ATI Radeon HD 5770 - is it the card or something else?

[gr33nman]

I have this system:
Mobo: GA P67A UD4 B3 (Bios v. F3)
CPU: i5 Sandybridge 3.3GHz
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance (Blue Fins)
BIOS: Turbo on Auto - AHCI enabled
Graphics Card: XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics - no overclocking


Changing frame widths causes odd video problems in almost all applications that use framing. I've included a video below. I don't know whether the problem is with the card or something else. I just installed the latest driver: 8.850.0.0 after the video and still have the same problem. I would be grateful for any suggestions. Should I RMA this card?

[flash=560,349]http://www.youtube.com/v/5oKgKdpHkG4?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oKgKdpHkG4

EDIT: I also tried the other graphics card slot. Same results.

 

[arson94]

Just want to clarify some info. In your youtube description you also say you've installed the latest driver, version 8.850.0.0, but list the date of the driver as 4/19/11. Is this a typo or is that the date of the driver's release? I ask because 11.5 drivers were released 5/9/11 and just wanted to make sure those are the ones you have installed.

I would also suggest that if you experience problems after updating your ATI drivers and you just updated the drivers already installed, to try uninstalling completely the drivers you have now and then reinstall the latest drivers. Sometimes it's makes a difference, usually not though. But you could also see if these problems exist with just the default Windows 7 graphics drivers before you install the ATI drivers.

Either way, I've had this problem before but only with websites that used frames and not Windows or stand-alone programs. It wasn't video drivers related though. Let me try to remember what it is and I'll get back to you.

EDIT: Oh yea, you could also try installing all Windows updates that are available just in case.

 

[gr33nman]

arson94,

Thanks for your reply. Here's the deal on the driver: I tried to uninstall CCC so I could install the latest version (5/9/11).

Bad idea, by the way. Now I have a working CCC I thought I'd uninstalled, and I don't have a way to uninstall it from windows. I tried installing over it anyway, but kept getting a dialog box saying windows couldn't install CCC.

So I unpacked the installer, opened the device manager properties for the graphics card and pointed the driver installer to the folder with the installers in it. It chose a newer one that has the date of 4/19/11 in the device manager properties, even though it was found in the unpacked folder of the 5/9/11 installer. I don't know why this should be, but I know it's a newer one than the CCC version that was installed originally from March. It may be that even though the installer is 5/9/11, the driver is 4/19/11.

Framed websites are not problematic in this instance.

I hope this is useful.

Also, the machine is 64-bit Windows 7, if that was not clear from earlier.

Cheers.

 

[-Fran-]

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Give that program a try.

After it does its magic, reinstall...

What bugs me is the problem itself... I've seen that behavior with the Java AWT package in windows, but not with the windows GDI or whatever they use in Seven package.

You haven't installed any "beauty" program for Windows, have you?

Cheers!

 

[arson94]

Well since you had problems uninstalling it, maybe it's related and not coincidental. Did the CCC installer not give you the option of uninstalling a previous version before installing?

Either way, deleting any remnants of a botched uninstall should definitely be the first thing you want to accomplish now. Try that program Yuka linked. I've never used it but Guru3D has definitely served me well in the past so I trust them.

 

[gr33nman]

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Give that program a try.

After it does its magic, reinstall...

What bugs me is the problem itself... I've seen that behavior with the Java AWT package in windows, but not with the windows GDI or whatever they use in Seven package.

You haven't installed any "beauty" program for Windows, have you?

Cheers!

I'll check it out. Thanks, Yuka. Please stand by.

Well since you had problems uninstalling it, maybe it's related and not coincidental. Did the CCC installer not give you the option of uninstalling a previous version before installing?

Either way, deleting any remnants of a botched uninstall should definitely be the first thing you want to accomplish now. Try that program Yuka linked. I've never used it but Guru3D has definitely served me well in the past so I trust them.

Thanks, arson94,

CCC installer did not give me the option of uninstalling the old one. I had a devil of a time installing it the first time.

I have installed nothing extraordinary - no themes, no multi-monitor backgrounds. I do have a lot of programs that are graphics-intensive, but all software that uses frames seems to be affected. I do have two monitors, but they both work out of the box.

 

[gr33nman]

Just tried to download the sweeper in three different browsers. If there's a link there, they're doing a good job of hiding it. Any ideas?

 

[JDFan]

Direct Linkie -- I hate the way they have it hidden to try to make you download their other programs and never actually get you to the program download page --This is a direct link from Softpedia ! NOTE : looks like they try the same -- select one of the download mirror sites not the Large Green "START DOWNLOAD" button or it redirects to a different program as well -- you want to click where it says to get driver sweeper !! :

DOWNLOAD LOCATIONS
for Driver Sweeper 3.0.0:


Softpedia Mirror (US) [EXE]


Softpedia Mirror (RO) [ZIP]

 

[gr33nman]

Thanks for the link, JDFan and everyone.

I made a restore-point first, of course. Then I used Sweeper to remove all ATI drivers. Unfortunately, I was still unable to install the software again.
I tried it by right-clicking and clicking 'open as administrator'.
I tried safe mode by left-clicking, and then right-clicking as administrator.
My second monitor was unrecognized and I was back at 800x600.
You may imagine I'm stumped.

I figured I could install the driver for the card directly from device manager again, but windows wouldn't allow it because the driver was something like 'vga-save' - a last-resort driver for when you can't install anything else. Bummer. I've seen this screen more times than I care to count:

I used the restore point to at least get the drivers back. My monitors are now properly recognized again. However, I still cannot install any version of CCC -- even the old one.

I guess the next thing to do is talk to ATI support. Am I likely to get a positive response?

PS: This is the run-around I got on guru-3d.com:
First click this link to go to the next page:

Brings me to this anchor link for an area further down the same (second) page:

There is no link here. Just links for going else where and for saying links are missing.

All other links were advertisements. I even looked in the source code.
I am using windows firewall.

I'm a pretty savvy guy, so I'm surprised by my seeming ignorance in this. I'm usually the guy trouble shooting other people's computer problems. Sheesh. Time to call it a night. Fresh eyes in the morning might help.

Again - thanks everyone for the excellent help.

 

[amirp]

LOL I spent so much time also looking for the driver sweeper link, but if you go to the forums you will see that it is not offered anymore lol oh well...

EDIT: also if you scroll between the two pics you posted theres red writing saying: Attention - Guru3D Driver Sweeper has been discontinued as such you will not find any download links here any longer...

 

[JDFan]

LOL I spent so much time also looking for the driver sweeper link, but if you go to the forums you will see that it is not offered anymore lol oh well...

EDIT: also if you scroll between the two pics you posted theres red writing saying: Attention - Guru3D Driver Sweeper has been discontinued as such you will not find any download links here any longer...

The Link I posted to the Softpedia mirror sites still have it available for download if you are still looking !

 

[arson94]

Hey I'm back. Sorry I haven't contributed to the troubleshooting since Friday. I got off work and became drunk, all weekend, I'm still not sure what all happened. But I'm back at work now so let's try to figure this out! haha...

But for real, where's the situation stand now gr33nman?

 

[gr33nman]

Hi, Thanks for writing back.

At this point, I'm sans CCC, unable to install 11.5, with a driver version in the Device Manager for 'ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series' that says '8.850.0.0'. I don't know if this is the latest version, but the results are identical to before starting this journey.

I suspect the card is having trouble mainly with 32-bit programs installed at C:/Program Files (X86). I suspect the problem is with the card and not something else.

Now I'm beginning to notice too, that any time I press play or stop on a you-tube video, the monitor that the browser is in winks, even when I'm playing the item normally in the browser and not full-screen. This was not the case last week or two weeks ago.

I've got a support request in to XFX. We'll see how it goes. I look forward to any suggestions you may have.

 

[arson94]

When I have issues like this, I usually run a chkdsk on the my OS partition and clean my registry with Ccleaner from piriform.com. Then I'd try to uninstall or remove the driver again then try to reinstall the new version of CCC. If you try a chkdsk, or Error-Checking in Windows 7, in the Windows GUI, make sure to check both check boxes to fix errors and attemp and recover bad clusters. If you try chkdsk from command prompt which I usually do, use chkdsk /r to do the same.

That's all I can really think to suggest right now. When I had an issue with CCC uninstalling, which has only happened once before like 4 years ago, the new version of CCC installed right over it. If I can think of anything else I'll post back. Good luck!

 

[gr33nman]

I got a fairly quick response from XFX support. They suggested I follow the directions on this pdf: http://xfxsupport.info/downloads/documentation/ATI-Driver-installation-Troubleshooting.pdf

Apparently, you must have C++ 2005 Redistributable on your machine. It cannot be a more-recent-year version of C++.

I followed the instructions screen for screen with results mirroring exactly what they said would happen. Except CCC did not install. C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies is entirely empty. There is no `uninstaller` for CCC in the Windows `Programs and Features` control panel. The latest version of the driver is in fact 8.850.0.0, even though it says it was compiled in April and not May, when the installer itself was compiled.

I still have the artifacts showing up, so I'm waiting to hear back from XFX support what needs to happen next.

I'd be curious to know if anyone with a different brand ATI Radeon HD 5770 is experiencing the same problems.

 

[gr33nman]

Okay, I got a little farther here - I realized that there are two places to download CCC installer - one was from the XFX site that had this file name: 11-5_vista64_win7_64_dd.exe. The other was from the AMD website per the pdf with this file name: 11-5_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe. Both installs look identical, but the only one to actually install was the one from AMD. Go figure. This version installs C++ 2010, as well. It has not resolved the frame refresh issue.

 

[arson94]

Well at least you got a little further. Do you play any games or anything? Or do you have any ANY other problems at all? I can't imagine that having a faulty card would produce only those issues you're having with frames in program windows not refreshing as they should. It just seems like it would be more of a runtime environment type issue like with Java, .NET or the C++ Redistributables. Did you ever try installing Windows updates and updates to your programs?

 

[gr33nman]

Well at least you got a little further. Do you play any games or anything? Or do you have any ANY other problems at all? I can't imagine that having a faulty card would produce only those issues you're having with frames in program windows not refreshing as they should. It just seems like it would be more of a runtime environment type issue like with Java, .NET or the C++ Redistributables. Did you ever try installing Windows updates and updates to your programs?

I don't have any games. I did at one point download Unigine's Heaven 2.5 to do a benchmark, but I uninstalled it since I didn't need it. I've just reinstalled it again. Heaven benchmarked as shown below, with a rip at about 220 seconds, but this is a known instance in Heaven across most cards. Because there are no frames to adjust, and it is run at full screen, I'm not sure this is all that helpful, but there it is.

Heaven Benchmark v2.5 Basic
FPS: 22.1
Scores: 556
Min FPS: 8.2
Max FPS: 47.8
Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 1 2011
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
CPU flags: 3309MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series 8.850.0.0 1024Mb
Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 1600x900 2xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: normal

I know it may seem trivial for the three programs I showed, but I spend a lot of time on Dreamweaver, and the other program is for tracking medical information. I use both of these programs on a frequent basis, so it's important to me that they run correctly. Every time I want to view a new tab in DW, I have to jiggle a frame to see the design frame. So if I'm copying and pasting, between tabs, it an be frustrating. It may very well be a .NET, Java or C++ redistributable problem, but I keep everything to the latest windows-approved version: every driver, every windows update, every everything. Wouldn't that still mean there is a flaw in the graphics card, if others' graphics cards produce flawless results with the same operating system?

You asked if other things were happening. I'm noticing rips when I view videos on youtube. Here's an example.
[flash=560,349]http://www.youtube.com/v/ByYRZuEaos4?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash]
Sorry for the low volume. I had to do this from the video camera rather than with screen capture because screen rips don't show up in screen capture for some reason. You can see rips in the screen at about 18.5 and 22.5 seconds. When I close the browser that has a video on it, I also get a screen rip or two. I guess that qualifies as unusual.

 

[arson94]

No no, I'm just saying that soemthing may just need to be reinstalled. Sometimes updates just mess sh*t up and you just need to reinstall the whole thing. Since you had problems originally uninstalling CCC there may be underlying issues that make it seem like your video card is having problems. You probably won't know for sure unless you try to reinstall Windows. I'd definitely try that before RMA'ing the card. I know it sucks, I've reinstalled Windows more than most people have probably. But sometimes you just have to go that route.

EDIT:

I see the screen rips you're talking about now. Yea that's not usual and definitely could indicate a bad video card. I didn't see your edits to your post before I responded. Personally I'd still try to reinstall Windows unless you've tried that already. If reinstalling Windows doesn't help, then I'd definitely think it was a bad video card. How long have you had the card without problems?

 

[gr33nman]

Argh... I'll have to make time for it then. I hate reinstalls. I've got a student license for Office, and it's always dicey not knowing if it will allow the next reinstall. Very frustrating indeed. Thanks for your help. Please stand by...

 

[gr33nman]

Get this... On a whim, I googled 'screen ripping'. Fourth one down is a post on overclock.net:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-ati/692326-screen-ripping-tearing-during-5770-overclock.html
Same card, same manufacturer...

From lower down in the thread:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-ati/692326-screen-ripping-tearing-during-5770-overclock.html#post8795390

PowerPlay in action. Your video card down clocks when not under heavy load or when under 2D. You might need to go into your CCC profile and manually adjust it so CCC doesn't under clock to 157/300Mhz. The tearing issue usually happens when using 2 or more monitors.

10.4 Drivers is suppose to resolve this issue without manually adjusting the 2D under clock.

Of course, I've just installed the latest 11.x drivers, so it's still an epic fail. I think I may need to get my money back. This isn't working for me.

 

[arson94]

I've noticed some other threads about this same issue with this same card. Granted several of those are from the same person posting in multiple forums but there are others. XFX still offer that lifetime warranty on their video cards? Or if you're still within range of getting a full RMA from the vendor that would be even quicker. What are you planning to get as a replacement?

 

[gr33nman]

I've noticed some other threads about this same issue with this same card. Granted several of those are from the same person posting in multiple forums but there are others. XFX still offer that lifetime warranty on their video cards? Or if you're still within range of getting a full RMA from the vendor that would be even quicker. What are you planning to get as a replacement?

It's been over a month, so I have to go through XFX.

The price point was really good for the achievable heaven benchmark for this card, which was what got me interested in it in the first place. I'm open to suggestions. I have multiple screens and they're not the same resolution, which is apparently part of the problem with the XFX card.

I was looking at maybe ASUS:
ASUS EAH6870 DC/2DI2S/1GD5 Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

or Gigabyte:
GIGABYTE GV-R687OC-1GD Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

It's hard to find a card with lots of reviews and five stars at that price range.

EDIT: I just saw this from XFX.
XFX HD-687A-ZDBC Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity
I wonder if it would be worth trying to swap up.

 

[arson94]

Well if you ever decide to get into gaming, the 6870's are a good card to help you get there lol. I currently have a Sapphire TOXIC 1GB 4870 and it's been perfect for the past 2 years. Sapphire is the only AMD/ATI brand video card I've ever used and I've always been happy with them.

The XFX 6870 you linked comes overclocked just a tad but is a few bucks more. You still get a $20 MIR if you get it by the end of the month like from the other two vendors. You get a free game with it too lol. But I guess what you want would be up to personal preference. However, at Newegg, XFX offers the lowest priced 6870 as see here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600083901%20600083829&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

 

[gr33nman]

Having an XFX model with the similar single-fan card, I'm wondering if a dual fan card might be quieter (lower down on the page and more expensive). Mine's not a jet engine or anything, but the XFX 5770 has the loudest fan under the hood. Everything else is whisper quiet. I guess I'll wait to see what happens with XFX. So far, I haven't heard back.