Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 is screwing me over. and over again.

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by ludde06, Dec 13, 2010.

  1. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    GPU:
    Sapphire Radeon HD 6850
    Hi,

    2 weeks ago I bought a brand new computer, and the graphic card I chose was Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB, which seems like a big mistake.

    Ever since I assembled the computer I've had issues when trying to benchmark or play fullscreen games on it (mostly world of warcraft). The screen turns either black and a "input not supported" box is jumping around on my monitor. When this happens I have to do a hard restart.

    The weird part about it is, that the same game with exact same settings, runs often fine in windowed mode. Only when I installed catalyst 10.11 windowed mode also crashed, so I jumped back to 10.10e.

    The other scenario is when the screen freezes / turns black, i hit windows logo + L and If I'm lucky the screen wakes up and shows the log-in screen. When I log in again, I get the message "AMD graphics driver stopped responding and was restored".

    I've been troubleshooting and trying everything I could think of and a little bit more. I have:
    Installed latest drivers to everything, and tested different graphic drivers.
    Used Memtest86+ showing no errors,
    Disabling windows aero (thought it would work, since fullscreen actually worked for a while, but then the crashes came when i rebooted the system) <-- this was also interesting, because when It worked fullscreen I had only the original drivers, not any version of catalyst. Unfortunately this didn't work the next day.

    I haven't got much hair left on my head, so please help me! :bang:

    The reason I'm not RMAing the card, is because I'll have to wait for the reseller to test it (which takes 2-3 weeks) and if they don't find any hardware errors i'll have to pay them 50$ for the testing.
     
  2. CoreyPL

    CoreyPL Guest

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    GPU:
    RTX2080 Super WC
    Try new Cat 10.12 that are on Guru3D download page.

    Symptoms you are describing suggest problem when card is stressed. Try to run Furmark/Kombustor in windowed mode and see if system crashes. Also try to run Prime95 to stress only CPU and then both of this programs. You will see what part can't handle the load.

    What temps are you having on the card when it is stressed? Check that with GPU-Z. And CPU temps with HWMonitor.

    Also check, if all of the power connectors are inserted firmly - maybe something has loosen up - but it's a long shot.

    When I bought my 6870 it turned out, that my PSU didn't supported it - card wasn't booting my system, but the PSU worked with my previous, more power hungry card without problems. I'm now having similar problem to yours, as it will be very hard to prove faulty PSU when it works with almost any config but mine.
     
  3. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    GPU:
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    Thanks for quick reply :)

    Just installed the latest 10.12 drivers, and the problems just got worse. Now I can't even run windowed mode without recieving the "AMD driver stopped working"-message.

    When I ran Furmark earlier, it ran fine in windowed mode, and GPU temperatures were kinda stable around 70° celsius. Don't know about now though. I'll try the Prime95 and get back.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2010
  4. CoreyPL

    CoreyPL Guest

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    70C in Furmark is more than fine. So it's not overheating of graphic card. Have you tried running your card in another PC to see if the problem is still there?
     

  5. LostHH

    LostHH Active Member

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    I had an issue like this several years ago with the then newly released X1950pro's (PCIE), bought a Sapphire one and was very happy. What happened was the same problem you're having, I'd play something or doing anything which involved using the card and after 15-20mins the screen would go black with the monitor reporting a 'no signal present' message.
    After an RMA to the shop I bought it from who couldn't find a problem and after scouring the internet for weeks I come to the conclusion it was most likely the voltage regulators on the card overheating. Never bought Sapphire again.

    Anyway, rant finished now. I'd say RMA it
     
  6. Black_ice_Spain

    Black_ice_Spain Guest

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    i have 3guys in spanish forum with same problem. They say it could be bcs of nforce, but i have it and dont have those problems, idk :$.
     
  7. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    Just finished the Prime95 test, showed no errors or system lockup. I have not tried it in another computer, only have a laptop and a 6 year old dell-computer available, so don't know how that would work.

    Also just ran furmark again, to check if it was still working in windowed mode. Got these results:
    Max GPU Temp: 72°C - Max Current: 1.0A
    Resolution: 1434x872 (W) - MSAA: 8X
    FPS: min=32 max=61 avg=39

    Haven't tried it yet in fullscreen, just have to save everything i'm working on, since it probably is going to crash...
    Edit: Fullscreen Furmark for 300 000 ms (5 min) worked just fine, without temperature stable at 71C. When i open up world of warcraft I get the blackscreen within 5 minutes of playing...
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2010
  8. CoreyPL

    CoreyPL Guest

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    Since doing individual test didn't showed anything wrong, I would suggest reinstalling Windows to see if it helps. Or maybe just doing a temporary install on another HDD or external HDD for the sake of test.
     
  9. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    Already tried that... Without results.

    I've also noticed that I get this issue more often when I'm alt+tabbing down and then tabbing back into the game. The strange thing is that Furmark can run for five minutes fullscreen without crashing at all when World of Warcraft can run for around 1 minute fullscreen before crashing.

    Was starting to think it had something with wow to do, but then I tried 3dMark vantage + 3dMark 06, and both crashes after the first or second GPU-test.
     
  10. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    Okay, this might be a long-shot, but worth mentioning.

    I'm using an Acer X192W LCD-Monitor, which has the max resolution of 1440x990 pixels. When the screen goes black, a message pops up at the monitor saying "Input not supported".

    Can it somehow be related to the screen? Like the computer automatically changing resolution or whatever?

    Would be kinda weird though, since sometimes the computer just crashes totally, even the sound, but most of the time iTunes runs fine in the background. I can even alt+tab-guessing and pausing/resuming the song playing with space....

    This is really strange and bothers me really much.
     

  11. tpi2007

    tpi2007 New Member

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    GPU:
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    Solution

    I started a thread over at AMD Game forums (here: http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...=142284&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear)

    A lot of people are having hard crashes with the monitor going into standby and the sound getting corrupted soon afterwards. I can personally say I had done everything I could to solve the problem.

    The solution is apparently simple, but nobody knows why it works: go to AMD's Catalyst Control Center, and in Overdrive underclock the memory from 1000Mhz to 900Mhz.

    It has worked for many people. I can personally say that Furmark, Unigine Heaven 2.1 with Extreme Tesselation in fullscreen and 3D mark Vantage and the new 11 NEVER crashed on me BEFORE this fix, only Crysis, Crysis Warhead and GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City crashed, and the first two hard crashed the PC at specific locations, even from a cold boot in the morning, while they could otherwise be working for hours on other game chapters without problems (in fullscreen too).


    EDIT: There is someone over ath AMD Game foums (see the thread I mention in the first post) that said he solved his problems by raising the load voltage from 1.15v to 1.2v (and thus kept the memory at 1000Mhz), but I haven't tried that.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2010
  12. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    Tried that, but underclocked via Sapphire TriXX, since CCC 2.0 doesn't support underclocking (it seems). WoW ran fine for like 2-3 minutes, then the same black-screen occured. Now after I hard-restarted it, I get the message "Catalyst Control Center has stopped working" whenever I try to open it. Now whenever trying to run it fullscreen, I get the crash after just a few seconds again.

    So many strange things....and seems like no solution....Just would like to be sure that it is a hardware error before I RMA the card.
     
  13. tpi2007

    tpi2007 New Member

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    What is CCC 2.0 ? Are you referring to the new preview version that comes with Catalyst 10.12 ?

    During all the stuff I did trying to solve the problem I ended up with CCC's Overdrive showing the sliders starting at their standard full load clocks, which prevented me from underclocking it; I had to uninstall everything throughly and reinstall in order to get the sliders in their normal positions (in the middle, thus getting back the possibility to underclock, in addition to overclock).

    Have you verified that the 900Mhz you set with the software from Sapphire is being respected by the card ? Try running something 3D in windowed mode along with GPU-Z side by side and see if the memory is in fact at 900Mhz.
     
  14. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    I reinstalled everything now, and reverted back to 10.10e catalyst control center with the 10.12 graphic drivers. This let me adjust the memory clock to 900 Mhz. I started the game in windowed mode, and checked with GPU-Z that the memory clock stayed at 900 MHz, and it did.

    The only part that failed was that even in windowed mode, the current frame froze after 10 seconds and I had to hard-reboot it again.

    I'm so divided here wether I should hand it in or not, since I'd like to be 100% sure first that it's a hardware error, and that it is the graphic card that's failing.

    And since I've got different results from different drivers etc, I'm not so sure at all.

    Last option might be installing Windows XP 64 bit, what do y'all say?

    Seems like my gpu constantly runs at 250/900 mhz when in idle, up from 100/300 mhz in idle before underclocking it. Is this normal?
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2010
  15. tpi2007

    tpi2007 New Member

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    Hmmm, if you have Windows XP 32-bit, that might be a better option, some people compplained about Windows 7 64-bit, but said Win XP 32-bit was fine, even with the ram at 1000Mhz.

    Those idle speeds are not normal. How was your uninstall procedure ? Did you use Driver Sweeper in Safe mode ? Even better, you could try AMD Catalyst TwL Cleaner v3.7.1 (read the instructions first), to completely wipe registry settings and obscure files that remain in place from previous drivers and versions and that might be doing that. Use only CCC to set clocks; uninstall the utility from Sapphire.
     

  16. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    I reinstalled Catalyst control center first, then entered safe mode and removed all drivers with Driver Sweeper and ran CCleaner. When I re-installed it again this way, the clocks were normal again and I could change it to 900 MHz using Overdrive.

    The only problem is, that now for some reason I can't even play the game windowed without getting a black-screen after a few seconds.

    The different part is; When getting black-screen now, the monitor flicks between solid black and saying something like "connect adapter" or "input not supported" and a "lighter" black like it would "come to life" again. It switches between these two "states" every second until I do a hard-restart.

    My question is though; Can I be sure that it is a GPU software/hardware issue? Or can it be like the motherboard or something else?

    EDIT: I remembered when I look at fullscreen youtube-clips, the status bar of the video looks really ugly. Don't know if it is related, but just saying;
    [​IMG]

    EDIT 2: I don't know wether it was a coincidence or not, but I changed so wow ran in DirectX 11 mode, and kept the 900 MHz settings, and now I actually could run the game fullscreen without crashing.

    I wouldn't say it's solved yet though, since I could do this before aswell, but then the next day the problems came back. So I will return in a while when it crashes again and cry a little more, but thanks for now :)

    EDIT 3: Was checking clocks in GPU-Z while playing, and even though it says it's set at "GPU Clock 775/900 MHz" in both gpu-z and overdrive, under load, memory clock still goes up to 1000 MHz...

    Strange, aye?
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2010
  17. ludde06

    ludde06 Member

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    So that's how long the fun lasted...

    Fixed 3DMark11 to test my finally invincible PC, i thought...

    Just before the demo-thingy is finished loading, the screen freezes and through my speakers comes this computer-sound, kinda like a monotone motorboat.
    Had to hard-shut down it.
    Soon giving up and slaughtering the whole system with a baseball bat, since this is just messed up.

    :pray2pc:
     
  18. tpi2007

    tpi2007 New Member

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    Did you have any youtube or flash video playing or even paused/stopped ?

    It's just that the 900Mhz setting is just for 3D apliccations, for 2D, the BIOS kicks in and applies the preset profiles, and those always have the RAM clocks at 1000Mhz - I checked it with a utility, you can look it up how on the AMD forum thread.


    I have a customer care ticket with AMD and have given them the reports they asked along with the solution I found and the fact that 10.12 does not solve the problem. I will say something when they get back to me.

    As to the problem being with the rest of your system.. can you get another GPU from a friend/store to test your system ?
     
  19. CoreyPL

    CoreyPL Guest

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    Looking at your motherboard's supported CPU list I've noticed, that PII X4 970BE is not on the list. Still, it would be good to have the latest BIOS loaded to your mobo.

    In my opinion you have done more than normal user would do to test the setup. If your hardware supplier is a local store, then take your whole PC to test and let them worry about finding failing part. If not, then it would be good to check another card in your PC or your card in another PC just to be sure it is graphic card's fault.

    One last thing - do you have any entries in windows error log matching the time that your computer crashed?
     
  20. xtrm_gamer

    xtrm_gamer Member Guru

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    GPU:
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    Try to connect the card to one of your friend's computer, see if you face the issue on that system also....

    I'm not sure about the recommended powersupply for 6850, check if 550watts is sufficient....

    Also try this to calculate power requirements:
    http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
     

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