Radeon 4870 RMA question

Hello, I'm having severe problems with the Gigabyte 4870 I purchased from Scan (details at bottom).

Many others seems to be having the same problem (not BIOS flashing involved). Some think it is a problem with the card and others think it is the driver. I have run out of testing options to find which it might be.

Despite Scan's excellent service, I would like to avoid the hassle of a RMA if at all possible.

Would anyone from Scan be able to tell me if your RMA have found this problem also? Is there any testing of the graphics card that the RMA people would do that I can perform? Any advice?

I am wary of waiting for a new driver in case the RMA 28 day refund period lapses.

The problem: In Vista 64, at between 20 mins and 3 hours, the display either shows a green striped screen from which I can't recover or the fan speed suddenly goes to what I'm guessing is 100%, sticks on this, and the screen goes blank. Holding in the power button is the only way to get out of either problem. Sometimes the screen goes blank without the fan jumping to 100%.

System:
Asus P5Q3 deluxe wifi
Quad 9450
Gigabyte HD 4870
2 x 2Gb Corsair XMS DDR3 1333Mhz
Enermax Modu82 +625
Velociraptor 300Gb
Samsung F1 750Gb

I have tested the other parts of the system, including RAM. Temps are all good, around 40C idle (using HWMonitor). All drivers are the latest from relevant sites. All components solidly in place.

I've posted in the "Technical - help & advisory" forum on this board with no solution (and 1 other person reports the same problem) as well as several other forums. Any help would be great.
Cheers,
websemantic

Websemantic,

The issues you have seem to be related to heat by the details you have posted.

Have you changed the default profile in the catalyst control centre to speed up the fan?

If you havent and need any help doing this let me know and I shall post the link I use to change mine on the 4850 card I have. It might be nothing to do with this however I guess it might be worth a try until hopefully a fix in the new catalyst drivers appear

Hi Carlh, thanks for getting back to me.

I have implemented the profile fix (incredible change from 20% to 35% RPM reduced temps by 30C!!) for temps as that was my first though but I am monitoring the temps closely and they are at 40C-ish when the crash happens.

I presume there has been no reporting of this issue from the RMA testing folk? I realise you may not be able to tell me, I'm just at a loss and don't really want to RMA but the card is unusable just now :(

I had a quick word with a few of the returns team and they said that they werent aware of any issues so far and they havent raised a RMA for the 4870 cards so far however as its a new product and the stock has been quite limited that thats hardly surprising.

Log a RMA request here and I am sure that our returns team shall try and assist further

Returns Request

That's good of you Carlh, thanks. I'll battle away with it a little longer before raising the RMA.

No probs,

Fingers crossed it just a driver issue of some description and you manage to resolve it.