radeon 4870 weird freezing

[rommie]

I have a powercolor radeon 4870. I first noticed this problem with far cry 2, but it's happening with mass effect as well. After a random amount of gameplay, the monitor goes into standby, and if I hard reset (ami BIOS) I get one long beep, and 3 short ones. I actually have to power off the system and turn it back on again to get a video signal. With far cry 2, I tried everything - running in a window, lower resolution, etc... but it would crash anyway. If I put my 4350 in, I had no problems. Have tried resinstalling drivers (with driver cleaner, as well), reformatting... oh, and with mass effect, if I don't run it about 1280x720, no crashing. GPU temp is 45c at idle, memory is at 60c (I'm told by another member that this is normal for a 4870). It might be an overheating problem, because it seems like cool air is drawn in from the back of the case, and exhausted out the front of the card:

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/4268/img0716w.jpg

Where the PATA ribbon cable is, that's where all the hot air is being exhausted. But the fan couldn't be turning the wrong way, could it? The fan plug only seems to plug into the card the one way.

My power supply is only 500 watts, with only one pci-e connecter. I can't use one of those 2 molex-1 pci-e adapters for the second one it needs, because the supply only has 2 molexes in total. I'm using a 250w AT supply to "feed" the second pci-e connecter (via adapter).

You'd think that it would be a problem with the card, but so far, it has only been happening with these two games. Ran them in 800x600 for hours yesterday, and didn't have a problem. Oh, and the fan does spin up to maximum when the card is at full load. CPU temp is 32c at idle, intel q8200.

[Lavacon]

If you are running two PSUs I would suggest running the card on either one or the other.

There are a lot of good deals on PSUs going on atm, you may want to consider looking into a new one if you have funds available. A single decent 500w unit should run a 4870 just fine.

[King107s]

+1 on the PSU suggestion.

Are you overclocking your system? If your system is overclocked and you upgraded to this card, try bumping the NB voltageand test it again. I found that games like crysis and farcry can exposes weaknesses that other programs do not. Try running memtest and P95Blend to see if you have stability issues.

[Lavacon]

Could you post your hardware info? It would help to know what are working with :-)

[Nekro31]

DRAM PROBLEM :D GOD I LOVE OVERCLOCKERS :D check this article out it WILL help you. look at the Ami Bios Problems :DDDDD
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=265143
Thank God For Overclockers xD

Edit... My bad Didnt read your whole post you should still check this article out :D

[rommie]

Could you post your hardware info? It would help to know what are working with :-)

Coolermaster case (no idea what model, but has 5 3 1/2 bays, 5 5 1/4)
500w coolermaster psu
Powercolor radeon hd4870
intel q8200 cpu at stock
aftermarket hsf (nothing fancy, runs as max 2000 rpm)
4 hard drives - 2 seagate 500gb sata's, 2 samsung 700gb sata's
2 burners
asus p5q se2 mobo
some sort of generic ram - 2 x2gb ddr2 800mhz

Someone mentioned that I should use either one power supply or the other to power the radeon. I'd prefer to use the AT supply, because the atx is daisy chained like anything (only ONE molex, with another "dependent" one hanging off of that). Thing is, with the AT supply, there are 2 "independent" molexes, with 2 molexes "branching off" of them. I'd need 4 in total to use 2 molex-pci-e adapters as needed by the card. I'm really unsure that a 500w psu can power all those drives as well as the card. But, does the supply need all 4 molex cables running straight from the psu, or can it be like, 2 coming from the psu, and 2 branching off of those (I hope that makes sense)?

[King107s]

Regardless of how many molexes you have coming off that PSU there is a finite amount of amperage for the 12V rails which is what you need to look at.

Example:

An ATI Radeon 4870 1GB video card pulls 316W @12V at full load which is 26amps.

The COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3 500W ATX12V V2.3 is 500W but it breaks down to 360W for two 12V rails at 18A each with the rest going to the +3.3V and +5V rails.

I would always recomend that you give the cpu and video cards their own dedicated 12V rail from the PSU (for mulit rails PSU's). So it would not be strong enough to run the video card under load along with the rest of the system drawing on the 12V rails.

Please provide the model number/specs on both of your PSU's.

[rommie]

Regardless of how many molexes you have coming off that PSU there is a finite amount of amperage for the 12V rails which is what you need to look at.

Example:

An ATI Radeon 4870 1GB video card pulls 316W @12V at full load which is 26amps.

The COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3 500W ATX12V V2.3 is 500W but it breaks down to 360W for two 12V rails at 18A each with the rest going to the +3.3V and +5V rails.

I would always recomend that you give the cpu and video cards their own dedicated 12V rail from the PSU (for mulit rails PSU's). So it would not be strong enough to run the video card under load along with the rest of the system drawing on the 12V rails.

Please provide the model number/specs on both of your PSU's.

cooler master: RS 500 PGAR J3

DC out: 3.3v 5v 12v1 12v2 -12v +5vsb
max load:22a 20a 20a 2-a 0.8a 2.5a
" watts: 130w 130 360 360 9.6 12.5

the crappy, AT supply:

+5v: 23 amps
-5 0.5
+12 8.5
-12 0.5

I hope that helps...

[King107s]

What is recommended for your 4870 videocard is a 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. So that means you need 150W/12.5A out of the 12V rail which it looks like your PSU should be able to do.

Using a lot of adapters and daisy chaining molexes is not ideal for a lot of reasons but should work. I always try to get a PSU that has the cords/connections I need already built-in so that I dont have to split the power for other hardware. I also prefer single-rail PSUs over multi rail but you can read up on that and form your own opinon.

The old AT PSU's were always 5V heavy which is not going to help you at all here. I would NOT use that PSU in your system at all if I were you. it does not have enough power for the video card or the cpu, I would only use that for something like a peltier TEC.

It does appear that you are running on the minimum specs so I'm not sure how long that will last you. If you start having any issues at all take a look at that PSU first.