HD 4850 stability problems - overheating?

[shaurz]

I've been having major problems with my new HD 4850 card (http://www.xpertvision.com/main/vgapro.php?id=167). This includes screen corruption, quickly followed by crashing the system. Sometimes the screen flashes black, but the system doesn't crash. I've uploaded some videos to illustrate the problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLA8QNUWWLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdT89J6NGhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLTOEkGZ2jU

I am running Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I am not doing any overclocking, everything is running at stock speeds. System spec is specified in my profile (Gigabyte EP45-DS3, Q9550, 8GB PC2-8500, HX620W).

Originally I thought it was a driver issue. I have tried the "4800 hotfix" drivers, Catalyst 8.8 and 8.6, all of which have the same problems. But now I think I might have faulty hardware.

I found that FurMark will run without crashing if I remove my case door. Hmm... Here's a screenshot of FurMark and GPU-Z running for 326 seconds:

http://i34.tinypic.com/ipa104.jpg

At this point there was actually a slight burning smell so I stopped the test. The MEMIO and SHADERCORE temperatures look worryingly high - 92 deg C!? Fan speed seems awfully low too.

Here are the idle temperatures: http://i33.tinypic.com/iwm3qw.jpg

I've run memtest86 and Windows Memory Diagnostic, which did not find any problems. My system has been rock solid in regular usage outside of 3D games / benchmarks.

[Koolpc]

Definitely looks like a heat problem. What about putting a hairdryer next to gpu on the 'cold' setting and blowing air towards gpu fan while in a game to see if that helps? Are there any after-market fans available for that card?

[Will404]

Hmm, yours does seem to be running very hot, I have one, and it runs about 10/15'C cooler under load. Also have half life 2, max graphics, on 1680*1050, and it runs for hours fine.

Is your fan borked, cos mine (with catalyst 8.6) runs on idle at about 1400RMP:



Under load, it increases but i dunno what to.

Sapphire card too.

[shaurz]

I found a review of the same card under the Palit brand (http://forum.palit.biz/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=196), the fan speed should be 1000 RPM at idle and 2000 RPM at load. If GPU-Z is reporting the correct speed, something is very wrong...

My motherboard has a feature called "Robust Graphics Booster", I wonder if this is causing the problem? There doesn't seem to be a way to disable it, the only options in the BIOS are "Auto", "Fast" and "Turbo" (I've tried Auto and Fast).

I've made a video of the flashing problem (in Portal): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWhOOdGCx9k
GPU temps seem reasonable (< 60 C)

[shaurz]

I've just installed Arch Linux with ATI's binary driver (fglrx 8.8), and the same screen corruption / system crash problem appears when running glxgears in full screen. So it is not a Vista/Windows problem.

[Will404]

faulty batch????

[eden188]

shaurz,

I've had a lot of problem previously with my 3850 and Vista 64 (4Gb RAM), I was getting random screen crashes, especially when graphic/videos were involved. It took me ages to find out the solution to the problem. You may want to try out the following solution and see if it fixes your problem.

i. Click on the Start (or whatever) button in Vista at bottom left.
ii. In the Search textbox, type in System Configuration.
iii. A configuration screen should pop up, select the 2nd tab (Boot).
iv. Tick both boxes for No. of processors and Memory, select 4 in the processors dropdown box and leave 0 in the memory.

Click OK, this should ask you to reboot. Reboot and see if it makes any difference. You can always untick these settings if it makes no difference to you.

Hope this helps.

[dfour]

For a solution to the fan speed problem is to download the beta version of ATItools which fully supports the 4800 series and allows full fan speed adjustment

http://cid-a50350ea7a969f0c.skydrive...c/attsetup.exe

I know this is marked beta but it has been as stable as a rock for me with no problems and helped my 4850 temps no end. It barely goes over 55 on load now.

[Mithrandir]

I suspect its a heat problem as mentioned earlier. Check fans are working when you load up a 3D app.

You could also try ATI tray tools to use the monitoring graphs and the fan adjustments.

[shaurz]

I have tried ATI Tray Tools but I get this error message:



I have installed under an admin account. I've also tried running "Low Level Driver Installation" which says it's already installed.

[this_is_gav]

If you're getting graphical corruption it's likely nothing to do with heat, but more likely faulty GDDR modules on the board. RMA time I guess.

[shaurz]

Bad news. I managed to set the fan speed to maximum (2700 RPM) in Windows XP. It still crashes even with low temps (40 C).

[this_is_gav]

So as suggested, not heat then?

[NovaSphere]

Seems your card is just faulty... Any chance you can send it back and request new one?

[shaurz]

I've submitted an RMA request. Cheers everyone.

[wei]

there're some modded bios which can fix fan problem. try google