Picked up a 4890.. puzzling troubles

[CraigRT]

So I picked up a used Gigabyte 4890OC the one with the Zalman cooler on it.. Sweet card!

The card was to replace my Sapphire 4850 in my days old new i7 rig. The Sapphire card was running problem free in my i7 and my old Opteron system before the 4890.

The problem is, oddly enough, all but 3D.. All 3D games play perfect and are smooth with no issues at all. Except for things like... Playing Left 4 Dead 2, finish a campaign, after the stats, as it were to be going back to the lobby, just exits out to desktop (closes the game).... Tested Sapphire 4850 afterwards, no issue there.

Left my PC be as went to work, etc.. came home... was not responding... monitor light just flashing. Had to hold the power button down to get it to power off, then it came back up and ran fine.. Tested Sapphire 4850 afterwards, same scenario, no issue there.

However, in-game and when you think you would ever have issues with a new videocard, is all trouble free. It's this other dumb stuff.

System specs:

Gigabyte P55A-UD4P
G.Skill NQ 4GB DDR3
i7 860 not overclocked yet
Seasonic S12 600W with dual PCI-E connectors.
Win7 Pro x64

Anyone heard of anything like this? I don't want to sell the card and write it off all together, but Im a big fan of having things work properly. It just seems like its not playing well with my system.

[Caldezar]

I've never had an issue with my 4890's in Windows 7 Ult. 64. And like you said, it's especially odd that it's in 2D applications. Have you tried putting the card in another machine? Maybe take it to a buddy's place and game with it for a while. Also consider a driver issue. Are you doing a complete uninstall/reinstall for the latest 4890 drivers for Windows 7? Installing drivers alone? Or entire Catalyst software?

Just a few points to ponder...

[CraigRT]

Originally Posted by Caldezar

I've never had an issue with my 4890's in Windows 7 Ult. 64. And like you said, it's especially odd that it's in 2D applications. Have you tried putting the card in another machine? Maybe take it to a buddy's place and game with it for a while. Also consider a driver issue. Are you doing a complete uninstall/reinstall for the latest 4890 drivers for Windows 7? Installing drivers alone? Or entire Catalyst software?

Just a few points to ponder...

I don't really have another machine to test it in.. I could build up a rig with my old parts, and that would work, but I don't have a case or PSU to use with it.. I would actually like to try that, but not worth the $ right now to me. I'll just have to figure it out with the one machine I've got here.

When I did the install at first I used the ATI driver from their site for the 4850. It was working good. I then downloaded the ATI specific 4890 driver, which turned out to actually be the exact same file... Even though it showed the same I installed the "new" driver anyways while running the 4890 card.

Next time I put the 4850 back in, I just tested the card and it ran while using the last driver from the 4890.... Clearly they're the same. Actually, its still on that driver now, I played L4D2 for a few hours tonight trouble free on my 4850 with that original driver I downloaded for the 4890... I can literally swap cards, reboot, and run games, whatever, on the same driver, without doing a thing.

Anyways, that's not the point.. The point is I did try what I thought was a specific driver for the 4890.

All the time in my system on the 4890, ran L4D2 1920x1080 max settings, crystal clear and smooth, no issues with performance or lockups, artifacting, nothing. Just after the game ends, and waking up the monitor from power save mode.

Really frustrating.. I'd have a better idea of what to try next if it were crashing in 3D like most bad cards do.

[MarkOne]

Let me ask a question here to try to understand..

So the card crash only in 1 game , and you experience only a computer Lock ( the black sceeen ) once ?

[CraigRT]

Originally Posted by MarkOne

Let me ask a question here to try to understand..

So the card crash only in 1 game , and you experience only a computer Lock ( the black sceeen ) once ?

Yep, only so far in L4D2, (but happened a few times)

and the power up thing happened twice as well before I got fed up and put the 4850 back in. None of these issues while using the 4850 = Happy user.

I don't like coming back to my computer and having to hard boot it... That just doesn't work for me.

[MarkOne]

thanks for the reply, I will look at a problem with this game. Search gaming forum, I will not be surprise you not the only one ( I'm not a real gamer ) I guess if it was hardware related, you will have a blue screen, or even a reboot , not just a Game crash For the black out, is the sleep mode deactivated, cause quite a problem like you describe this feature.

[gingerbee]

sounds kinda like drivers if it's only happened in 1 game. jm2cents

[MarkOne]

Originally Posted by gingerbee

sounds kinda like drivers if it's only happened in 1 game. jm2cents

something like that, depend if you ask the L4D2 support or ATI support

[CraigRT]

Originally Posted by gingerbee

sounds kinda like drivers if it's only happened in 1 game. jm2cents

Game isn't really the big issue. Completely locked computer under no stress in a windows desktop with nothing running environment is what made me put the 4850 back in until I do some more research. The system works exactly how its suppose to, and is reliable and stable, with my 4850 in place.

By browsing the AMD ATI Radeon forums extensively it looks like the problem COULD BE related to the 2D idle GPU clock dropping down, and causing these problems. Some people have reported using a 3rd party app to run the GPU clock at rated speeds even at idle has solved their problems. Keep in mind.. while running 3D apps, is the only time the card performs as it should with no problems.

I believe when the campaign ends in the game, and its ready to go back to the lobby, it probably switches to 2d for a minute, then back to 3d to display the lobby and game settings, etc. Thus causing my crash.

My 4850 does not have this problem I believe because the 4850 does not share the same configuration as the 4890.

Anyone have any experience on this now?

Here is a thread describing fairly closely what I am experiencing.

AMD Game Forums - GA-P55M-UD2 and 5850 = idle crashes/freezing - help!

[gingerbee]

yes and if it's 2d or 3d it's driver related try running some older 100% stable drivers. just a thought and the 2d thing had been a problem in the past drivers solved it.