5970 Freezing

P

PrincessFrosty

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
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I got my 5970 a week or so after launch and it was running fine, I overvolted and overclocked to 5870 speeds (850/1200) with absolutely zero issue with the beta drivers available at the time.

About a week ago I moved to the 9.12 beta and kept the same settings, then at the LAN party we're having at the moment I've been experiencing grey screens crashes once or twice and lock ups where the screen freezes and nothing responds, I've not had this issue before. I moved to the 9.12 WHQL drivers and it's not helped, I occasionally get them after a few hours of gaming even with stock clocks and volts.

I'm about to move back to the launch drivers and see if that improves things, but does anyone else have this problem? If so any idea if it's just driver revisions or what?

Im running Win7 x64, all windows updates, nothing special runnign in the background, no viruses or spyware etc.
 
Yeah I tried the 9.12 drivers a bunch of times.Even with reformats of win7 64.They are just bad drivers.OC is bad on them too.
They cause the crashes,driver stop responding all that stuff.Weird artifacts in games Like crysis and such after playing for a bit.
I even flashed my SAPPHIRE cards to Asus cards and used smart doctor to no avail the drivers are not very good at all,and are causing problems with all 5xxx cards.
 
My 5970 seems to run smoother and faster but crashes every few hours with the 9.12 hotfix. The original beta 5 drivers ran crappy but I never crashed with them.
 
Personally, the WHQL 9.12 drivers work perfectly here. Haven't bothered with the hotfix ones. As for the grey screen crashes I encountered a couple when on the Beta 5 drivers, but it might've been unrelated to the driver set as I tweaked my CPU OC after that.
 
I have the same issues as you guys, but what I found is that I have to o/c the card for it to run better. If I run L4D2 for about 30 mins. at default, it ends up crashing. Run it a little o/c'ed, and there is no issues. I'm hoping 10.1 drivers will be better.

I never had any issues with the beta 5 drivers, but it also only didn't have xfire enabled for most games, which is pointless.
 
This is beginning to become a real pain in the ass to me. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes I can play for a few hours before it freezes with looping sound. I hope it's just a driver issue.
 
so how the hell are we supposed to test this monster for stability? I really'd like to know how to make sure I don't need to RMA my 5970
 
TehQuick said:
so how the hell are we supposed to test this monster for stability? I really'd like to know how to make sure I don't need to RMA my 5970
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If you want stable, buy Nvidia's re-badged two-year-old tech. Easy to make perfect drivers when the hardware's been around a while...
 
Tolyngee said:
If you want stable, buy Nvidia's re-badged two-year-old tech. Easy to make perfect drivers when the hardware's been around a while...
Click to expand...

If you want to be a smartmouth, why don't you suggest a console then? I need a real answer, not some BS response.
 
TehQuick said:
so how the hell are we supposed to test this monster for stability? I really'd like to know how to make sure I don't need to RMA my 5970
Click to expand...

At this moment its kinda hard to stability when we are still getting beta drivers for this card. It happened when the 4870X2 came out, immature drivers for a few months after launch.
Most cards that probably need an RMA would be if there is artifacts (i.e. Red dots) during post, boot screen, desktop (although if you o/c with eyefinity you will get flicker so that doesn't count), and during gaming.
Freezing or crashes usually indicate driver or power supply issue.

I wouldn't be worried about an RMA since the minimum warranty on the 5970 is one year anyway. I'm sure most driver bugs would be looked after before your warranty runs out.
 
Will I am using the 9.12 hotfix and no issues at all at default thank god :rolleyes: I am having a little issue when running it at stock 5870 speeds after about 3 hrs or so it locks up but a restart and good to go...I think it needs a bit more volts.

But running default its FINE.
 
Yeah well I ran with the new hotfix drivers for a while, more or less since they were released without issue but now getting lots of crashes/freezes

i've moved back to the drivers I used on release, these ones:

8.663.1_Beta5_Hemlock_VistaWin7_Nov11

Problems have gone away now, running overclocked again without problem as well.
 
I have had the same experience as PrincessFrosty. The 9.12 hotfix seemed to run fine for more than a week and now my games freeze after prolonged play. It is not overclocked. It seems to be getting worse. I might try to roll back drivers also. :mad:
 
TehQuick said:
If you want to be a smartmouth, why don't you suggest a console then? I need a real answer, not some BS response.
Click to expand...

I've had problems ever since my 4870x2. The problem was caused by using ATI overdrive to enable manual fan control, but took 'til I bought my 5870 to come to that realization, as the issue became worse with the 5970, and happened immediately the moment CCC loaded and adjusted the fan speed. And all of the searching of forums the past half-year never found this as a potential cause of all of my problems. (sometimes my machine would last three weeks without a BSOD, sometimes it couldn't last 10 minutes... With the 5870 installed, it wouldn't last 10 seconds, though... turn of ATI overdrive, instantaneous fix... And I wasn't overclocking, just using it to manually adjust the fan...)

So, I'm aware of an ATI issue that a year later hasn't been fixed. (Using MSI afterburner to manually adjust my fan speed doesn't cause any issues...)

Didn't have this issue with Nvidia hardware, either.

My point stands: to get 100% stability, you apparently can't be on the bleeding edge of tech. You can't be certain where the problem lies. And sometimes it's hard to find others with the same problem.
 
Well, I feel a little stupid but I think I've fixed my problem. I turned manual fan control up to 50% and I have not had one freeze or crash all day. I guess the damn thing was overheating even on default clocks. Now it may not take 50% fan speed to get it stable while gaming, but that is what I ran it at all day. I will report back if I crash. Oh, and I'm still running 9.12 hotfix. I guess they just heat the card up more than the beta 5 did.
 
GreenGoose said:
Well, I feel a little stupid but I think I've fixed my problem. I turned manual fan control up to 50% and I have not had one freeze or crash all day. I guess the damn thing was overheating even on default clocks. Now it may not take 50% fan speed to get it stable while gaming, but that is what I ran it at all day. I will report back if I crash. Oh, and I'm still running 9.12 hotfix. I guess they just heat the card up more than the beta 5 did.
Click to expand...

Weird, auto should crank up the fan sufficiently when needed. I have mine set to manual too though since I overclock. I did get an FPS boost in nearly all games with the 9.12 drivers so it's possible they are stressing the card more.
 
x3sphere said:
Weird, auto should crank up the fan sufficiently when needed. I have mine set to manual too though since I overclock. I did get an FPS boost in nearly all games with the 9.12 drivers so it's possible they are stressing the card more.
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That's what I thought, so I never messed with it. I never had to adjust my fan control on my 4870x2 or any other video card at stock speeds.
 
I've been running the 9.12 hotfix since they came out without issue on my xfx 5870. Running @ 900/1200 since it's birth. Haven't bothered trying to oc higher as no game I play needs it. Running Vista 64 SP1. Specs in sig.
 
reduce the clock speeds and see if that helps, I had a xfx 5870 xxx do the same thing at their factory oc, I reduced speeds, problem went away. I had to go below stock clocks to be stable, so I rma'ed the card. If you dont want to rma just yet, use msi afterburner, and bump the volts a bit.
 
i had those same problems on my 5970 with 9.12 hotfix drivers and went to reg 9.12 and its been fine ever since
 
Still on the release drivers and had no issues now since I last posted in the thread but just a minute ago had random screen going black for 2 seconds then coming back on, then again after that about 20 seconds later..cable isn't lose and the monitor still had a signal as the power light stayed blue...strange, anyone else had this?
 
GreenGoose said:
Well, I feel a little stupid but I think I've fixed my problem. I turned manual fan control up to 50% and I have not had one freeze or crash all day. I guess the damn thing was overheating even on default clocks. Now it may not take 50% fan speed to get it stable while gaming, but that is what I ran it at all day. I will report back if I crash. Oh, and I'm still running 9.12 hotfix. I guess they just heat the card up more than the beta 5 did.
Click to expand...

People have reported solving the issue, and running the computer fine for a week, and then they still get this grey screen crash. I would doubt it's hardware related.
 
The 9.12 and 9.12 hotfix were quite buggy for me. They wouldn't even install properly until I put them on a fresh install of windows 7. It works for me now but it's not perfect. Hopeing that the 10.1s will be a real improvement. Still have problems with flickering on secondary monitors in 2d mode and some occasional lockups that require reboots. Running dual 5970s and the graphical horsepower is obscene overkill so far. Don't even have to overclock them. They overclock fine to 850/1200 but the additional noise and heat doesn't seem worth it when you're already running at 100+ and 200+ fps on most games. When drivers get less buggy I'll try overclocking them again and seeing how far I can push 4 cores. Is 1ghz core on all 4 possible?
 
PS3 said:
People have reported solving the issue, and running the computer fine for a week, and then they still get this grey screen crash. I would doubt it's hardware related.
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It's been four days and I've had zero crashes with the fan speed at 50% while gaming. I have never had a gray screen crash on my machine.
 
Do you have good airflow in youe case? Also, there is alot of talk on the net about Afterburner not inputing the good voltages, and causing those crashes.

My watercooled 5970 is rock-solid, gaming over 12 hours a day in the last 6 days, and didn't got a single freeze/lock-up/BSOD or any other problems.

My only ''problem'' was in 2D, and only at start-up when getting to my desktop, but since I made a 2D profile with higher idle clock speed (400/900 instead of 137/300), I didin't have any problems since then.

Rock-solid 5970 here. :) 9.12 hotfix installed over 9.12.
 
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