Display Problem with HD5870 Graphics Card (Gray Lines)

[Guest]

I just bought a new system.

The specs:
- AMD 1055T x6 core @stock
- MSI 890-FXA
- 2x2 Kingston HyperX 1600 MHz (KHX1600C9D3K2/4GX)
- ThermalTake Toughpower XT 750 Watt PSU
- Sapphire Vapor-x HD5870 O.C. Edition
-- Windows 7 Ultimate ed. 64-bit
* 4:3 17' monitor W/O HD Support

I built the system myself and as for this was the first system I put together, I was concerned that I might do sth. wrong but everything seems to work fine except for the display in games. I don't know the reason; but the games get stuck (i.e. HL2, L4D) and I can't rate my hardware through the Windows Rating System because it also gets stuck while testing Direct3D support.

The screen when the computers stucks has yellow and black vertical lines from one end to the other.

So I thought that this is somehow a Graphic Card failure; but then again, it might have something to do with the non-HD monitor that I own from my earlier setup.

I don't know what to do and I don't want to mess with the stock values of the hardware.

If someone would help, I'd appriciate it.


*ps.: It runs the game Left 4 Dead or Just Cause 2 for about 1-2 minutes AND stops.

 

[ekoostik]

Download the latest drivers from AMD: http://support.amd.com

Have you monitored temps? Download GPU-Z and keep and have it record your graphics card temps during gaming. If they look normal when the problem occurs, use HWMonitor to watch your CPU temps.

Finally, open Windows' "Event Viewer" and look under Windows Logs in both the Application and the System logs - are there any errors reported at about the time of the problem?

 

[Guest]

I have the latest drivers for all the hardware and I am monitoring the temps for this is a new setup..

But I think I now know the problem: Just to test, I opened Just Cause 2 and started to play it. It got stuck once or twice on the intro nearing the end and wasted the sync of the intro, and after the intro the game froze -but just the display, not the sound; the sound was still performing uninterrupted.

And I pressed alt+tab to see if it was windows or the game that stuck; and voila! It was the game and there was an error pop-up message on the sys-tray saying that my video card has just stopped responding but fixed. The game is still on btw. I'll try to resume after this reply.

 

[Guest]

The game is still on but I cannot see anything but the cursor. And I can understand from the sounds when I scroll the mouse around that the menu is opened up because I pressed alt+tab.

So the game is performing fine but there's no display. This might just be a problem with me messing with the quality/performance of the game; but then, I got the same problem in other games which btw I never touched the graphics.

Could this be a problem because of a missing software?

Oh and now I closed the game from the Taskbar and I now see little flashing boxes on my desktop. When I use the group-select over them, they disappear and reappear elsewhere.

 

[Guest]

Ok now I know that this is a problem caused by my Graphics Card -it seems ATI was having this problem since 2009 or maybe from the day it was released. I posted a ticket to Sapphire Support Staff and I am waiting for a reply.

As far as I know from reading other users having the same prob on different forums, I can now say that it has something to do with the idle voltage settings. It is working on 0.995V in idle mod but undere constant load, this goes higher and the Graphic Card can't handle -it's what they say in AMDGame forums or it's what I understood.

The problem with the card seems to go away if idle V values are set to 1.025 V; they say .. but I don't want to void my warranty so I want Sapphire to fix it -that's why I posted a ticket..

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been moved from the section Systems to section Graphics & Displays by Maziar

 

[Guest]

I thank myself for purchasing from Sapphire; I think they'll provide me with a VBIOS update. Still waiting ..

 

[Guest]

Yep, they provided me with a VBIOS update. Installed it & will try soon -but GF comes first.