ATI Confirms 5700, 5800 Problems; Promises Fix

Earlier this week, it emerged that many 5000 series users were experiencing problems with crashing and grey or colored lines appearing on his or her display. The grey screens and hangups were occurring while users were gaming, watching movies or in some cases, when the computer was just sitting idle.

When users contacted customer service they were told the issue was caused by a Windows 7 update. ATI recommended a clean install of the graphics card driver as a possible fix, stating this had solved some users problems. The ATI Catalyst 10.1 release notes (published Wednesday) note the problem as a known issue; however, it's described as a problem affecting users of all versions of Windows and not just Windows 7.

Today Dave Erskine, an AMD spokesperson, informed us that, "only a small number of ATI Radeon HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series cards are exhibiting the behavior," and that the team is closing in on a fix for the apparently software related issue.

"The team is testing a driver hotfix and initial tests indicate that it resolves the issue," Mr Erskine said. "We need to test it further but we expect to make the hotfix available shortly."

  • kurahk7
    this is probably the 1st major ati driver issue in such a long time....
    Reply
  • jennyh
    No worse than Nvidia's last patch issue, which was also hotfixed. Of course there wasn't even 1/10th the drama with that one.

    Then again Nvidia is so irrelevent now nobody really cares.
    Reply
  • fatkid35
    i just bought 2 5770's and installed a week ago. happened a few times, once when my 5 year old was playing purble place! had to laugh cause i was playing crysis a few hours earlier. crysis would work but purble place wouldn't?!!!WTF? did a clean driver install and has not reoccured....yet.
    Reply
  • jrharbort
    Most people seemed to think it was caused by faulty hardware on the chip. I had a feeling it was either driver related, or caused by heat.

    Looks like one of my guesses is correct.
    Reply
  • micky_lund
    yeah....but its still annoying
    Reply
  • fatkid35
    thats right baby! crossfire for purble place! i heard SLI is better for solitare.
    Reply
  • deltatux
    hopefully this can get patched soon. My friend's 5770 keeps grey screening on him.
    Reply
  • omnimodis78
    It's so annoying that companies are using the generic line that it's a "windows 7 limitation/issue" before they even test it to come up with that conclusion. Also, if AMD states that "only a small number" of their customers are experiencing this, then they must know the number, so instead of watering it down, why not give us the figure. What's a small number to them? 100, 1000, 5000? I mean sh*t happens but I think companies should be obligated to inform us.
    Reply
  • akoegle
    Better get the fix soon
    Reply
  • requiemsallure
    idk if nvidia will stay irrelevent based on its fermi chipset im quite impressed, i will not get one but i have to say the architecture is quite impressive. they just need to fix the bugs X) but if it works i can say that it will work icredibly well
    Reply