5870 gray screen crash.

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Supreme [H]ardness
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I had ran my 5870 crossfire setup with this card with no problems. Now I started getting this gray screen lockup issues where about a minute after going into a game I get a lockup with a gray screen. Ive been reading a few ppl in guru3d having the same problem. Is it drivers? My Power Color never did it but I never ran the 9.11 b4 driver with a single card until now. Just strange if it was hardware why would I be getting issues now and not with the crossfire setup? I should mention this is happening in COD World at War. Also it was doing this at stock clock. I ran it 900/1300 in my crossfire setup for a while without a single glitch.
 
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I'm running the 9.11 beta driver and sometimes when watching flash videos on the internet, mine will lockup to an off whiteish color screen. Running Windows 7 x64
Also getting distorted textures sometimes in Borderlands.

I like the card but I'm ready to throw it against the wall with all these driver problems.
 
Compddd said:
I'm running the 9.11 beta driver and sometimes when watching flash videos on the internet, mine will lockup to an off whiteish color screen. Running Windows 7 x64
Also getting distorted textures sometimes in Borderlands.

I like the card but I'm ready to throw it against the wall with all these driver problems.
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Indeed! I get it during similar times (flash videos). However mine is more greyish...slightly bluish.

It also looks slightly banded...like its a bunch of grey-blue bars running down the screen if you get my drift....subtle.

It happens so randomly...can't really pin it on any one thing. And I'm seeing more reports of it around the interwebs. Hasn't happened in a while as of today, but it does. I defragged my hard drives...impossible to say if it was the problem though. Running win7 64 bit too.

It also seemed to happen whenever I put the pc to sleep or hibernated. Since I defragged I've slept/hubernated it a good number of times and it's been A-ok. Also been doing an unusually large amount of gaming today, and not a single hiccup.

So all I can suggest is defrag....not sure why, but I've seen results. I should've payed more attention, but I think it did defrag a few things from my amd driver folder.

Waiting for better drivers...
 
I got this too once while playing natural selection while forcing 8xAA and 16xAF through CCC. Don't know why, but it's only happened during that game and only once.

Edit: I have a 4870 though so I'm assuming this is a driver issue.
 
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Wazooty said:
Indeed! I get it during similar times (flash videos). However mine is more greyish...slightly bluish.

It also looks slightly banded...like its a bunch of grey-blue bars running down the screen if you get my drift....subtle.
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Yeah I totally know what you are saying. Mine is off whitetish with banded subtle red lines.

Not much we can do until ATI gets off THEIR ASS and makes some STABLE drivers for only the biggest operating system release in 10 f***ing years (Win 7)
 
Ok, this sounds like exactly what I am getting. What drivers are you all running? My screen is gray with what looks like small light blcak lines running from top to bottom that give it that banded type of look. I know the card is ok becuse I use it for a month in crossfire without a single issue.
 
I am having this problem too, the gray screen with thin black lines creating a bunch of squares. Things had been fine and I have played for hours OC'd at 900/1300, but all of a sudden it started happening while playing GTA IV.. I retested my overclock and dropped the clocks back down to stock on the card. Things seem to be ok now, but it kinda freaked me out. I'm running the 9.10s. I also re-ran 3dmark vantage and my score has dropped almost 2000 marks...yikes!
 
All of the available ATI drivers for Win 7 seem to have this problem. 9.11 beta, 9.10, etc
 
Compddd said:
All of the available ATI drivers for Win 7 seem to have this problem. 9.11 beta, 9.10, etc
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Strange I never had the problem with my crossfire setup or single Power Color card I just sold.
 
In the few games that I have played on my XFX 5850 (because I am having board issues that is making some games unplayable...but that's another issue) I am getting inaccurate textures. 9.10 x64s in Win7 Ultimate x64 has given the following issues:

Fallout 3 PipBoy buttons at the bottom, and accompanying text are completely blurred. You can't even tell that there should be letters there. The buttons look fuzzy and indistinguishable.

Fallout 3 rock textures (on large rocks only) are smoothed and grey. They do not look normal.

3DMark06 load screens for tests do not exhibit high IQ. They do not even look right. The orange bars used to indicate that a test is loading do not line up with the location of the bars that should be filled. The orange bars, when shown, are skewed from where they should be. Load screen graphics look like you're looking at them through a frosted window, and appear very diffused. Vantage does not have this issue.

I tried the 9.11 betas, but they were worse, for me. I got game crashes with the driver call in the error message. Textures were flashing for me in Fallout 3 on 9.11 betas, and I couldn't take it. I also saw no noticeable performance gains...but that could be my board issues.
 
sabregen said:
Fallout 3 rock textures (on large rocks only) are smoothed and grey. They do not look normal.
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This is exactly what happens to me in Borderlands. Certain areas of the game are completely smoothed and grey.

FIX YOUR SHIT ATI
 
Doesnt matter wich one you choose your still screwed

screw_manufacturer-l.jpg
 
NeonGuy said:
Doesnt matter wich one you choose your still screwed

screw_manufacturer-l.jpg
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hahahah you got that right. I have had my fair share of issues with Nvidia also but ATi seems to take a bit longer to get things right. I reseated teh card but when I pulled it out I added MX2 paste. The stock paste was on there pretty good. I got about a 3C difference total. I will give it more time to cure and see if it gets better.. I was getting 77-78 while gaming.. now im getting 74-75. Same ambient temps.
 
Everyone getting this gray screen crash.. I noticed I was getting issues in Afterburner where the Voltage was sticking at max value instead of under volting on desktop. Is everyone who is getting this issue running MSI Afterburner? Not sure if the two are related. I just installed the new 1.4 version to see how things are. I noticed he removed the voltage graph.
 
I'd recommend reducing your clocks/voltage and seeing if the problem persists. Also, rolling back to the 9.10 WHQL drivers might help, although, as mentioned, it seems to be a problem with Win 7. For what it's worth, I have the Borderlands texture issues using the 9.11 betas on Vista x64. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in the final release of 9.11.
 
You can resolve the gray texture problem in Borderlands by disabling Catalyst A.I.
 
Mr. K6 said:
I'd recommend reducing your clocks/voltage and seeing if the problem persists. Also, rolling back to the 9.10 WHQL drivers might help, although, as mentioned, it seems to be a problem with Win 7. For what it's worth, I have the Borderlands texture issues using the 9.11 betas on Vista x64. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in the final release of 9.11.
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I might try rolling back the clock.. I had it at 900/1300 which it did fine in crossfire.
 
I know someone getting this problem with a 4850 on XP. Has anyone found a cause for this?
 
Not yet... I just switched to another 9.11 beta driver and im wating to see how it does. Also using the new 1.4 afterburner.
 
I am getting a lot of crashes with my ATI 5870 as well. This weird gray screen of death and sound looping......... followed by a crash most of the time.

I have tested it on two builds. I recently went from..

Q6600, GTX 260 Core 216, 4GB DDR2, 1000w Corsair PSU..... ran everything like a charm.

Now..... I swapped in a 5870 in to the above build and the games look even more amazing....... but then these fucked up crashes started happening when playing my videos.
When I do get a message it will say the ati blah blah blah driver stopped working. I get artifacting or the gray screen of death/freeze/sound loop.

I had planned on building a new computer anyways. So I now am rocking this build....

Core i5 860 3.7 ghz, 4gb DDR 3, 1000w PUS........... installed the newest ATI drivers.
I still get that dam crash!!! I can play Dragon Age Origins for hours and hours.... as soon as I play a video.......... BOW crash!


Oh forgot to say I ran Win7 Ultimate 64 on with these machines. Fresh installs 3 times.(so dam fast on corsair p128 SSD!!!!)
 
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Try downloading the GPU clock tool from AMD's website. Set the clocks to 850/1200, and hit apply. This disables powerplay and forces the video card to stay at 850/1200. When you're done gaming, go to the GPU clock tool again and set it to "restore default" settings. You'll want to do this before you play ANY sort of videos by the way, as it sets the UVD clock too high for it to handle without crashing.

This fixed the glitches I was experiencing with my 5870, which sound very similar to yours.

Another thing you can try is to increase the voltage on the card (very slightly) by using MSI's afterburner utility. I get the impression that some of the PowerPlay voltages that are set on certain cards do not provide for stable operation. It's an annoying thing you can use to workaround the issues until a driver fix is put into place. I don't even think this happens to all people. I'd RMA my 5870 myself if I knew I could get my hands on another one, but there's not many out there and I don't want to give up my Eyefinity :)
 
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redpriest said:
Try downloading the GPU clock tool from AMD's website. Set the clocks to 850/1200, and hit apply. This disables powerplay and forces the video card to stay at 850/1200. When you're done gaming, go to the GPU clock tool again and set it to "restore default" settings. You'll want to do this before you play ANY sort of videos by the way, as it sets the UVD clock too high for it to handle without crashing.

This fixed the glitches I was experiencing with my 5870, which sound very similar to yours.

Another thing you can try is to increase the voltage on the card (very slightly) by using MSI's afterburner utility. I get the impression that some of the PowerPlay voltages that are set on certain cards do not provide for stable operation. It's an annoying thing you can use to workaround the issues until a driver fix is put into place. I don't even think this happens to all people. I'd RMA my 5870 myself if I knew I could get my hands on another one, but there's not many out there and I don't want to give up my Eyefinity :)
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Thanks for the information. I forgot to say my crashes only happen when watching movies. Gaming works perfectly. I play WoW, Fallout 3, Dragon Age and other games for hours and hours....... not one problem. But as soon as I watch a video/movie I get those crashes.

And I forgot to mention that sometimes....... before the gray screen and sound loop....... Win7 will tell me that the ATI Display driver has stopped working. Most of the time it crashes first before the message comes up.
 
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Hmm the new MSI afterburner has an overclocking method that pushes past the CCC limits using a method like AMD GPU Clock. This turns off Power Play I was told.
 
I get the grey screen crash with slight vertical banding too. Never happens with crossfire enabled. With crossfire disabled, it happens in every game i have tried when i plug the monitor into the top card. If i plug into the bottom card it works fine. I have switched the cards and tried both in the other spot and the same thing happens.
 
I had XFX 5870 and ASUS 5870. I just installed and COD MW2 and playing the first part of the single player game and ran into this same problem. I wasn't doing CF, but I was overclocking to 900/1275.
I was going switch the cards and even cross installed bios between the two cards. I was doing everything I could think of. The last thing I tried was rasing the default voltage at 3D from 1.162v to 1.187V by using the MSI afterburner. I have tired lower voltage than 1.187V, but so far I haven't run into the problem at all.
 
FranklyShankly said:
I get the grey screen crash with slight vertical banding too. Never happens with crossfire enabled. With crossfire disabled, it happens in every game i have tried when i plug the monitor into the top card. If i plug into the bottom card it works fine. I have switched the cards and tried both in the other spot and the same thing happens.
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Funny you say that. I never had this problem with my crossfire setup. It happened after I sold one card. Also I never had this happen with my Power color but I was running the MSI driver that was popular at the time. Has anyone tried going as far back as that MSI driver?
 
Same crashing that is described with my 4850 and the 9.10 or 9.11 drivers. CoD4, Crysis Warhead, Borderlands all love to crash!
 
I was digging around in event viewer today and saw this...

ati eeu client event error
 
Came across this interesting post on ATI forums. I am tryng............shit anythings worth a try at this point posted by DocMartin


Up until last week, I had never seen the atikmdag.sys error. I started getting it all of a sudden, and it has been driving me crazy ever since. I read every post out there, I re-installed every driver I could get my hands on. I updated every BIOS, voltage, and memory timing to make my system rock solid stable. But still within 30 seconds of opening any 3D application, my screen would freeze and reset, with the dreaded yellow triangle.

So here's my solution, that I haven't seen posted anywhere yet:
"High Definition Audio Device"
How many of these are in your device manager?

Normally I install the ATI display driver ONLY, but with a full install I noticed that it installed 2 HDMI audio devices (one for each card). I guess this is so that you can use the HDMI interface for sound, but I only use my DVI ports to my monitors. After doing the ATI uninstall, they are still listed in the device manager. I had 3 copies of "High Definition Audio Device" but I knew that only one of them was my onboard sound. I downloaded the Realtek drivers, and used the "update driver" button to determine which of the 3 was my sound card (it refuses install the realtek driver on the ATI HDMI audio ports). After disabling the remaining 2 HD Audio Devices, I have no more atikmdag errors.

I tested the setup using FurMark, which would always give the error within 60 seconds if it was going to happen:
1. Microsoft/Microsoft/Microsoft = error
2. RealTek/Microsfot/Microsoft (before reboot) = error
3. RealTek/Microsoft/Microsoft (after reboot) = error
4. RealTek/Disable/Disable (before reboot) = error
5. RealTek/Disable/Disable (after reboot) = stable
6. Microsoft/Disable/Disable (after reboot) = stable
7. Microsoft/Microsoft/Microsoft (after reboot) = error again

So it doesn't matter what driver my sound card is using (Microsoft or RealTek), but I need to disable the HDMI audio ports from the graphics cards (with reboot). I remember having some kind of trouble like this back when I had a SoundBlaster card with joystick port (I always had to disable the joystick port). This could explain why some people have limited success using single monitor setups, and maybe why there are similar issues with nVidia cards. (And maybe why it works in XP? I'm not sure how it handles the audio devices)

I'm posting to the AMD forums, but I know there are a billion other websites out there if I google the problem. If this solution works for you feel free to pass along the information, or send a PM I'd be interested to know.


My specs:
Vista x64 Ultimate
M/B: MSI x48C Platinum
CPU: QX9650 (9.0 x 400Mhz)
GPU: 2x MSI ATI Radeon 4870x2 (Crossfire)
RAM: 2Gb x 2 DDR3 G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (400Mhz FSB 1:2 = 1600Mhz)
PSU: CoolMax CUQ-1200B 1200W
Monitors: 2x HannsG 19" Widescreen (both using DVI)

My solution:
1. Open Device Manager
2. Under Sound Controllers, determine which device is your sound card
3. Disable other/unknown sound controller devices
4. Reboot
5. Test for Stability
 
I get blank screen crashes (usually blue in color, sometimes black) almost every time I wake the computer from sleep mode. This is really annoying because I tend to use sleep mode a lot. I've communicated with Sapphire dozens of times over the last few weeks and they've been of no help, absolutely clueless. The funny thing is that the longer the computer stays in sleep, the more likely it is to crash. The theory I've been peddling around is that maybe the correct voltage isn't being applied to video memory, causing the contents to become slowly corrupted.
 
cluelessnewbie said:
I get blank screen crashes (usually blue in color, sometimes black) almost every time I wake the computer from sleep mode. This is really annoying because I tend to use sleep mode a lot. I've communicated with Sapphire dozens of times over the last few weeks and they've been of no help, absolutely clueless. The funny thing is that the longer the computer stays in sleep, the more likely it is to crash. The theory I've been peddling around is that maybe the correct voltage isn't being applied to video memory, causing the contents to become slowly corrupted.
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have you tried locking the clock and voltage with AMD GPU Clock? Just to see what happens.
 
I havent had a crash since I disabled the ATI HDMI Audio device in device manager.
 
I don't get a gray screen, but ever since I got my 5870, TF2 locks up on map changes. This is what appears in the event viewer right after. (Many times!!)

Error: Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceDFP.Graphics.Runtime.RT_DeviceDFP::privateRefresh

I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del out of it to see the "HL2.exe has encountered a problem..."

Using the 9.11 drivers, (Though it's happened with 9.10 to.) and I was OC'd to 900/1300. I'll be testing default clocks today.
 
Little_4nic8er said:
I don't get a gray screen, but ever since I got my 5870, TF2 locks up on map changes. This is what appears in the event viewer right after. (Many times!!)

Error: Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceDFP.Graphics.Runtime.RT_DeviceDFP::privateRefresh

I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del out of it to see the "HL2.exe has encountered a problem..."

Using the 9.11 drivers, (Though it's happened with 9.10 to.) and I was OC'd to 900/1300. I'll be testing default clocks today.
Click to expand...

900/1300 is normally fine at stock voltage but you can try adding a bit to it.
 
Solved my crashing by lowering card clocks to slightly below stock. Heat didn't really change, so not sure what the problem is.
 
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