4870 black screen high fan RPM problem - anyone else had this?

[CrazyMonkey]

Btw posting - My Sapphire 4870 is perfectly fine on Vista 32bit + 64bit + XP 32bit..

[saurus]

CaptLemming, i ran my NB voltage at all the different levels from the min to max incrementally but nothing solved the crashing. I also tried my RAM voltage from the Patriot recommended (1.5v) up to 1.76v and played alot with the timings, including alot of tries with the SPD of the Patriot ram which is 9-9-9-24.

im using : 2 x 1Gb Patriot DDR3 1333Mhz 9-9-9-24 (PDC32G1333ELK)

but guys I solved my problem!

I took out 1 ram module and !bam! no lock ups for 24 hours. However Vista 64 runs like a dog on 1gb.

So I took my Patriot ram back to the dealer yesterday and swapped it out for 2x 2Gb (4gb) Corsair TW3X4G1333C9DHX - the 1gb sticks are on the QVL list so I took a chance and went for the 4gb set for $200, set everything to auto in the bios and so far no crashes after 24 hours, ill keep my fingers crossed but it's looking good, so try swapping out your ram first thing if you are getting random Blue screens or lockups.

edit: sorry i installed my new RAM and left all bios settings to auto except:
NB voltage 0.02 above normal (1 tick above normal)
DDR3 voltage to 1.7v as required by my ram modules.

[Xoni]

Hmmm - I don't think that'll stop all BSODS or black screens with the 4870.

I had to test my RAM recently when my P5K-E went down and they were all 100%.

I've been using 4x1GB OCZ Reaper HPC at 1066MHz standard with Vista HP64 and had two BSODs in the last two days, caused directly by atikadmg.sys. I don't get black screens any more, though, and I've reverted to 8.501.

They don't happen any more when exiting rFactor - one was spontaneous on the desktop and the other was immediately after booting into the o/s - but every time safely recovered by Vista - it's a cracking o/s imo.

[J3llyf1sh]

ive got my 4870 to work perfectly with 2gb ram but when i put in another 2gb i get bsods

i think it may be my mobo

btw both sets of memory work fine

[dannybgoode]

Hi all

Just to add to the pot - I am running a completely different set up to most here and I am also experiencing this black screen problem.

I've got an MSI K9A2 board with a Phenom 9950BE with Vista 64 bit, 4gb of OCZ Reaper and HIS 4870. I'm fairly convinced it must be some sort of driver conflict or O/s issue. Could there be a bug in Catalyst that causes memory issues, as really you shouldn't have to go poking in the bios to ply with memory timings etc to get a card to work.

The reason for my thinking is that this is a completely new build and the card worked fine when installing windows, loading on all the drivers etc. Once this was done I restarted the system and it died. Firing up the system in safe mode and the system boots to desktop no problem. The only thing on my hard drive is Vista and Catalyst (with hotfix) so there can't be any other conflicts.

I do have a second 4870 that I'm going to bung in as Crossfire so I'm going to try that first. If that doesn't work then I may reinstall Windows and Catalyst without the hotfix 'cos as mentioned above its frankly ridiculous if bios settings need to be played with.

Has thi been fed back to ATI does anyone know?

Thanks all

Danny B

[dannybgoode]

Just a quick update for you. I tried the other card and same issue. I've now reinstalled Vista and when installing Catalyst I only installed the video driver and the north bridge thing and not the control panel or anything else. Also haven't installed the hotfix.

All seems to be working fine now so just a case of installing the other bits until I get the failure. My suspicion is on the control centre.

Thanks

Danny b

[kirth]

Any solutions for this problem?
Got exactly the same hardware as the thread opener (websemantic) and I have the same issue as most of all: black screen (plus randomly BSODs). Tried almost everything suggested on several boards: nothing has worked till now.

[dannybgoode]

Kirth

As per my posts above - my suspicion is that some aspect of Catalyst is causing a conflict. Using the advanced install option on Catalyst I have only installed the ATI driver and the north bridge thing and it all works absolutely fine.

I didn't install the control panel or the Hydra thingamawatsit. The issue you have is how to uninstall Catalyst 'cos if you boot in safe mode whilst your system will work fine it will not let you uninstall Catalyst 'cos the catalyst install manager needs to be running so you may need to start this manually.

Let me know how you get on...

Danny B

[websemantic]

Hello all, finally got time to fiddle with this again and I have now had a stable system for a day (previous best was a few hours).

I'm afraid I didn't have time to methodically make a change then run for ages to see if it crashed (Black screen/BSOD) so I had to make several changes at a time. As such, I can't say specifically what fixed things.

However, I'll list the changes I made below in the order I would guess is the most likely fix. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, I'm sure someone hit the nail on the head and I just took a while to implement it.

Changes:
1 - RAM. I removed one stick of RAM and changed the slot from black to orange. Still got a BSOD so tried the other stick of RAM, no probs so far. Both sticks tested fine with Memtest86+). I now have an expensive spare DDR3!
2 - Increased North Bridge voltage to 1.2
3 - Installed latest Catalyst drivers
4 - Installed latest BIOS
5 - Ran CHKDSK /F on both drives
6 - Removed AVG anti-virus and replaced with AVAST
7 - Disabled Express gate
8 - Disabled Sleep/turn off display in control panel > power settings
9 - Disabled WinHTTP web proxy
10 - Removed Windows.old folder from failed attempts to install Vista

If you are not sure how to implement any of these steps, there is plenty of info on Google.

I hope that is a help to someone.
Cheers,
websemantic

[kirth]

That's great!
Gonna try immediately.
Just a quick question: what about dram frequency, dram voltage and cpu voltage? Auto or manual (1333mhz, 1.70, 1.20?)
Thanks a lot

[websemantic]

Manual and exactly what you stated kirth. Good luck!

[Carlh]

My 4850 card started having the same issues over the weekend.

Updating to the newer Catalyst drivers yesterday seem to make the problem worse, luckily I have got a replacement today so the new card should be ok all being well.

If not I shall try the steps above

[websemantic]

Hi Carlh, I'd be interested to hear how you get on. Good luck!

[kirth]

Seems not to work for me...green stripes and black screen still there...
I don't want to give up....

[joz12345]

ive had this problem with my 4850 while overclocking my CPU, (obvious cause) My screen used to go black and the fan went to 100%, and a red light went on. That was scary, until i realised a red light went on during post. This started happening after i had returned it to stock settings, and then i thought it had to be the graphics card, but i tried a system restore, and all was back to normal. It turns out i was half way through a windows defender windows update when my PC crashed, corrupting it, and making my PC crash on boot.

Conclusion: it turns out the 4800 series fan goes to 100% whenever windows cant get a BSOD in, my problem wasnt GFX card related at all

[superlip]

Hi Guys, I'm having the same issue! Black screen with crazy fan speed. Here is my case:

My Sapphire 4870 has been runing well for 4 weeks.
A couple of days ago I flashed it with the ASUS OC bios, then tested it with a few games (Gears of war PC, crysis..), all running smoothly.

This morning, the black screen starts to show. I scared ****less and flash the card back to it's original BIOS. Now it's back to normal.