ATI 4670 on an i7-950: still occasionally dying

[DanOln]

I've just built an i7-950 system, with an ATI sapphire 4670, which runs off PCI-e power. It's occasionally crashing during gameplay: grey screen of death. No VPU recover either on windows 7, so it requires a complete restart.

I was using that card on an ancient pentium 4 before: it crashed a lot, until I underclocked it from 750mhz to 700. Then it worked fine. But that was on a crappy dell board, PCI-e 1.0. Now my new machine in running on a Coolermaster GX550 watt "80 plus" PSU, with a Gigabyte UD3R mobo. There should be no problem with power or the mobo.

I'm loath to even try underclocking: I should be able to overclock on this system.

Any ideas on what might be causing it? It's not something daft like my choice of particular PCI-e slot, is it?

[Phage]

The GOD is quite rare on the 4xxx series. Are you sure that's the problem ?
If so, it relates to the frequency on the VRAM and can only be cured either by a new BIOS, or RMA. It doesn't have anything to do with your new build.

[DanOln]

Not sure if it's the problem. Symptoms are just the same as they were on the old XP machine, minus the VPU recover. Gameplay freezes, short pause of maybe 3 to 5 seconds, followed by blank screen, which I think was grey last time. Audio loops, no response. On restart windows complains about a system crash and checks I want to start normally.

Note last person on this list:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1323760

I'm trying what they've tried, a 5mhz underclock. Would like not to have to!

[Phage]

Sounds like it. From my experiences on this issue it's either underclock or flash to a new BIOS. You can see my adventures here. Lukily they have been completely fixed by the BIOS, and I haven't a single GSOD since.

http://forums.hexus.net/graphics-car...sod-issue.html
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-net/18...ml#post1886524
Grey Screen of Death
Grey stripe crash

[DanOln]

Cheers for that; reading your threads, BIOS flashing sounds a little worrying! I have no other GPU and the mobo has no integrated graphics, and I need the puter for work - so I think I'll stick to underclocking for now. Good to know it worked though.

[Phage]

Actually simpler than it sounds. XFX sent me a Powerpoint step-by-step-how-to, that was very easy and took about 10 mins.
Happy to email you the instructions if you want. You'll just need to source a new BIOS.

If it were me, on such an old card, I'd do what you are doing. Then keep my eyes peeled on the 'For Sale' section here for a suitable replacement. (I'll probably have a pair of 5870s for sale sometime next year. The one I fixed - which will be cheap, but still under warranty and my new one.)