ATI 6970hd

Rubberducky · **ATI 6970hd -** 03-19-2012, 10:14 | posts: 18

Hi guys.
so i recently bought the XFX ATI 6970HD and it's been causing me grief ever since.

when i stress the graphics with a game for instance, sooner or later my video freezes up, sound repeats the last second or so, the i see a split second of snow before my screens turns to black and the turns back to normal.
it can also do this, when just sitting idle on desktop, though not as often.

Weird thing is that it seems to run a lot more stable when playing multiplayer, for some reason, but the problem is still there.

i've tried rolling back drivers..went from the current version and am now all the way back 10.5
i've tried underclocking the graphics card, overclocking the power output, and nothing seems to do the trick, and i can't find anything online anywhere, that describes my problem. please help

BlackZero · 03-19-2012, 10:18 | posts: 8,075 | Location: United Kingdom

Could be a powerplay issue or a bad unit. Try running a benchamrk like uigine heaven for an hour or so at stock clocks and see if it's stable, if it is then it's likely a software powerplay issue and you could diagnose it using something like msi afterburner to turn powerplay off (unofficial overclocking mod 2) and see if that fixes it.

oh, and wrong section, btw. This section is for nvidia cards.

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 10:29 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

What PSU do u have?

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 10:30 | posts: 18

thanks for the reply.

i'll try the benchmark, but what do you mean by powerplay issue?

oh and sorry for the wrong section thing..i'm brand new to forums..you learn as long as you live, right?

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 10:31 | posts: 18

i have a "be quiet!" 600w psu

BlackZero · 03-19-2012, 11:06 | posts: 8,075 | Location: United Kingdom

PSU should be supplying enough power, unless it's faulty of course, but we'll come to that later.

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:10 | posts: 18

so i ran the benchmark a few times and there was no sign of any fault..
everything ran smoothly at top settings.

no issues found.

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 11:13 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

Is it new or 2nd hand? What card did you have before? Have you tried using the secondary bios?

These "games" (plural) you mention .....wouldn't happen to be only one game (singular) called BF3?

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:16 | posts: 18

it was new when i bought it which was somewhere close to september/november, last year

i had a nvidia 9800gtx before that and it worked without problems, it was just getting outdated.

i don't know what the secondary bios is?

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 11:18 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

^What games? BF3?

Should be a switch next to the CF bridge to switch over to second BIOS. Might be hard to see as it's roughly the size of an atom.

Prob irrelevant if the card is new.

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:23 | posts: 18

no the games i'm referring to is bf3 which works way better on mp then sp, oddly, and then there's skyrim, Grid, mass effect 1,2 and 3..lately i've bought NFS:the run and wargame: european escalation, and when screen freezes up on those 2, they crash, so i need ctrl+alt+del out of it.

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 11:33 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

Hmmm well if the old card worked great then logic says the cause is directly or indirectly related to your new card.

Is it a factory OC'd version?

What drivers did u install originally? Did you run driver sweeper etc before installing new ones

Sorry for all the questions...

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:34 | posts: 18

but in reality it does not seem to matter what is running since i've even seen the same problem while playing chess titans and even just watching a video or browsing the web...basically it can happen anytime, it's just a lot more frequent when playing a graphically demanding game.

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:37 | posts: 18

i think it's factory oc'd..the only changes i've made is in ccc and after realizing it did'nt do anything positive, settings were reset to defaults.

i formatted my pc, before installing the drivers so sweeping for old drivers should'nt have been necessary.

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 11:40 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

I think you should test the PSU 12v rail under load to eliminate that as the cause.

In particular check for any ripple.

Then I would check the CPU load, At 3.0Ghz in BF3 and Skyrim I bet that CPU is nearly fully loaded... maybe just enough vdroop to make it crash?

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 11:45 | posts: 18

how do i do that?

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 12:09 | posts: 18

could the problem maybe be related to having ddr3 ram sticks while the graphics card is carrying gddr5 ?

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 12:12 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rubberducky

could the problem maybe be related to having ddr3 ram sticks while the graphics card is carrying gddr5 ?

No, definitely not.

You can check the 12v rail with AIDA64 or OCCT (prob the best). Test your ram as well with memtest86+....

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 12:30 | posts: 18

all power values are within acceptable range, running very smoothly with little to no spikes...
12v values are hovering between 12,15 - 12,19

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 12:34 | posts: 18

also ran a gpu test where the 12v values are a little more bouncy but still ok..between 12.05 - 12.17...average is about 12.11

Pill Monster · 03-19-2012, 12:43 | posts: 20,441 | Location: NZ

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rubberducky

also ran a gpu test where the 12v values are a little more bouncy but still ok..between 12.05 - 12.17...average is about 12.11

Needs to be tested under a proper load for the results to mean anything. I suggest using OCCT...do u know what the acceptable ranges are when testing 12v?

Don't forget to test the ram too.

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 12:55 | posts: 18

i googled the ranges and i found that it was at aprox 11.7 or 8 to about 12.3 or 4

i'll get on with testing the rams as well, and i'll try running a game while monitoring further..

btw thank you for the quick replys

Rubberducky · 03-19-2012, 20:51 | posts: 18

rams reported no problems either..
i did try some basic OC..and it seemed to help...a little.

the thing is, i'm not 100% sure what i'm doing when it gets to the more advanced oc's, so i'd rather not just fumble around the bios like a blind man..

i read through the MB's manual and found this little jumper for overclocking the voltage output..computer crashed while skype'ing.

my top suspects atm are my harddrive or the video card..

harddrive is old and i've partitioned it so that i don't loose all the "junk" data like games, series and so on, whenever i decide to re-install windows, so part of it hasn't had any real maintenance for years..

next is the graphics card..it's on the bottom of my list mainly because that would be a huuuuge hassle for me, so i'm kinda hoping it's something else

i have had a few incidents where after the video freezes up, catalyst tells me the "drivers have stopped responding and have recovered" i've tried rolling back the drivers, but i still get the same error message, which is why i'm thinking maybe a hdd fault?

---TK--- · 03-19-2012, 20:58 | posts: 14,680 | Location: New Jersey, USA

whats this amd talk in the nvidia section lol

bonob · *Last edited by bonob; 03-19-2012 at 21:14.*

i had quite the same prob when i apply too much oc on the gpu try to put the power slider on CCC on +20% or put more voltage to the gpu like +0.010v.

edit: just notice you already try the power slider.