XFX HD 7970 Issues

Smokeydubbs

Honorable
Feb 20, 2013
8
0
10,510
Specs:
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
i7 950 3GHz
XFX HD 7970 3GB "Black Edition" 13.1 drivers
12GB DDR3 1333MHz
ASRock X58 Extreme (BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. P2.20, 10/1/2010) Mobo
Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W (Discontinued but here is a Newegg page (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153136))
-Will add other specs if necessary-

To start, my problem seems to be driver related.

I have played several games since I bought the card a couple weeks ago. League of Legends, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, The Witcher 2, Anno 2070, Torchlight 2, and Crysis 3.

Several of the games are unplayable with my issue. Anno freezes and crashes randomly, Witcher freezes into a black screen for 10 seconds and loads back in, this repeats quickly after the first time, and Crysis freezes and black screens completely.

League of Legends shows graphic anomalies every now and then but it plays just fine. CS shows no issues at all. Torchlight runs just fine.

During a crash with Anno, I Alt-Tabbed quickly to see a windows error: "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered." After that I checked the Windows Event Viewer after every crash, and wouldn't you know it, that's the error.

I have uninstalled, reinstalled the drivers. I've lowered the factory overclock with CCC. I've put a decent bit of research in to see how to fix it, but I'm getting many different results. One thing I haven't tried is reformatting my HD which I'm told generally doesn't fix it.

So people of Tom's Hardware, what do you say? And BTW, I debated leaving AMD forever because I've had driver issues before this.
 

Spaniard United

Honorable
Nov 17, 2012
686
0
11,160
Actually, sounds like an OC issue to me. Possibly timings, possibly voltage ... have you tried lowering the OC to true stock timings?

Did a little research and this seems to be a common problem with that card. Try decreasing the clocks and see if your performance and stability gets better.

If so, you can try RMAing the card for another or, if you were smart and got it through newegg, perhaps a different manufacturer.