ATI 6970 crashes with full fan speed on L4D2...

K

kam03

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 8, 2006
Messages
102
When i play L4D2 for a while i get this weird problem where my screen would suddenly turn black and the graphics card fan enters full speed and i'm resorted to pressing the restart button to restart my pc.

I never had this problem with my 5870.


Any ideas?


Thanks
 
If you haven't already, uninstalling drivers and performing a driver sweep in safe mode solves many problems. My guess is that 6970's fan defaults to full speed when there is no signal from the MB, so it's a symptom rather than cause
 
Last edited:
Update: I just tested it on black ops and i get the same issue with the screen going black and the graphics card fan going full speed. It must be my graphics card thats faulty or driver issue?
 
Probably a driver issue. Time to manually go into registry and nuke out all AMD/ATI driver files and delete any other folder that has AMD/ATI files. Then run driver sweeper, ccc and any other driver cleaner utility you like to use.

I have had problems like this in the past and only when i did a full manual clean install was I able to play the game and have nice improvements on overall FPS and 3d quality.


I wouldn't send back the HD6970 till you do a full clean install of drivers.
 
ok time for a clean uninstall. ill report back once i've tested it.
 
Actually, I would do a full OS / Driver re-install if you continue to have issues with your card. I get my MSI 6970 Monday. Believe when I say this has cured my 5870 woes. From chipset to directx to the actual video driver, when you have all day tied into a video card and then you swap video cards? Yeah, it's not pretty sometimes.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Actually, I would do a full OS / Driver re-install if you continue to have issues with your card. I get my MSI 6970 Monday. Believe when I say this has cured my 5870 woes. From chipset to directx to the actual video driver.
Click to expand...

It really depends on how much he has on his computer. It takes me about 2 hours to reinstall everything I have, but I'm minimalistic when it comes to programs and games installed. Most people would not want to go this far. Hopefully, he'll just come back to say the driver sweep worked.\



Oh yes, please post your power supply brand and model if there are still issues, even though the peak watt increase is very small.
 
I removed the drivers and cleared out all the left over files in safe mode followed by installing the drivers again. I then ran furmark for 1 hour and the system did not crash.

Furmark results:

Room temp 25c
Average GPU temp 92c
Run time: 1 hour

Now to test with games...

My System Spec:

Videocard: AMD 6970
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.60 GHz
Mainboard: Gigabyte X38 DQ6
Memory: 4GB DDR II 800mhz OCZ CL4
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty CS but using 6970's HDMI for audio.
PSU: Enermax Galaxy 1000W DXX
 
I had that problem with a 5970 I had before. Turned out to be a bad driver i.e. 10.6/7/8 never worked. Screen will black out the same way.
Several hard resets was needed in order to get the driver to reset.
You have to find the one that's most stable.

OS reinstalls are too extreme for video card problems. I reserve that for virus infections only.
I'll sell the AMD card before I'll reinstall my OS.
 
Last edited:
Just played black ops and the same problem after 15-20 mins of game play. Screen went black and the fan went full speed.

I dont understand what the problem could be, it was stable under furmark for an hour but when i play games it crashes within 30 mins. I used driver sweeper and XDC - The Driver Cleaner to remove all the left over files in safe mode so i dont know what else to do.

A clean windows 7 installation is not an option for me.
 
If it is having problems after working for 15-20 minutes, it may be a memory or CPU instability that only raised its head now.

I would try running prime95 for 30 minutes to see if it is stable, and if it is, trying prime 95 + furmark. If it is a weak PSU problem, the combined load should crash your PC quickly. This narrows down the cause of your problem step by step.

Still, it's hard to recommend this since failing PSUs can damage your system.
 
I too am thinking it's not actually a GPU problem. Like Nightbird says, memory or CPU could easily be the culprit.

I'd try simply dropping that overclock on your CPU( and memory, if that's OC'ed) and try gaming again.
 
Last edited:
I would try what stalker says if you can.

It sounds like a hardware problem, you just have to find out which pieceof hardware. It sounds like CPU or memory as COD black ops seems to be very CPU intensive.
 
Reset all your hardware to factory settings, and test again. I'm with everyone else here...doesn't sound like a graphics card issue at all. Probably overclock related. Even though it was stable before, you just added some new hardware. Perhaps its time to redo all your CPU and memory overclocks?
 
I set the power control setting to -20% so thats basically underclocking the graphics card.

36279782.jpg


I fired up a game and i managed to play longer then normal thinking it has fixed my problem but it was inevitable, the black screen appeared but this time the fan speed was not so loud, it was around 40% i would say compared to the 80-100 sound i hear when the power control settings is at default level.

This could all mean one thing right? faulty card?
 
You can also put your old 5870 into it and fire it up. See if it still crashes. If it does, then you know RMA won't help you, otherwise, RMA it.
 
Set your CPU and memory speed to defaults, then test again. If it doesn't crash...you have your answer. It might just be time to re-tweak all your hardware. 3.6Ghz is a pretty healthy overclock for a Q6600, and chips can and do degrade as they age. It might just be showing its age a bit.
 
Have you tried running the OCCT graphics card tests - specifically the memory test? With it only happening in games and not in Furmark, maybe there is some faulty RAM on the video card.
 
When I do an OS re-install on my current system, AMD hex @ 4.1Ghz, 8gig ram, 120gig force 120, it takes me about 20 mins to start from boot to format to install to desktop to drivers and apps. Very quick.

Hope this guy gets his issues fixed. I would be pissed off on a new 6970 and problems like this.

I am doing a HD video unboxing of my MSI 6970 Monday if I don't get lazy.
 
Unless AMD drivers have suddenly become utter garbage, there's no way that a system can run a 5870 fine and then suddenly fall on its ass running a 6970. Something is clearly wrong with the card.
 
I disagree, especially since the 6970 drivers are far from perfect. Its completely reasonable that instability within the system would pop up with the addition of the new card, especially if the overclock is already borderline. Also, the 6970 does draw a bit more power...that increased current draw might just have been enough to let the aforementioned instability rear its ugly head.

It could very well be a bad card. However, when you're dealing with overclocked systems, especially overclocks that are rather high (3.6Ghz is near the upper end for a Q6600), then its a reasonable to at least check the other components.It takes a few minutes to load up the bios and restore everything to defaults. Crank open a game, and see what happens. If it locks up...you have your answer. If it doesn't, then it might be time to take another crack at the bios settings.
 
Hmm if your able to run furmark for extended time without crashing it leads me to believe it's not a hardware problem. What are the full specs of your system? Try updating your motherboard bios, checking all the bios settings, updating your motherboard chipset drivers to the newest set, remove any 3rd party vga applications like afterburner, precision, etc.. Older versions of those programs can cause issues with newer videocards. If you have a spare hard drive, do a clean install of the OS and try gaming after a clean install with all the updated drivers and windows updates.
 
Last edited:
When moving from my 5870 to 6870 I had similar issues. I believe the drivers/afterburner was detecting using the 5870 voltage settings. I removed both programs and re-installed and all was fine.

My GPU spiked to 110c within a minute of being in a game of BlackOps. All is well now. Idling around 35c and loading at no higher than 75c.
 
Using afterburner you can ramp up the fan profile so it doesn't reach 90C.
 
Ok i think i found out what caused the problem. With the ati 5870 my system was set to 400 fsb x 9 multiplier with 1:1 ram ratio so i got 800mhz on ram which is the default ram speed. I ran prime95 for a few hours and it was stable with the 5870.

Now with AMD 6970 prime95 makes thread number 4 fail every 20-30 mins, which i assume what caused the system to crash with black screen every 20-30 mins when i play games. Now i have lowered the fsb to 380x9 so im on 3.42 ghz instead of 3.6 with 760 mhz on ram and i also decreased the cpu voltage 1 notch.

With the settings above i have prime95 stable for 9 hours now and still running so im assuming the new settings are stable now with this new gpu. I dont understand why the 5870 allows my system to run on a higher fsb compared to 6970? maybe the 6970 draws more power from the pci-e slot causing some sort of problem or something? i have no idea how they work.

I will let prime95 run for another hour then start testing it with a few games. I'll report back with results.
 
Since you crash fastest when loading both gpu and cpu together, and it prolly isn't bad power that suggests northbridge. Could your NB be undervoltaged for the faster vid card's greater demand or even overheating for the same reason. Try intel burn test standard on 3 cores and furmark at the same time, if you can pass that for 10mins you're set, if not drop OC(s) and repeat (or increase voltages assuming you're not overheating or having psu issues).

Could also be new card + old mobo = :(
 
kam03 said:
Ok i think i found out what caused the problem. With the ati 5870 my system was set to 400 fsb x 9 multiplier with 1:1 ram ratio so i got 800mhz on ram which is the default ram speed. I ran prime95 for a few hours and it was stable with the 5870.

Now with AMD 6970 prime95 makes thread number 4 fail every 20-30 mins, which i assume what caused the system to crash with black screen every 20-30 mins when i play games. Now i have lowered the fsb to 380x9 so im on 3.42 ghz instead of 3.6 with 760 mhz on ram and i also decreased the cpu voltage 1 notch.

With the settings above i have prime95 stable for 9 hours now and still running so im assuming the new settings are stable now with this new gpu. I dont understand why the 5870 allows my system to run on a higher fsb compared to 6970? maybe the 6970 draws more power from the pci-e slot causing some sort of problem or something? i have no idea how they work.

I will let prime95 run for another hour then start testing it with a few games. I'll report back with results.
Click to expand...

Hope this sorts the issue. It's good idea when troubleshooting to remove all overclocks and have everything run at stock. The new 6970 just stresses the whole system more than the 5870, so that could explain why you could run higher overclocks with the 5870.
 
another thing you could try is increasing your NB voltage if you want to get your ram back to ddr2 800. the problem is most likely due to the way the 6970 puts load on the system by sharing files with your ram that is causing the instability. so the NB would be the biggest culprit causing the problem. other thing you could try is increasing the voltage on the cpu just another idea i figured i'd throw out there.

i've had the same thing happen to me which switching card generations. 1 overclock was stable with an 8800GT switched to gtx 260 overclock was no longer stable. switched back to an 8800GS recently and what do ya know that overclock wasnt stable but went back to my original overclock with the 8800GT and it was stable again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top