Crashes with 7970

Ok so I installed the 7970 today and everything was running smoothly. No problems at all.
I correctly uninstalled previous driver versions before installing and installed correct latest version for this card.

I even ran Unigine Heaven Benchmark and got a good score and no problems to report.

However i decided to test out Far Cry 3 on this new card. 15 minutes into the game the screen randomly goes black and a few seconds later my monitor reports 'no signal'.
After rebooting the PC everything is fine. So i decided to try Far Cry 3 again to see if this was a one off event. This time 2 minutes in it happens again only this time my PC restarts.

My power Supply is 650 what Gold rated which is more than enough so its not a problem there. The cables are all connected securely and the card is seated firmly into the PCIe x16 slot.

The first crash was on the AMD 13.2 Beta driver. So i thought maybe unstable and rolled back to the 13.1 driver but that was shortly before the second crash.

Any ideas?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phage

Heat ? Have you overclocked it ?

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Its a factory over clocked version; Gigabyte Windforce X3 7970 OC/Ghz edition.
It's not overheating. I don't think the temperature ever reached 70 degrees.

Also I've noticed slight whining noise in Borderlands 2 (nothing too bad) but it hasn't crashed in Borderlands 2 or Crysis Warhead (though i only played that for short amount of time) or Battlefield 3.
All 3 of those games ran on maximum settings just fine. Silky smooth no issues (except the weird whining noise in Borderlands 2)

I will need to test out other games. But i have no idea what the problem is. Tried multiple drivers, re-seated the GPU checked cables. Its only FC3 so far that has crashed it, which is unfortunately one of my favorite games :(

It's worth noting that if you Google; '7970 no signal' you get an hell of a lot of people with very similar if not identical issues but often with multiple games.

nomissivraj,

Are you able to try running the new Valley benchmark from the Unigine website - http://unigine.com/products/valley/ to see if this causes any problems?

Kind regards,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mick@SCAN

nomissivraj,

Are you able to try running the new Valley benchmark from the Unigine website - http://unigine.com/products/valley/ to see if this causes any problems?

Kind regards,

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I will try that now. I have ran Unigine Heaven Benchmark though and no crash. The problem so far seems to be isolated to Far Cry 3.
Though i feel i need to stress that I've as of yet only played 3 games. Do you think this could be a driver issue or a PSU issue? My PSU is GX 650 Coolermaster which is powerful enough i would have thought. Though maybe it has developed a fault? idk how i would check that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mick@SCAN

nomissivraj,

Are you able to try running the new Valley benchmark from the Unigine website - http://unigine.com/products/valley/ to see if this causes any problems?

Kind regards,

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The benchmark ran just fine on the Extreme HD test preset no crash to report. The max FPS was 70.3 lowest was 14.2 (which happened for a split second) which somewhat ruined the score; 1529. Idk if this score is normal for this card. But like i said the low end of the fps happened in a split second only twice (first time went down to 20fps) during the entire benchmark which was otherwise smooth. Going to test on Crysis 2 max settings now. It looks like this really may be an Far Cry 3 Issue. :/

NOTE: The benchmark score may be affected by the fact that my CPU is not on par with my GPU I'm still using a Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Or does CPU not factor in on this particular benchmark?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phage

Might be a FC3 issue. There's someone at OCUK with the same issue albeit a much more complicated rig.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18487499

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That is similar in that i still had sound but the screen didn't freeze as such like his did. It just went black and the monitor lost signal from the card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deejayburnout

Sounds to me like a Farcry issue. Have you tried re-installing it?

That whinning noise might be the fans running at a high speed. do you happen to know how high they run at when playing borderlands.

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No i haven't tried re-installing it. Do you think that would make any difference? The game ran just fine on my old 6870 (albeit at much lower settings) using 13.1 driver i believe.
The fans seem to keep the card temp below 60degrees and i'm fairly sure they didn't go past 55% speed which is barely louder than my chassis fans.

OK so an update. After loading up Borderlands 2 and attempting to load into the game i got the same crash. It also happened once in Unigine Valley after another run-through (though usually doesn't).
I am coming to the conclusion that the overclock is just not stable enough. The crashing happens on Far Cry 3 and Borderlands 2 (with PhysX on high) but this is stuff this card should handle fine.

Would i be able to get this card replaced? as i am really not happy. :(
Which i shame because SCAN has been amazing so far and it\'s just a shame that this card seems to have issues. I will be phoning Scan tomorrow to get some advice or arrange replacement tomorrow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deejayburnout

If it a pre-overclocked card and it doesn't work, I would send it back and they should replace it.

Defo call them and tell them the situation.

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Yeah it is pre-overclocked.

Update:

Problem
There has been a development in my troubleshooting. I decided to try and film the crash happening as evidence, so i loaded up Far Cry 3 again. As if on cue within a minute of trying to load into my campaign the graphics card crashed yet again 'no signal'. I had to hard reset the PC again.:(

Possible Solution
However, i may (i say may deliberately as i haven't had long enough to be sure yet) have discovered the solution. I suddenly remembered reading a post on a forum somewhere that suggested using different cables. I really didn't think this would make a difference as the cables had worked fine with my old card. Though I remembered that my old card was only powered by 2 x 6-pin plugs where as this uses one 8-pin and 1 6-pin and as i was using the same cables as before except with the extra 2-pin add-on for the 8pin socket.

What i did
So having nothing to lose by this point. I unplugged the 8-pin (6+2-pin) power cable and replaced it with the molex to 8pin adapter that came with the card (plugging this into the molex connectors being used by my case fans) leaving the regular 6-pin in as i didn't have enough molex connectors to spare. I also guessed that if there were to be a problem with any of the cables it would be the one with the +2pin on it as i've not used the extra pins before.

Result
I have since played 51minutes of Far Cry 3 without any crashing, though with a few rare texture flickers or something that i put down to the game... for now.

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Obviously 51mins is not solid enough evidence to raise my hopes too high but the crashes always happened within 18min usually within 5min if not immediately after loading into the game. So it is at least an improvement. Hopefully this success is not temporary. I have a feeling i will be replacing my PSU as this cable set up is stupidly messy and i fear the poor thing has degraded somewhat.

**Crosses fingers**

nomissivraj,

I am glad to hear that the card is working correctly, if the card continues to give you problems please let us know and we will process a return for you.

Kind regards,