not in crossfire, it has 2 gpus

 

[Guest]

sorry for double post, it didn't allow me to edit the previous message. I forgot to add that the temperature is 88 degrees when the v-card activity is 0%

I definately haven't touched the thermal paste, I don't think it's a good idea to do that.

and stabwisker - I have formatted and reinstalled everything multiple times (not because of this problem, because I had to) - it didn't solve anything.

btw I have XP.

 

[Guest]

i have the same card but from gigabyte, it work fine with all update from ati.
just remove all old ati software and then restart your pc, after taht install the new one
and download also iZ3DDrive , this software very. see it for your self
by the way,this card use crossfirex tech because it has two gpu.

try to search over google "how to update the ati driver" or you use other
then you will get nice result.
read this it may help
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=112372

 

[cromedome]

i think its quite obvious that you card is overheating, 88 degrees in idle.. something is up. Have you got good case air flow and you should re-apply thermal paste.

 

[strangestranger]

Okay, temps are higher than my load at idle. Try manually adjusting the fan speed to 35% in the overdrive section.

Also, it is a very good idea to replace the thermal paste as that alone can drop temps by a fair few degrees in some cases.

As saeeddalhosni pointed out, the card is crossfired as it has two gpu's, which is all you need to crossfire, not cards.

You can disable crossfire by disabled catalyst A.I if you need to.

However, first sort out the heat then try other things.

 

[Guest]

The overheating both makes and doesn't make sense, because it appears only in particular games like bioshock. I can play for example team fortress 2 or farcry 2 with maximum settings and nothing's wrong, I can hear the fan giving its best and everything works.

I cannot re-apply thermal paste because I don't know how to do that. What concerns the air flow in the case - again, I can't judge.

What concerns the manual adjustment of the fan - I can't do that, there is no such option in the catalyst. That's actually weird, because some time ago there was.

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

Have you uninstalled CCC before installing the new drivers? Have you tried formatting? Have you used driver sweeper before installing the new drivers?

Did you clean out the dust on the card?

 

[wolfram23]

For the driver issue, I'd try running the free app Driver Sweeper to completely remove all uneeded drivers, then install the newest ones.

As to the crashing, it's probably due to overheat. More demanding games will heat it up more. People have recommended replacing the thermal grease but the most common cause is probably the issue - dust buildup. Open your video card up to expose the heat sink and clean all the dust out. My old GPU died because of dust buildup - I didn't know at the time I had to do that.