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View Full Version : Brand new build brought down by Asus 5870 Crossfire, help!


bluesugar
01-03-10, 05:13 PM
Originally posted in the ATI forums, reposting here for possible help :)

So here is my problem. I recently bought the parts to build a new PC, assembled my PC, overclocked it, and ran Prime95 to check for stability. All was well after running it for 8 hours, no problems. My specs are:

Asus P6T Deluxe VT / Intel i7 920 @ 4.1 / 6 Gigs Corsair 1600 DDR3 Ram / 1000w Crossfire ready PSU / Corsair H50 Cooling / Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case / Creative XFi Fatal1ty soundcard / Asus 5870 x2 Crossfire cards / Win 7 Pro on a Corsair 128 SSD.



The problem begins when I play any game with my new PC. I get crashes where the screen goes black, but the sound is sometimes looping. I have all drivers updated, and when I am running very intensive games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat (man I hate typing that out lol) I have the fans set above 70% to ensure the cards don't go above 65 degrees celsius.

From what I can tell from reading these forums and others, it seems like there is an issue with the drivers downclocking volts / speed when switching from 3D/2D, but there isn't a way that fixes it for everyone, so I have not tried this.

But here is the deal - I just wiped all of my video drivers and used driver sweeper in safe mode, installed my old Nvidia 280GTX SLi cards, reinstalled most current drivers, and VOILA, no more crashes. Seriously, the system is stable and running well with any game I throw at it. The problem is that I bought the 5870's because I heard they rock, and they do, when they aren't (or the drivers aren't) hard locking my PC. Also, the 5870's run much cooler than my 280GTX's, and the new mobo I have (coming from the Nvidia 780i) makes the 1st card heat up like crazy since there isn't enough space between the two of them with the soundcard in between.

To make a long story short, when are we going to get a resolution for this problem with the 5870's? I have read that some people have RMA'd their cards, but that didn't necessarily fix the problem. All I want to do is use my new ATI cards. I switched from ATI to Nvidia after my X800XT, and decided to return to them just now and hope that I didn't make a huge mistake.



Thoughts?

mattspalace
01-04-10, 03:45 AM
I've had zero problems with my HD5870's in crossfire, so I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion.
Are you sure the CPU overclock is stable? Do you have the 5870s overclocked at all?

bluesugar
01-04-10, 11:26 AM
PC is Prime95 8+ hours stable, cards are not overclocked. Apparently, after reading different forums, the problem seems to either lie with the cards hardware or the drivers causing issues in 2D/3D. I am not saying that this is happening for everyone. What seemed to fix the problem for me so far was to set the VDDC voltage to max, edit the CCC profile so that the 2D volts didn't drop down too low when I open up an in game menu, and unplug my second monitor from the first card. After doing these things, I am able to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. at max setting with 50-60 fps and no crashes.

Here's to hoping they find the issue and fix it with the next set of drivers.

silencer51
01-06-10, 01:56 AM
This is a well-known problem with the 5xxx line, it mostly affects the 5850s and 5870s. A quick google search returns many, many relevant hits.

When I first got my 5870, I too experienced random crashes in 2D (games worked fine), for example I could be browsing the net and then - bam! - the monitor lost the signal and my PC froze requiring a hard reset.

I tried pretty much everything.

I flashed my card's BIOS to the latest ATI release, I installed the 9.12 hotfix Catalyst drivers, reseated the card, changed my PSU config around, and finally, I just bumped up the voltages on my RAM.

After doing all of the above, my C2Q rig is rock solid again, both in 2D and 3D.

I suggest you flash the latest ATI bios (found at techpowerup.com), it raises the idle voltage a little bit, also get the CCC 9.12 hotfix and try bumping up your RAM voltages a little bit...

bluesugar
01-07-10, 02:09 AM
My RAM voltage is at 1.66, the recommended for my memory, but I am worried about raising it more than that since my motherboard clearly stated that raising it above 1.66 may cause permanent damage to the CPU. What is yours set to? I have the Asus P6T Deluxe V2, Corsair DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24. PSU is a KingWin 1000 watt. What are your voltages at? I have my i7 920 at 4.1 with a 1.3 voltage.