4850 Stability

[Oversized Rooster]

I am sure there are others having problems with the 4850 cards - well the drivers to be specific.

I've tried running only a single 4850, and also dual 4850 cards, and the instability seems to be directly tied to the crappy drivers.

Basically, the symptoms I'm experiencing are:

1) Randomly when playing a game in Crossfire the screen will become corrupt, my audio starts to stutter and then I have to reset the computer because not even the power button will work.

2) Randomly even when the PC is idle, my left and center displays become corrupted and I have to reset the computer.

Using the Catalyst 8.6 drivers, this happens about 2-3 times a day.

If I use the Hotfix drivers, then the symptoms will happen about 10 times a day.

Apparently there is no correlation between the cards being overclocked or not.

I'm running Vista Business 64-bit.

Am I alone with this instability? When are the 8.7 drivers coming out?! Being a guinea pig for ATI's new cards is one thing. Not providing me with the software means to even run these things properly is another.

[Cheator]

ATI Catalyst 8.7 Beta Leaked - Overclockers Forums Betas leaked.

Seems to my like more than driver issues. The driver should crash and Vista should give you an nice little annoying popup telling you so... Have another one to try it in?

[magictorch]

That sucks! The P45 Q is brand new so maybe a new mainboard bios could help to fix that?? Given that the 48**'s are also brand new and the driver support seems quite weak right now its perhaps an interaction between the two problems.

My 4870 is arriving tomorrow although it may sit in a box till some decent drivers are out that allows BOTH easy fan adjustment and overclocking.

Originally Posted by Oversized Rooster

I am sure there are others having problems with the 4850 cards - well the drivers to be specific.

I've tried running only a single 4850, and also dual 4850 cards, and the instability seems to be directly tied to the crappy drivers.

Basically, the symptoms I'm experiencing are:

1) Randomly when playing a game in Crossfire the screen will become corrupt, my audio starts to stutter and then I have to reset the computer because not even the power button will work.

2) Randomly even when the PC is idle, my left and center displays become corrupted and I have to reset the computer.

Using the Catalyst 8.6 drivers, this happens about 2-3 times a day.

If I use the Hotfix drivers, then the symptoms will happen about 10 times a day.

Apparently there is no correlation between the cards being overclocked or not.

I'm running Vista Business 64-bit.

Am I alone with this instability? When are the 8.7 drivers coming out?! Being a guinea pig for ATI's new cards is one thing. Not providing me with the software means to even run these things properly is another.

[belgolas]

never have had a problem with my 4870. If you have an error log look to see if it is a graphical issue. Though by the looks of this the 4800 series is a little bit rushed but there are already leaked drivers for the past couple of days. I haven't heard this problem from anyone else. You can try the 8.7 leaked drivers but I never like downloading anything leaked.

[Frost]

Never had trouble with my 4870 (heck, it's even modded with a new cooler). I run Ultimate Vista 64bit as well and I have even tweaked the card to run slightly faster on both the GPU clock and the memory clock (through ATI Catalyst Center) and it purrs just fine. I am using in box drivers plus hot fix.

My PC specs are below.

[Oversized Rooster]

I don't think this is an issue with my motherboard. Let me tell you why:

When I bought my FIRST 4850 card, I was still running the Asus P5K Premium WiFi mobo. I got the same symptoms with that card. As a second video card to run my 3rd LCD, I was using a 256MB Radeon 3450 card.

Then a few days later I decided to get a SECOND 4850 card, and at the same time I changed the mobo to the new P5Q-E so that I can have the PCI-E slots run at 8X in Crossfire as opposed to the black one only going at 4X on the P5K. However, despite the mobo change, I got the same video card symptoms.

I have since tried unplugging one card or the other, and it makes no difference as to HOW MANY 4850 cards I'm running, or if they're OCed or not. Honestly guys this looks like fishy drivers.

I know it can't be a power issue because I'm running a 750W PCP&C PSU. And it's not a heat issue either because I've modded the Catalyst profile to give me a constant 40% fan speed on the 4850 cards which keeps all 3 GPU sensors in the low to mid 50s.

I have high hopes for Catalyst 8.7 fixing these issues.

[UrbKlr]

I haven't noticed anything weird, other than stuttering in 3Dmark06.

Are the 8.7 Beta's better than the Hotfix's in anyway?...I'm thinking they are not.

[Boldeagle]

I've had stability issues as well and when playing Crysis I would BSOD "every-time" and on occasions in Oblivion but the beta 8.7 seemed to fix Oblivion. I found that if I lowered my OC from 3.15GHz to 3.01GHz I could play Crysis for hours without any BSOD while having my Fan at 60%. I read others have lowered their OC's and gotten stability back.

[Jhayman]

I am having similar issues as well..
I cannot play Battlestations Midway with it freezing 2 seconds into a mission..
I get the driver is not responding error message.
Hardlock sometimes have to power down..
Happens even without CF enabled.
I just installed the 8.7's just released from AMD, still happens.
Grid plays perfect..

[Boldeagle]

I'm just wondering if these cards are causing significant stress on the NB that it needs a Voltage increase to increase stability. Will be lapping my HS and CPU in a day or to and then see if I can increase the OC again with a bit more voltage to the NB.