Problem with HD 4850

[mlcaouette]

Hello everyone,

I recently purchased a Palit HD 4850 for a build that I am slowly purchasing parts for. I was testing it in the budget system I built for my wife a while back (see specs below). I was planning on crossfiring it with another HD 4850 but I cannot get the drivers to work properly on this card.

Problem:

The catalyst drivers will crash and restart (sometimes BSOD) whenever I have multiple windows open and when I try to save a openoffice document. Here is the catch it will run fine with the default windows drivers (no AMD drivers). I have tried all the 11.x drivers up to 11.4 with no success. Each time I uninstalled, restarted, then installed the new driver. The fan works fine, although it sounds like a jet engine at 50%. My Sapphire HD 4770 works absolutely fine with the catalyst drivers.

My guess of the cause:

Failing GPU, my janeky PSU, maybe driver issue.

My options are to sell it on Ebay as for parts/not working and try to recover some of my losses. Or I can wait till I finish the new build (about three months time) with a good PSU and test it then. If I sell it I am gonna put the money towards the Sapphire HD 5850 extreme on the egg so I don't get stuck with another lemon.

So the question is do you think it is the card or the PSU?

Thanks for any and all help!

Specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon II x3 450
M/B: Asus M4A88TD-V EVO
Ram: G-skill 2x2Gb 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 1.5v
Hard drive: WD 250Gb caviar blue
PSU: Raidmax 500W 22A across a single +12v rail (bundled with case I know now this was a bad decision)
GPU: usually a Sapphire HD 4770 but the problem one is the Palit HD 4850
Case: Raidmax smilodon (I hate this case but the wife wanted it cause she loves green)
Monitor: My old RCA 32" 720P LCD TV

 

[nforce4max]

You already know the problem, when I read raidmax psu I already know they are junk.

 

[mlcaouette]

Should I have used driver sweeper to remove the catalyst drivers before switching cards (I used the uninstall option in the AMD installer)? I don't have the program, where do you guys download it from? I don't want to get a virus from a bad download.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Sheesh!!!!! How can a PSU be rated as 500W when it delivers 22A on the 12 V rail? nforce4max is right regarding the PSU.

 

[mlcaouette]

Best answer selected by mlCaouette.

 

[mlcaouette]

Well since there have been 70 other viewers and no more posts I am going to assume they all agreed with nforce4max and Tamz_msc. So this is my decision: I will keep the HD 4850 and either wait to test until the new system is completed or test again once I purchase a new PSU for the original test machine.

Thanks for the responses that is all the conformation that I needed!

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey