ATI Grey Screen of Death question

[Phage]

That's idling. When under strain, the frequency will be advanced to the 600/900Mhz.
Give it a hard spin in Crysis oir similar and see if you can make it crash.

EDIT: I assume you have made sure that heat is not an issue ?

[Grey M@a]

That's idling. When under strain, the frequency will be advanced to the 600/900Mhz.
Give it a hard spin in Crysis oir similar and see if you can make it crash.

EDIT: I assume you have made sure that heat is not an issue ?

Second the heat issue play a graphics intensive game for 5 - 10 minutes and then alt tab out and open the ATi CCC and see what temp its reporting for the card.

[adamsonm]

OK, so far so good since the downclock and reinstalling the drivers after running CCleaner and Driver Sweeper. I have been able to play Dirt 2 on reasonably max settings. The max temp I noticed was 60C. I also played modern warfare 2 on max settings, with the temperature not going beyond 60C. I will be able to play Crysis 2 later so I guess that will be ultimate test!

Before during these crashes, I never really bothered to play games because even though it was crashing during playing modern warfare 2, when I was just browsing on the internet, the coloured screen crash would happen anyway, so I am not completely satisfied just yet. However, one important note, before every single crash I got, the screen would flicker, like as if it was warning me. So far no flickering, even when playing these computer games.

Also, I have noticed that the computer is running slower since I downclocked the card, at least it seems that way. I was wondering, what are the consequences of downclocking a gpu??

I will give it a week or so, but so far it looking promising. Thanks a lot for the help, it has been much appreciated!!!!

[Phage]

The downclock will not affect the CPU, the only effect will be a drop in the frame rate in games. Your machine will not be processing anything else any slower than it did previously.

If it remains stable, I would start inching those clock speeds back up, so that you can find the max safe speed for your card. If it doesn't, I would be trying very hard for an RMA.

[adamsonm]

I have been able to play Crysis 2 on "Exteme" gpu settings without any crashes. The temperature didn't go above 60C.

In terms of ATi OverDRIVE I will leave the setings as they are for now. Hopefully, if after a couple of days everything is fine, I will start to increase the settings on ATi OverDRIVE.

[Domestic_Ginger]

For temps GPUz will allow a log to be saved; saving any alt tabbing.

If you do run GPUz could you check for your ram voltage; if there is a sensor. The grey screen afaik is due to undervolted ram; I'm no expert mind and could well be wrong/misinformed.

This could be compared to Phage's to rule it out (if hes game of course!).

[adamsonm]

I don't understand where to find the ram voltage. I see the sensors bit. It's a tab. From there I can see information regarding my gpu.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Apologies; you're using a 5830.

I thought you had a vanilla 5870 for some reason. The sensors are probably not going to be there.

radeon bios editor might show the voltages. GPUz can extract the bios and you can look at it in RBE. You do not need to flash your card to check so if the data is there it should be reasonably painless. You can find the exact ram chips from a review where they remove the heatsink and then get the required data from the manufacturers data sheet (find this by googling the chip model number).

Which card exactly do you have?

[adamsonm]

I have the "SAPPHIRE HD5830 1GB GDDR5 PCIE (Game Edition)". You should also find my rig's specs on the left hand side under my Login Name.

[adamsonm]

Today I got the following message when browsing the internet:

"Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered"

When I went to action centre, it came up as a video hardware error. When I double clicked the message to get more information, the following came up:

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA8003BF6010
BCP2: FFFFF8800480740C
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
Bucket ID: X64_0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information: b12a3780-f23d-45d8-bda0-71672fd44406

From what I can gather, this seems to be the same message I got before. Only this time the screen recovered so I was still able to use windows. Maybe the reason for this was that I downclocked the card??
I had a thought that maybe the power supply could be faulty in some way??

If downclocking the card, and reinstalling the drivers didn't work, what else can I try??

Any ideas??

[adamsonm]

Guys, I have contacted Sapphire about a new VBIOS. They have given me the latest they have! Are there any websites you guys can direct me to in order for me to flash the VBIOS successfully.

[Phage]

I have some instructions - PM me your email address.

[adamsonm]

Phage,

PM sent

[Phage]

You've got mail. If you need more let me know. The problem is that I cannot email executable files.
However andmar has the upload links on his email somewhere. I can't find them now, but I'm sure we can get him to send them on to you.

[adamsonm]

OK, I think I can get all the programs from "Techpowerup". Fingers crossed this flash will help fix the problem.

[adamsonm]

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I have only just flashed my graphics card today. When the flash was done, I'm talking within the DOS, it said successful. I rebooted my computer and it went straight to windows without any problems. The screen resolution was still the same as before, i.e. 1920 x 1080. I thought that when the card is flashed, the screen resolution would be all messed up, like when you don't have drivers installed. I guess not.

Anyway, I uninstalled the drivers, and reinstalled them. Hope this flash has fixed the problem.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me through this annoying situation.