Frustrating Video Card Problem!! Please help!!

[Turbulent Solac]

Greetings,

First of all, I just want to say that my pc has been running 100% stable with no crashes whatsoever since its conception - which was about 10 months ago. A few days ago, however, I started to encounter a lot of strange video card errors, and I can't really resolve the problem =/. At first, the screen would go black for about 5-10 seconds, and then it would come back with the following message: "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered". Then, I started getting BSOD's about every 5 hours of operation, and the error pointed towards the same driver. Now, whenever this problem is encountered, my system will go black for about 20-30 seconds, and I'll be able to move my mouse around on the black screen. Then, the desktop will come back with aero mode disabled, and everything will be insanely sluggish (mouse movements will be delayed by about 15 seconds). This process keeps repeating until I personally restart it (it's too sluggish to even restart it through windows) or experience a crash, and I no longer see the balloon "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered". However, whenever this happens, that display driver phrase is still recorded in the event viewer.

Here are my specs:
intel core i7 930 at stock speed (2.8 GHz)
corsair xms ram - 6 gb in triple channel mode
ASUS P6X58D-E Mobo
XFX Ati Radeon HD5870 1 gb ram
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Now, to troubleshoot this, I started off by figuring out if it is a driver/hardware issue. First, I started to monitor my temps both in-game and in Windows. When idling, my video card is around 33 C, and it goes up to around 45 C at full load. So, I don't think that it's a heat issue. Similarly, I looked at cpu temperatures, and, even though I do not have solid numbers, it was definitely not hot at all. So, heat is definitely not an issue; I have really nice heat sinks on everything, and there's nice air flow throughout my case.

After looking into the temperatures, I decided to test my video drivers. First, I left my computer in safe mode for an entire day, since that does not use your video drivers (correct me if I'm wrong). Oddly enough, I experienced absolutely no crashes, and I usually get 3-4 crashes each day now. So, I was pretty sure that the drivers were causing the problem. After narrowing down my options, I then decided to completely remove my drivers and reinstall them. I have actually done this about 4-5 times, trying different methods (I have used guru3d's drive sweeper and everything too). However, this did not resolve the issue. Actually, tbh, this sort of caused the problem to mutate into the different forms explained in the first paragraph.

After trying all of this stuff, I am completely lost, sadly =/. Apparently, this used to be a huge problem back in 2010 or something, and most people have narrowed it down to a driver issue, but I somehow can't seem to fix this damned problem. Since my temps are very nice (and I hardly play any games that would stress my card), I highly doubt that a 10 month old video card is dying. Do you guys have any suggestions for me? I'm really annoyed that I'm having all of this trouble after spending a lot of money on this system....

 

[Janus67]

It is possible that your video card is dying. Since it is so new it is still under warranty and you can RMA it with no problems. I doubt your OS is causing a problem but you could backup your data and reinstall your OS (or if you have a spare HDD install a quick OS on that and see if it works without any errors). To me it sounds like your video card is having trouble, though.

 

[MKOIS]

If you have a spare PC install the card in there. Otherwise, wipe your OS and do a clean install.

if you go to start->run->cmd and type in "sysinfo" it should give u install date (original) i usually like to re install os once a year.

 

[vdgamer]

+1 janus67, very good suggestion, to eliminate posibity of driver issues, use another OS drive for a day or two, if no issues occur it's the drivers (I had my share of issues with ati divers this doesnt surprise me at all as driver issue), if issue persists with other OS then it's the card.

 

[Psycogeec]

run the warrenty , and test it at the same time sort of get your problem report in early.
i dont know about ATI, but with some companies and somewhat legally speaking if you initiate the problem report now, your more likely to "stay on the records" if you have to return.
there is a slight possiblity that the power somehwere , be it back at your psu, or the regulations on the card are giving trouble.
but so far, suspecting the drivers especially when running 3d stuff non stop, is good.

 

[Turbulent Solac]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Since I really don't feel like dealing with the RMA process and do not have a spare pc, I really want to avoid RMAing my card. Plus, I'm still convinced that it's a driver issue, even though I'm open to the possibility of hardware failure. I don't really have any more time to troubleshoot it tonight, but I'll be trying as much as I can tomorrow after work.

Psycogeec - The odd thing is the fact that it crashes when I'm doing things within windows (browsing the internet, looking through folders, etc); I can still play games for hours, and it will not crash at all in-game. Also, it tends to crash when I leave it sitting idle and come back to it. So, as per a suggestion that I just read on the internet, I may try to up my card's idle clock speeds to 400 mhz core and 900 mhz ram. For whatever reason, the HD 5000 cards declock to 157 mhz core and 300 mhz ram when idling, and many people have suggested that this is not enough for aero/other basic 2d tasks.

Janus - That's a really good idea. However, unfortunately, my second HD is a storage drive, and I don't want to mess with that =/.

 

[Psycogeec]

ahh, well it is easy enough to lock in one memory and gpu clock speed. the screen does jump around quite a bit when changing the memory clocks for sure.
many of the, OC the gpu utilities, will require locking out ATIs stepping to gain full control, so loading up one of them and follwing its directions, would work.
and
they usually do that by disabling "Ati Hotkey poller", which takes about 2 seconds it is usually found in services, and can be disabled.
then along those same lines, the Voltage itself is raised and lowered.
when i was clutzing around with overclocking the gpu, if i didnt put the voltage to at LEAST where it steps up to, even at very low clocks it would go by by instantally, because they also stepped the voltage down so far when setting it down for the "2D" type speeds.
so that all is a likely combination. and not so much the clocks shifting, but that the voltage is so low then.

and i think it sucks that they ignore 2D speeds, they keep getting the 3D faster and faster, and 2D speeds even clocked suck worse than back in 1998
on the other hand, i dont want to pay for 100W of power to do the 2d either , they needed to have both somehow.
.

 

[vdgamer]

When I ran my 5770CF my cards ran 157/300 at idle and I never had this issue, I don't think that's the problem

 

[prime81]

The only thing I see that has been overlooked is a possible OS update that has driver conflicts. Try removing the videocard drivers from control panel, then manually navigate to the OS drive and delete the ati folder... also navigate to the hidden ati folder under users and delete that. Download the latest drivers from ati's site, reboot and then install the new drivers. If the drivers are cleanly installed and nothing else is out of the ordinary, then you may have a faulty card or PCI-E port.

 

[Pierre3400]

I would say you could have a hardware problem, being the gfx card ofcourse.

I run almost identical setup to you, and havnt had any similar issues.

 

[MKOIS]

I think it's at least worth a fresh install of the os (with nothing else installed)

Just re-install windows and graphics drives (thats it)

surf the web for a few hours if it crashes ...well than there u go "hardware"