Powercolor x850xt PE Problem? or something else?

Hello and thank you for taking the time to read this post.

I recently got a new pc with a VGA card from Powercolor.
I am having terible errors when in game on Half Life 2, Counter Strike Source and Americas Army and sometimes even windows. I can play for a little while before the game freezes and i get random static/white noise in my headphones. I can Alt TAB out of the game (the noise keeps going) only to find a small message in a grey box saying something like:

Your VGA is no longer recieving data. Now switched to Software Rendering. Please restart your pc immediately.

I am wondering if any of you out there can help me fix such a problem. Im not sure if its overheating or if theres an incompatibility. Maybe a look at my specs will give an answer.

My system is as follows:

AMD Athalon 64 3500+ (939 Chipset)
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI (Nforce 4)
2x 512 Kingston Ram (DDR 400)
Powercolor Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition
Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS (i use 5.1 headphones)
Western Digital Caviar 120Gb SATA HD
Xconnect 500W Power Supply

Please Email Me If Possible On [email protected]

Thanks again...
Riko

mmh, I've never heard of such a problem before, but let's try to track it down:

at first google for ATITool , download the most recent version (0.22 I think).
Here you can check several things like your core speed, core type, temperatures and fan speed. Play some games and check the temperature, anything below 80C is fine and looking at this giant copper cooler on this card, I'd say you're more around 60C. But maybe they seated it badly.

Install the 5.2 Catalyst with the new control center which needs framework bla. and set all performance/quality options to full quality.
read somewhere, that whis fixed issues.

If this error message shows up again, please take a screenshot, this would really help to get an idea.

Till the I'll take a look around in on the internet, maybe someone else has the same problems.
Good Luck.

i would rma it if a windows reinstall doesnt fix ur problem

You don't need the new control center to set everything to preformance.

Pull card out, make sure everything is nice and snug and reseat it making sure all connections are good. Get ATITool, check temps. When playing a game for a little bit hit alt-tab and check the temps quick, if it crashes on you when doing that try touching the heatsink, if its extremely hot there might be an issue with it.

Take the side of the case off to see if that helps and if you got bigger fan put it in the case opening to see if its a temperature related issue also.

Yeah okay i tried the ATITool and the system had some trouble. The screen went all 70's colour vertical line style. OH and i had NO IDEA how to check those speeds and clock speeds!
So i reseated the card and all connections ARE SNUG as a BUG! Fan runs normally and Sink feels allright temp even though its covered by plastic. Check Powercolor site to see what i mean.
Anyway i used the control centre and i did all settings to max and played HL2 on topz for about 4 hours. I then felt the TOP of the card opposite the heat sink and it was HOT! not TOO bad though. It all looks fine.

Havent had the problem yet since driver upgrade though but it might sneak back in. Any other suggestions?

oh yeah and my Pc's case is a thermaltake Tsunami so i have NO heating problems inside the case!

THIS IS WHAT THE ERROR SCREEN SAYS!

===========================================================
VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.

Please tell ATI Technologies about this problem
the generated error report contains only system information such as driver version, AGP settings, graphics frame buffer size etc. that will be used to analyze the problem. This report will be treated as anonymous

(Buttons)= Send + Dont Send

===========================================================

This recoverer is a setting in the control panel and it is an option you can disable and enable. I only have to restart my system but it happens when the card is working for a few hours. It MUST be a heating thing. Anyway im contacting ATi for now. HOW DO I GET THE FAN OFF SO I CAN CHEC THE HEATSINKS LOCATION? I dont want to damage my card or void a waranty.

AS SOON AS I POSTED THAT My windows wont boot now.

Missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

now i gotta Reinstall windows again for the 6th time. OMFG this is ****ing me off.

DONT BUY A POWERCOLOUR X850XT PE EVER

Actually it's a great card, I have a few I've sold in systems and they work flawlessly.
I had the issue that you describe, with mine, but only when I was overclocking.
I alleviated it by raising CPU and Chipset voltage, and dropping back to the Catalyst 4.12 Omega's.

Jack up the voltage on your CPU 0.100v, make sure your voltage rails are on spot, and make sure your PCI-E Bus is at 100MHz.
Try older Catalyst drivers such as the 4.12 Omega's. ALWAYS disable VPU Recover.

Rik0chet said:

AS SOON AS I POSTED THAT My windows wont boot now.

Missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

now i gotta Reinstall windows again for the 6th time. OMFG this is ****ing me off.

DONT BUY A POWERCOLOUR X850XT PE EVER

Click to expand...

damn chill man out man, no need for the caps, feelings can be expressed with the smilies doesn't sound like a video card problem, its most likely something else being unstable and is causing the errors, probably the unstable memory

really? thats okay news i guess

May i ask how i do all this TekXoid? i am rather new to this level of overclocking/underclocking.

Hit the delete key while your system is booting to get into the bios, find the "frequency & voltage"
submenu and raise the cpu voltage 0.1v. e.g. if the voltage is 1.50v, raise it to 1.60v.

Check the PCI-Express frequency too and if it's at 100MHz, try 105-110MHz.
Check your PSU voltages for the 12v, 5v, and 3.3v rails in the pc health section
and tell me the actual values your PSU is putting out for each voltage rail.

Make sure any "Spread Spectrum" and "Cacheable" options are DISABLED.

I dont think the problem is with the card. Windows is crashing in his system.

I am thinking that its probably his powersupply.

TekXoID said:

Check your PSU voltages for the 12v, 5v, and 3.3v rails in the pc health section and tell me the actual values your PSU is putting out for each voltage rail.

Click to expand...

If you are goint to check voltage rails, do it with an acutrate messurement device. Get a Digital Multimeter, don't trust what the bios or windows monitoring programs say what the voltages are, because usally they are off.

Yeah, I was about to say..... the only time I've had Windows errors is when I've been overclocking my memory too high or have the timings too tight. That doesn't really explain the graphics errors that you're getting, but it would be a good point to start at to make sure that your system's at stock speeds and that your powersupply's rails are still good.

What PSU are you using?

i have a powercolor x850xt pe and have had problems with it till i got the ati 5.2 cats then no problems at all make sure you have "Microsoft’s .NET version 1.1 framework " installed first tho that caused me problems to if i didnt

I think it could be the PSU! For your system maeby a HEC 425W or Antec TruePower 550W!

I havent seen this card, but are those contacts from the PSU on the card? For the voltage!
But the card if it works then it

I use an xconnect 500W power supply. And in Bios everything looks normal. Im not sure about the V's though but both those options are off.
Though, HOW do I check the rails? god i feel like a n00bster. Oh and it isnt WINDOWS crashing it is the ATi VPU Recoverer that kicks in. Windows has been doing some dodgy **** though :S

Oh and i have latest Catalyst Drivers and Net 1.1, but the cat drivers are a problem because they make the VPU recoverer kick in os i am unhappy with them.

Tell you what though, my powersupply has cables that come with it. You connect only the ones you use so you have a nice clean case inside, but i have many cords that split at the base so i use less of them (they can connect to two devices. The 2 HD's work together and so do the MotherBoard cords. But it could be this:
I have power cable for the video card (that came with it) attached to one of my psu's cables (standard 4pin Male-Female connection) BUT that psu cable splits in two at the PSU and on the other end of the cable all my Fans for my case (3 of them) and my case Led's are connected. Could this be sucking power from the card that i need to keep it cool or running smoothly?

Plus should my powersupply have a slightly odd smell of hot parts? its just slight, kinda like a 'new' smell

Yeah, mine smelled like hot circuitry when I first got it....... it should wear off in a few days.

As for the rails, do you have a multimeter or know someone that does have a multimeter? If so, just plug the negative electrode into the black plug on the molex and the other electrode into the yellow or red cable depending on which voltage you want to read. Just make sure it's set to measure voltage and you can just plug it right in.