XFX 7850 freeze issue, time to RMA?

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earneszm

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Sep 5, 2010
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Hello all.

So I bought a XFX Radeon HD 7850 some months back from newegg, here is the link

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150609

I love the card and am happy with its performance but I have one fairly crippling issue with it. Every so often (as much as once or twice a night or as few as every several days) the card locks up and freezes my whole system. It locks up the sounds, video, all input, everything. I am forced into a hard reboot whenever it happens. I primarily play WoW and have not seen the issue when it has not been open. The only other game I have tried on this computer is Diablo 3 and I have had no issues.

When I first had the card I did a modest overclock on it and then backed it off to stock when I had my first freeze. The freezes have still continued. Here is a list of my basic hardware components:

CPU: i7-930 3.1 GHz (clocked to 4.0)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A
Ram: G Skill Ripjaws series 12G (3 x 4gb)
SSD: Kingston 96gb
PSU: Cougar SX700 700W

Here are some of the things I have tried:
-Returning the video card to stock settings
-Returning the CPU to stock settings.
-Trying several different versions of AMD Catalyst and drivers (including 12.4 and 12.6)
-Updated every driver of every component, including my bios
-Tried running different programs in the background (ie firefox, chrome, itunes, it crashes with all of them and none of them)
-Reformatted my hard drive and installed fresh windows
-Changed the PCI-e slot the video card was in and switched the cables running from the power supply
-Adjusted the minimum clock speed as I read a forum thread that suggested sometimes the switching between low speed and high speed caused crashes.

I am nearly out of ideas and am not sure where to go from here. Prior to this card I was running a HD 5830 with no issues and the exact same hardware setup. I am well outside of my newegg return dates but I did register with XFX for the lifetime warranty. At this point is it just time to contact XFX and RMA?

Please give me some suggestions, thanks as always.
 
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drums101

drums101

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check the temps of your card. under load and idle and report back...do you have good airflow to the card? it seems like it may be starting to die...have you been running the card with a high oc on? you may have to rma the card but lets make sure we cant fix it before you send it in
 
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earneszm

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Ah sorry, I meant to include that part of it. The temps are very regular. My case has pretty good airflow and under load the card is in the mid 50s. Idle is significantly lower than that. I ran the card with a moderate OC when I first had it checking for stability, and as soon as I encountered a problem I backed it down to stock. The problem still exists.
 
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drums101

drums101

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if the system runs completely stable with a different graphics card and it seems like you pretty much tried everything I cant really think of any other issues that it could be......I think it might be time to RMA the card to xfx....unless anyone else can think of anything else to try
 
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Saiing

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Jul 23, 2012
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earneszm, I'm having the exact same problem with a Sapphire 7850 2 Gig.

I think it's a WoW issue.

I've run the following games since getting it:

Diablo 3 - No issues
Crysis Warhead - No issues
Borderlands - No issues

In all the above I've had the settings pretty much maxed out at 1920x1080 and never had a freeze.

With WoW I get a freeze sometimes as often as every 20 minutes or so. Temperatures totally normal (around 50 degrees). I never had a problem before with the 5770 that it replaced.

I did the same as you - overclocked it without any real problems, but then when I started playing WoW got lockups and crashes, and had to keep resetting my PC. So I dialled it back to stock settings but the problems still occur in WoW.

Actually I found this thread because I did a Google search to see if anyone else had reported the same problem, and found a number of places that mentioned WoW having problems with the 7850.

Not sure what to suggest really. It seems like this particular card and WoW just don't play nicely together. Probably the best hope is to see if Blizzard patch it, or at least find some kind of fix. It seems like a pretty popular new card, so hopefully they might do something.
 
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Saiing

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I may have found a possible solution...?

I changed the WoW client to the 64 bit experimental version and changed the DirectX version to 11 in the advanced tab under graphics settings in options.

Having previously had a crash literally every 15-20 mins, I've played for about 1.5 hours now without even a stutter. This isn't long enough to conclusively say it's been solved, but it's a big improvement.

Thought I should post this here while the thread is still reasonably current, in case it helps the OP.
 
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earneszm

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Saiing, I will try that. I haven't been using the 64 bit client since the last time I had to patch but I will give it a go. It is very difficult to troubleshoot as the problem may not happen for me for several days. I guess its a good thing XFX has a lifetime warranty. Any more problems after this and I will probably RMA.
 
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Terning

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In WoW, change the Dx11 to Dx9, it's a driver problem... worked for me I have a 7850 HD 2gb Asus, I got the freezes all the time, then switch to Dx9 and haven had a problem since..
 
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earneszm

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I just wanted to add a small update, Terning's response made me remember about this thread. Yes, switching to Dx9 does work, however you must sacrifice a fairly significant performance drop. It is enough to make me wonder why I upgraded in the first place, but it does eliminate the freezes.

The other option I have found that does work is to revert back to driver 12.3. For whatever reason, this version also eliminates the freezes even in Dx11. I keep trying the new driver releases, but so far nothing has been as stable as 12.3. Give that a shot if you are having a similar issue.
 
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i5dude

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IIRC I tried DX9 awhile ago on my Sapphire 2GB and still had the freezes in WoW. I'll give it a shot again though because the crashes are much more frequent in MoP than they were in Cata for me. It's starting to crash multiple times in one session whereas in Cata I could play for days without a crash.
 
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lemonade_no54

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Hi all!

I recently had the same problem as described, and thought I should share my experience for those who still struggle.

Bought an xfx 7850 2gb (ghost, one fan..). As soon as i got it I hooked the gpu to my watercooling system. Finished the game I played over the next weeks without problems. A few weeks after (without playing games) my system started to fail. It turned out it was a waterleak dripping on the wifi Board (from the gpu-block, no leaks on the gpu itself), so I removed the waterblock and remounted the Stock cooling/fan.

Startet to play Halo 2, wich isn't demanding on the hardware, and it startet to crash/freeze after an hour or so. Thought it was strange and upgraded the gpu-driver (think it was 13.1..), same prob. Managed to finish the game without any aftermath to the problem.

The real problems began when i started to play newer games like need for speed the run and modern warfare 2.

This was the problem; nfs started out good and would mostly freeze (Picture and sound) after about 15min, sometimes black screen/reappearing/artifacts. mw2 would mostly dissapear to black screen, then reappear, but if I didn't exit the game imediatly it would either happen again, overflow With artifacts, or just freeze up the Whole system.

What I did; Used amd tool to remove amd/ati drivers completely, tried all drivers from 12.1 through 13.1, reinstalled Windows (7 pro x64). Tried to underclock via ccc, tried to raise fan-speed.

What I observed; The problems occoured when temp met approx 60 degee (celcius), and when enabling "gpu overdrive" option in ccc (not overclock it, just enabling With Stock clocks, so I could manually rise the fan speed). I could rise the fan-speed to 100%, and hear it blowing hard, but as I entered 3D-apps it would crash/freeze faster.

I fixed the waterblock yesterday and remounted it to the gpu. Now the temp stay between 40-45 degrees C under load, and I played all last night With no crashes/freezes. (I'll report back if the problems come back.)

Conclusion (for me/my card): There seems to be some issues in the catalyst drivers that triggers when the temperature rise (too high? I've had many Cards running for years over 70 degrees C without problems..), and/or the fan Control don't seem to work properly at default settings in ccc. Still, I can't say if the 7850-cards is weakly manufactured (since many reports the same issue(s)) or the catalyst drivers are badly engineered.

I've mostly had nvidia, it has worked best for me (stability, monitor setup etc.), so i'll probably go back to nv next time. It's almost 10 years since I had an ati-card. Back then I also had big issues With the drivers, but I figured those issues would be long gone over theese years..

Other info; win7 pro x64, amd x6 1040 cpu, 8 gb ram 1333mhz, gigabyte am3 mb, Never overclocked the gpu.
 
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Jackkend76

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@ Earneszm:

I had that EXACT problem. Still do. With Windows 7 it just froze. With Windows 8 it gives me a blue screen and "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" caused by hal.dll
Sometimes my system will run for a couple weeks without it, other times it happens nearly daily.
 
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Jackkend76

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Nvidia has always way outperformed ATI with WoW. I have read some experts think it's AMD's drivers and why they've never written better ones for such a popular game is puzzling. Even back years ago ATI cards had more issues than Nvidia.
 
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lemonade_no54

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I've had some freezes/crashes today..I can play games with higher settings and run them longer than before though. Max temp 42 C. Maybe I'll convert back to nv sooner than expected after all.
 
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lemonade_no54

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UPDATE: Have not given up quite yet :)

Noticed the freezes in NFS (followed by "display driver stopped responding and has recovered") came somewhat after the same period of played time, approx 20min, and thought about what windows normally did after 20 mins..

Found a thread where someone said to disable hybrid sleep and set HDD to never turn off/ spin-down, and noticed that my hdd was set to turn off exactly after 20mins. I then sat it to never (0) (and disabled hybrid sleep at the same time).
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/360575-15-another-driver-stopped-responding-recovered-thread

Voila! NFS is ok! Increased every setting to "ultra" and gpu-z show gpu load around 72% at stock clocks (Have had it underclocked the last weeks, suspecting it was a power or heat issue). No freezes last times played, 1 hour+ :D

Will test MW2 the next days if i can find the time, hopefully this would have solved all issues regarding crashing/freezing of games, if so then :ouch: :pt1cable: :D and if not :cry: :heink: :fou:
 
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lemonade_no54

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UPDATE: played MW2 last night for 1.5 hour, no c for merashes/freezes, assume the problem is solved for me.

Still puzzling though, as I bought the gpu together with an ssd. Kept the win 7 config on the new ssd and didn't have any probs first two months.. Still don't know if it's windows power management's fault or the catalyst driverpack, but I'm anyway excited my system (so far) now works as it should!
 
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