4870 Graphical Problems

Today I received my brand new Saphire Radeon HD4870 1GB card (How exciting!) but after uninstalling my old graphics drivers and replacing it with this card I had a bunch of strange problems.

I had blue artifacts whenever I would move something (Window, mouse, &c.). Also, I had blue lines running down the monitor. Also whenever I tried to mess around in the CCC my display would suddenly stop working, the same thing happened when I tried to change the resolution through Windows.

"Okay." I thought, "It must be a corrupt install" so I unistalled the drivers, restarted, reinstalled, and the same problem manifested again.

If anyone could possibly help me out, I'm afraid it may be a dead card.. but I hold on for any hope!

Thank you,
Jason Kupersmith

 

Go to Ati site and download only the driver not with CCC.Post what you have done.
If doesn't work download the older version of drivers.
Good Luck!!

 

I tried this and somewhere along the way got the card to work (after swapping it with other video card about 8 times, something to say about persistence?) thank you for the advise!

 

Good to hear that the card is OK.:major

 

Well about a day after our "solution" the card started acting up again. I figured it was a DOA card so I sent it back for an RMA. I received the new card today and the problem has resurfaced! I tried the different sorts of driver installs, with and without CCC and I have a few theories on why this may be happening. any insight would be fantastic

1.) My MB is a 680i SLI, and I believe it may have a PCI-E v1 slot. I know that there aren't supposed to be any problems but maybe there is a problem I'm unaware of?
2.) My power supply may not be delivering the correct power to the card (It's an 800 watt though, so it should be fine, but you never know)

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated

 

If you have a spare hard drive, install a fresh install of windows on it using your computer
and see how the Video Card works then. If the problem disappears, then you know the problem was your software. If the problem persists, you know your problem is hardware.

 

The problem actually happens during BIOS and booting up, not just within the OS. This is why I think it may be a problem with my hardware... Hopefully I'll be upgrading along with the upcoming Core i7's.. Maybe I'll just wait for a new mobo and buy the card again then.

 

I have had awful problems with my new Sapphire 4870 1GB card too, I have spent hours of my life looking for a solution

There are lots of people with this issue, hence there are lots of theories & solutions for the problem. All the issues I have tryied have failed though, the best solution was to replace the BIOS on the card itself. But thats only for the 512MB ver of the card which is obviously no use to 1GB ver owners :confused

Do a search on google for:

"4870 overheating"

&

"4870 black screen"

You get alot of forums talking about it.

I have yet to find a solution for my problem, I think I have gone through everything I canon my own :cry

These are the steps I have taken (to avoid repatition lol):

*At first I though the card was overheating, so I got a program to alter the fan speed, as the ATI CCC shows me that the card uses the fan very little, e.g 70C card temp, fan speed 46%. Using the program RivaTuner I turned the fan up bit by bit I got to 100% fan speed all the time. So that rules out heat I guess.

*Secondly I stumbled upon a solution that used two programs called, Winflash to wipe the GPU BIOS and a new ver of the BIOS called "ATI Crash fix", (from Sapphire) to fix any issues. It looked as it was gonna work then it turns out the crash fix is for the 512MB ver only, so thats useless for me.

*Thirdly I found a post on the AMD website, well take a look...http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=100973 this has a couple of solutions as you can see. It actually seemed to have both solutions I had already tried but more in-depth.

I think i'm just repeating myself now, basically I really need help with this card. This is all I know of the problem:


Possible causes:

*It was working fine using my old AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ 3.0GHz AM2, then I get an AMD Phenom 9750 2.4GHz AM2+ QUAD CORE.

*My mobo, I saw on one forum people with ASUS mobo's are having this problem. They are not using my board (ASUS M3A) but still similar.

*My PSU is getting very hot all of a sudden when the card goes funny, it's a ColourSit 600W 12cm Gold. I was thinking maybe it is having trouble providing power.

Syimtoms:

* Screen goes black.

*System stops responding, (not even Ctrl, Alt & Delete works)

*The fan on the GPU itself goes to full RPM, louder than any other fan in the case. It's actually louder than 100% that I have had it set to.

*Looping sound halfa second looped.

This all happens when I play games, sooner or later (depending on the game).

I really can't think of anything else to put except my spec:

OS: XP Home SP3
CPU:AMD Phenom 9750 QUAD CORE 2.4GHz
GPU: Sapphire 4870 1024MB GDDR5
PSU: ColourSit Gold 12cm fan 600W
RAM: x2 1GB 667MHZ DDR2 (Soon to be x2 1GB 1066MHz DDR2 Kingston Hyper)
HDD: x1 Samsung 320GB SATA2 7200RPM
x1 Samsung 160GB SATA2 7200RPM
Mobo: ASUS M3A, HT3, PCI-E 2.0, AMD 770 + SB600
Audio: Realtek HD onboard
Case: Jeantech Nitro
CD: x1 Samsung DVD RW SATA
x1 Samsung DVD ROM IDE

All driver up to date as far as I know.

Any helpwould be greatly apreciated :-D

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

Forgot to mention this problem only happens when playing games, never sure when it's gonna happen though.

 

To be honest you problem is complexing, I've never heard of that brand power supply though it does seem like you could be experiencing either PSU or Motherboard problems (You mentioned that others with the board are experiencing problems?) I don't think your PSU is having trouble supplying power though, for what you have it should supply plenty enough. One thing to check though is to see how much power it puts out on the rails, they may not be up to par for handling that sort of GPU.

I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more.

P.S. I realized i never said that after receiving my new i7 build and getting a new (different model) sapphire card that everything is running smoothly with Windows 7. Thanks to everyone who tried to help!

 

Unfortunately I lost my job today so that £58 PSU I was suggested in another post is all I can afford to try atm

This is it...http://www.falconcomputers.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=2049

I'm sure the rails on this one will be much better for my new GPU, if it's not my PSU then it's either my new CPU (doubtful) as it just unlocked the power that my old 3GHz dualcore was bottlenecking (spelling :confused), or it's my mobo. If it is my mobo that will just have to wait till I get a new job to pay for it.

After that it's gonna have to go back to either the shop (computerorbit), google it and you'll find the site, or Sapphire themselves.

What do you guys think?

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

P.S: I didn't know windows 7 was out yet :confused Where can you get it? Does it work with games at all?

 

I'm sorry to admit that I'm at a loss.. I'm not too good at this troubleshooting thing online (Hence why I don't go around the forums as much as I should) Maybe you could try posting a new thread about your problem? I'm sure someone here could help you much better then I could.

P.S. Windows 7 comes out.. Today actually! http://www.microsoft.com/windows7 The public release launches supposedly in the afternoon. So far it's awesome and I have had zero problems with any games that already worked in Vista, performance is top notch!

Good luck!!

 

I have solved my issue with the Sappire HD4870 1GB, power.

I got a new PSU it's the CoolerMaster extreme power Duo 650W, now thats only 50W more than my COLOURSit 600W PSU, but it weighs alot more. The heavyer the PSU the better it is :-D.

That has solved my issue, what PSU do you have?

:major2-Bit-Geek:major