Sapphire HD 6870 - Display driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered

[patrick_kidd]

This happens every time I try to play Tf2, the witcher, or L4D2. So as soon as any of these games get past the loading screen to actually enter a game (or server loading screen in tf2/l4d2), The screen will flicker to black, the fans in my case stop momentarily, and the games crash giving the error Hl2.exe has had an error... If I do this in windowed mode, the bottom gives an error saying "Driver ati driver has stopped responding and has successfully recovered" This happens every time.

This is a new pc I just built, and has been doing so since I started trying to run these games. There had been one time where TF2 and the witcher both worked, and that was after I installed Dirt 2 (and Directx 11 was installed on my system). They then proceeded not to work after I tweaked my ram settings in the bios (and reverted).

Specs are as follows:

amd phenom ii x4 970
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe
SAPPHIRE 100314SR Radeon HD 6870
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
ASUS VH236H Black 23" 2ms(GTG)
Windows 7 64bit ultimate.



Things I've done so far to try and fix:

Stripped out all video drivers and reinstalled them about a dozen times (including using a driver sweeper on some passes)

Prevented windows from auto installing drivers when none are present (to make sure it doesn't do so while I install official ones)

Installed drivers from original Dvd and official site

Over clock, Under clock, Change idle core/memory clock, turn up fan

Flash bios to newest version

Overclock ram/return to normal speeds

Run memtest86 (0 errors returned)

Tried playing with default windows drivers (not amd official)

I'll post if I remember anything else. Also these game swere tried with a fresh DL from steam, all come up validated and defragged.

I can run Dirt2 at 1920 x 1080 at ultra settings w/ full antialiasing and anistrophic filtering, so I don't believe the card is over heating. I've also bench tested it in MSI Kombustor, and it runs just fine.

Anyone have any ideas?? This is really killing me because I don't want to return the card since I have seen that it offers some great performance...

[LaughingCrow]

Its a quirky problem I'm not sure I've fixed. Some people are able to resolve it, while others don't find a solution. Happens with both NVidia and AMD. I suspect it might be more of a Window's issue than anything else, possibly because of this so called 'protected media path' DRM that Microsoft first introduced with Vista, that polls the video card.

I did the same things you did. Check drivers, uninstall, install, clean, etc. Didn't work.

This was happening to me with Dragon Age:Origins once in a while. I suspected the video card sound drivers (GTX 460) might have been interfering with my sound card (Xonar). Removed just the video card sound drivers and only had only one instance of it. It hasn't happened in the last week but I haven't been playing DA, just Witcher.

[_dangtx_]

if the system is prime95 stable, and the card is furmark/3dmark stable, and
then you can run both at the same time? then its software for sure.

the case fans stopping is interesting, a bit like juice is dropping. check your 12v rail with speed
fan or something like that,after the fans stop and system becomes usable again. do you see a dip there?
could be mobo too. even if the gpu craps out,dies out,however you call it, the system fans shouldnt change
speeds like that, unless the gpu is locking up the system via the pci-e bus or such.weird one indeed

[Frank Encruncher]

Check your bios and try setting PCI PnP to Yes, that seemed to help mine.

[patrick_kidd]

Ok, so I ran furmark and Kombustor at the same time, 1280 x 1024 i believe, for 30 mins. No issues there, got roughly 45-50 fps on both for the whole duration, temperature around 65C.

Ran 3dmax and got a few interesting results...

GT1 - Return To Proxycon
60.71 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest
63.51 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley
1.61 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley
2.36 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight
108.94 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze
81.45 FPS

Result

I'm very curious about the cpu1 and 2 scores...

Prime95 showed no errors over 11 tests (I know not that many, but it was running while furmark/kombustor was)

I'll try that bios setting soon,

Thanks again all.

[Arinoth]

What version of drivers are you running for the 6870, it is a very picky card with very poor driver support from AMD i've found

[patrick_kidd]

I installed using catalyst 11.1a, I'm quite open to the possibility I've made some stupid error choosing/installing it.

I reinstalled it with the hotfix, just in case it changed something so I'm using version 8.820.2.0

I've attached my DxDiag just in case there is something buried in there.

[proxy]

You may have already tried cleaning the drivers off the system, but if not try using the Guru3D driver removal tool, rebooting, then redownloading and reinstalling the latest drivers for your card from the ATI website.

[brent_wing]

Originally Posted by patrick_kidd

This happens every time I try to play Tf2, the witcher, or L4D2. So as soon as any of these games get past the loading screen to actually enter a game (or server loading screen in tf2/l4d2), The screen will flicker to black, the fans in my case stop momentarily, and the games crash giving the error Hl2.exe has had an error... If I do this in windowed mode, the bottom gives an error saying "Driver ati driver has stopped responding and has successfully recovered" This happens every time.

This is a new pc I just built, and has been doing so since I started trying to run these games. There had been one time where TF2 and the witcher both worked, and that was after I installed Dirt 2 (and Directx 11 was installed on my system). They then proceeded not to work after I tweaked my ram settings in the bios (and reverted).

Specs are as follows:

amd phenom ii x4 970
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe
SAPPHIRE 100314SR Radeon HD 6870
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
ASUS VH236H Black 23" 2ms(GTG)
Windows 7 64bit ultimate.



Things I've done so far to try and fix:

Stripped out all video drivers and reinstalled them about a dozen times (including using a driver sweeper on some passes)

Prevented windows from auto installing drivers when none are present (to make sure it doesn't do so while I install official ones)

Installed drivers from original Dvd and official site

Over clock, Under clock, Change idle core/memory clock, turn up fan

Flash bios to newest version

Overclock ram/return to normal speeds

Run memtest86 (0 errors returned)

Tried playing with default windows drivers (not amd official)

I'll post if I remember anything else. Also these game swere tried with a fresh DL from steam, all come up validated and defragged.

I can run Dirt2 at 1920 x 1080 at ultra settings w/ full antialiasing and anistrophic filtering, so I don't believe the card is over heating. I've also bench tested it in MSI Kombustor, and it runs just fine.

Anyone have any ideas?? This is really killing me because I don't want to return the card since I have seen that it offers some great performance...

Ok . I tried everything. Uninstall, reinstall, everything. So I put the card away. Tried It again with the same results. I phoned MSI and talked with someone and he said nothing that everyone else is not saying. Power, fresh install, all that stuff...He even told me it was refurbished with them and up to spec. I got and RMA number and an email from them. I filled out a little form and a description of what was going on. "driver has stopped responding and has recovered" So I sent it out that day, only cost me 13 bucks to ship with the Canadian post to Markham Ontario. It was there at 12:10 P.M and they knew what was wrong because they sent me a new one at 12:38 P.m that day. It never said what the problem was but It must have been the card because the card had a different serial number.

So my answer to everyone is just get and RMA number and send it out.

[clone63]

A couple times I've heard of this caused by the default clocks being too high. By checking the model and what its clocks are supposed to be, you might find it is not at the right speed. Likely not too common though.