HD 4850 Rendering problems

[hotpurple]

Hi all,

I have just bought a HD 4850 to put into the following PC:

Gigabyte GA P35 D3SL Motherboard
Pentium Dual Core E2200 (don't ask, I was on a budget)
2 GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 C5
Seagate 7200.9 160gb hard drive
Antec P180 case
Vapochill micro heat sink
X-Fi Extreme Music
Samsung 22" 223BW Monitor
Hiper HPU-4M580 PSU
Some old LG DVD burner
Vista Ultimate x86

The problem I have is that I will be playing a game (e.g. Crysis or Bioshock) and the main rendering window will just go black, but the HUD stays there being rendered, but in black and white. When you quit out back to windows, the whole desktop is in black and white, apart from the window borders, which are flickering (Aero turned on).

I'm using the latest chipset drivers and the beta x-fi drivers. I've installed vista from a clean disk with Catalyst 8.7 drivers. Vista is fully up to date.

Interestingly, I installed some updates earlier which fixed a more serious problem, in that I couldn't play games at all because they would lock up and bomb back to the desktop with an error saying that the graphics driver had recovered (I can't remember the exact syntax). That seems to have been fixed now and replaced with this problem.

Has anyone got any idea what could be causing this and how to fix it?

Thanks guys.

Chris

[mrsobvious]

Sounds like overheating. You might want to reseat the cooler on your 4850 and apply some Arctic Cooling MX-2 or Arctic Silver thermal compound.

[hotpurple]

I have tried upping the fan speed using the xml profile fix, which has made the temps reported in overdrive much lower, at the expense of some extra noise. I have also tried running the PC with the side off, which yielded improvements in how long I can play for without a crash.

I may try reseating the cooler, just a bit worried about warranty issues.

Chris

[mrsobvious]

Apparently they're a doddle to remove. There are some pics at http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...-points-3dmark

I haven't heard of any having anti tamper seals so there's no way they'll know.

[hotpurple]

I've been experimenting. I have tried upping the fan speed to 80% (hoover speed ) and the system crashes more often. I have a sneaky suspicion that his may actually be power related, or a faulty card. The temperature at crash tends to be around 60 degrees C, which is lower than the idle temps using automatic settings, so I don't think that it is a heat related issue. As a precaution I have turned my fans up a notch (2 x 120mm Antec tricool as fitted to the P180 case), which gives me lower case temperatures for sure (although they weren't bad to begin with). I have also repositioned the gfx cooling duct on the case so that it vents cool air into the area directly opposite the fan on the 4850. Again, no improvement.

Today I got a different problem, the screen went black and the fan spun up to full speed. This appeared to be a full system crash and I couldn't get out of it. Today has also seen the return of the dreaded graphics card driver stopped responding and was successfully reset message.

This is driving me nuts, does anyone have any idea what could be causing it?

Chris

[hotpurple]

OK, another development.

I've installed 3DMark 06. When I try to run it, it gets through all the tests until the canyon scene (graphics test 3 IIRC), then crashes after a single frame, which says to me that there is a problem with rendering specific features, possibly HDR or SM3.0+. This would indicate to me that there is a driver problem here. I'm going to fire this at ATi now and see what they say.

Chris

[jonh17]

OK, another development.

I've installed 3DMark 06. When I try to run it, it gets through all the tests until the canyon scene (graphics test 3 IIRC), then crashes after a single frame, which says to me that there is a problem with rendering specific features, possibly HDR or SM3.0+. This would indicate to me that there is a driver problem here. I'm going to fire this at ATi now and see what they say.

Chris

Indeed so, if the problem still occurs and cant be solved you could always RMA it.

[cobhc]

Couldn't this still be a power issue, as doesn't HDR/SM3.0 rendering put more stress on the card, and thus draws more power?

[hotpurple]

Possibly I guess, but my PSU ran my 2900XT ok, so I would think it would be ok with the 4850. Maybe it is the motherboard PCI-E power suppy to the card?

Chris