5870 unstable overclock?

[Joeses]

Hello,
My 5870 keeps freezing for me. While gaming the card sometimes freezes, making the screen display weird colours (seems to differ depending on where I am in the game, and what colours are around me) and I'm not able to do anything, except resetting my PC.

The card is a powercolor 5870 pcs+, pcs+ meaning it's overclocked with a factory oc of 875/1225 (might be unstable?), My psu is a corsair TX 650watts(should be enough).

The card doesn't seem to overheat either, with a 50~ degree load temperature.

The freeze usually occurs after about 30 minutes, sometimes it can happen just 1-5 minutes after starting the game.

I've tried fixing this before, last time uninstalling drivers etc and installing again. It seemed to fix it for a while, till the freezes started.

Again, could this be an unstable overclock, or what is the issue?

Thanks

 

[welshmousepk]

doubt its the overclock, a 25mhz bump would barely qualify. these cards can easily eclipse 900mhz at stock volts.

the PSU is a good brand with plenty of amperage, so thats unlikely the problem either.

try removing the drivers, running driver sweeper, and then reinstalling the latest catalyst release.

 

[Joeses]

Yeah, I've been trying that before though, but oh well

 

[welshmousepk]

well you can try lowering the clockspeed back to 850/1200. but like i said, i doubt its the issue.

 

[Joeses]

I read another forum and read something that seemed to be some person have the same issue as me and he fixed it by disabling one audio driver, think he had 3. I had 2 so I think I'd give it a try aswell and disabled the ATI audio driver and am currently running Realtek high definition audio. Don't know if it's fine now, since I haven't been able to play much, but we'll see.

 

[wolfram23]

Hmm I think you're talking about the freeze screen that's like 1 colour and vertical lines? It seems unlikely that the 5870 should get that from 1225 memory, however, it's entirely possible that that particular unit was given memory that only just barely qualified for a 5870. As you might know, 5850s have the same hardware but that wasn't quite up to par for a 5870 (and in the GPU core, they then disabled a couple parts) but as far as the memory goes it's basically the same. One of my 5850s was totally fine up to 1200 memory but since getting the second, I can only get 1190 which I believe is due to the second one just having slightly worse memory. The issues I experienced from too high mem clock was freezing for the most part at 1200 or 1210, and if I was higher like 1220+ I got that death screen (usually grey, sometimes green or red or w/e).

Anyway, I think if you can you should try to RMA the card and get it replaced. A 5870 should really be able to get up to 1275 even 1300 memory.

Of course, there is potential for the issue to be something else but my gut tells me it's the card's memory.

 

[Joeses]

For anyone wondering how this ended, I took my card back to the shop and they tested it and it actually was defect. Then I got a new card and have been running on that since.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey