Sapphire HD 6950 BSOD

[jbseven]

Bought two of these cards for use in crossfire:

6814102945 ]

As soon as I installed the drivers from sapphire i havent been able to boot windows successfully.

I boot to desktop, see artifacts and then BSOD requiring restart.

Apparently this issue is commonplace with this card.

I'm just wondering if anyone here has experienced this and if they ever found a way to fix the problem.

 

[Guest]

Why didn't you install drivers from amd?

Also what power supply are you using?

 

[Dogsnake]

Try the drivers from this page (http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/Catalyst-Hotfixes.aspx). They are the latest for your cards. I doubt the Sapphire site is current. Uninstall your current drivers using (http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html) driver sweeper and then do a clean install of the new drivers. Also check to see that your power supply is up to the task of running the pair. GL

 

[jbseven]

Why didn't you install drivers from amd?

Also what power supply are you using?

Am downloading the amd drivers now but from what i've read its likely gona be futile.

Using a Corsair TX 850 v2. Couple hundred watts more than what i need for my system according to power supply calculator at least.

 

[dalethepcman]

Are you set using crossfire right off the bat, or did you start with one card, then get BSOD when you added the second card?

Personally I would startup your system and run system restore to just before you installed the sapphire drivers, then install the new ones from AMD with a single card installed. After the reboot if things are going well add in the second card and xfire cable them together.

p.s. your link is broken so I'm not sure what card you have

 

[jbseven]

Sorry...its the sapphire hd6950 dirt3 edition.

 

[jbseven]

had them crossfired from the start. if the amd drivers don't sort them out ill try n see if its one card or both.

 

[HugoStiglitz]

I had a friend with a simmular issue.

what solved it for him was a total clean of all the older ATI drivers (regisrty and all)
downloaded and installed latest fresh and has been great ever since.

 

[dalethepcman]

I have a pair of 6590 dirt3 edition 2gb cards and have no problems with them, but I installed them one at a time (both purchased at the same time though)

Sapphire is a tier 1 manufacturer for AMD, and make outstanding products. The only sapphire driver I used was the one on the disc, after the first install I downloaded from AMD directly. Make sure you have the crossfire cable connecting them too. After you get them working there is an easy unlocking guide here

 

[jbseven]

so i switched off all default overclock settings on the motherboard (GA-Z68XP-UD3), set the ram timings manually and used driver sweep in the link above in safe mode.

The system would still crash on windows boot so i did a cold boot, did another clean install of windows 7 32bit and used the drivers from amd (amd_catalyst_11.11c_windows_vista_7)

Been running video and cpu benchmarks all day with no crashes

really, thanks for the help guys...i was afraid i'd be stuck with 2 bricks in crossfire!

The dual fans do an awesome job of cooling the cards- max 55*C as opposed to ~80s in the tomshardware 6950 benchmarks so am gona look into unlocking them to 6970 specs.

 

[jbseven]

Best answer selected by jbseven.