57xx and 58xx locking problems with stripes

[hurleybird]

I've been having this issue too. At first it was happening all the time, but it seems to be getting a lot better with new driver releases. Now it doesen't happen often at all, but it still shouldn't EVER be happening. I'm ok right now, but if it doesen't get better with drivers, or if it ever gets worse I'll end up RMAing it. In a perfect world it will get better with drivers, and worse around the time when RMAing it will net me a better card (XFX liftetime warranty).

[roller11]

For me, it's two things: win7 and using afterburner. It's somewhat random, but I've seen no crashing for long periods, then the second I install Afterburner, crash city. Also, I get the lockups with Win7 but not with Vista. And VGA clocks and CPU clocks make no difference. Also, all revs of drivers 9.4 through 9.12 all have prob. Finally, it happens with both my 5850 and my 1900 XT. I sent my 5850 back to amazon (return policy) and my nvidia 260 is on the way.

[HeXploiT]

For me, it's two things: win7 and using afterburner. It's somewhat random, but I've seen no crashing for long periods, then the second I install Afterburner, crash city. Also, I get the lockups with Win7 but not with Vista. And VGA clocks and CPU clocks make no difference. Also, all revs of drivers 9.4 through 9.12 all have prob. Finally, it happens with both my 5850 and my 1900 XT. I sent my 5850 back to amazon (return policy) and my nvidia 260 is on the way.

Thought of that. Uninstalled afterburner and still crashing.

[OC Nub]

I have had this happen randomly for a while now, I though it was only caused by a bad oc but that isn't always the case. Someone else had posted they had this happen on an Nvidia card with a bad oc but I have tried to recreate this with my GTX card and it just doesn't happen (for me at least). I have been a pretty loyal ATI fan, my GFX cards over the past few years have been mostly ATI. These cards are awesome to bench so it is hard to knock ATI, but the random stripes/freezing are really pissing me off.

[road-runner]

I did not have the locking problem but had the stripes, rolling, flickering screen. I sent it back...

[roller11]

Thought of that. Uninstalled afterburner and still crashing.

If I uninstalled AB, like you, I still get crashing. But if I do a system restore back to a time before I installed AB, then no crashing. Sounds weird, but it's as though something in AB screws up the partition so that even uninstalling AB doesn't help. Try doing a a clean install of the OS and do not install AB and note if lockups still happen.

There are only two variables that affect the prob for me: If I have win7 installed and Ab running, I get immediate lockups almost everytime I launch a game. If win7 and AB never installed, I get random lockups which happen typically 2-30 minutes after I launch a game. With Vista and no AB, I never get lockups at all. Underclocking memory, CPU, GPU have no affect on the prob. Happens the same on all revs of drivers from 9.4 to 9.12, and on both 5850 and 1900 XT cards. As far as I'm concerned, all ATI cards are incompatible with win7, at least for games.

[Zorlac]

I already posted this on [H]ardforums awhile back, but it may be a solution. I havent been able to test since my 5870 is back with XFX now. Check it out...

After RMAing my card, I decided to go back to nVIDIA since I was so fed up with the situation. I bought a GTX 285 with the plan to step-up to Fermi in a few months.

Installed the card and instead of grey screen/vertical stripes/looped audio, I started getting all sorts of random BSODs. Never the same error and nothing in particular set it off. It was basically the same thing as the 5870, but the 5870 was not allowing the BSOD to actually happen...it would just hard lock.

Obviously the sky was falling at this point as I felt the massive amount of $$$ I just invested in my new gaming rig was all for nothing. Sooo....I decided to go back to the "your memory is bad" hypothesis even though memtest86+ and the Windows memory checker both state that my memory is fine. I checked the Corsair forum and noticed an issue that was very similiar to our experience...random BSODs caused by having all DIMM slots populated.

Why would all DIMM slots being populated cause such a problem??? Well apparently stock JEDEC voltage is sometimes not enough when all DIMMs are full. The Corsair techs were recommending people to raise their memory voltage to fix this issue.

I checked Intel's site since I have the DP55KG with an i7-860 and the stock voltage is 1.5V. That is what I am running. Then I notice that Intel says to never run above 1.6V as a max. So, I changed my motherboard BIOS memory voltage to 1.6V and all is FIXED! Not one crash in about a week thus far!!!!

Now I am starting to think this is the source to all of our problems. Most of us have systems with memory controllers on the CPU and most of us are now using massive amounts of dual or triple channel RAM (usually filling all DIMM slots).

Worth a shot if you havent RMA'd your card yet.

[roller11]

No, that's not it....I've tried a GTX260 with both Vista and win7, afterburner installed, never crashes. If I do nothing but change to a ATI card, crash city in Win7. Vista never crashes with any combo. My memory/settings/voltage was the same in all tests, so the memory has absolutely nothing to do with the vertical stripes lockups. Sounds like you have a different problem since BSOD is not a symptom in the "vertical stripes/lockups" problem reported in this thread.

[Zorlac]

I never once had a BSOD with my 5870, but I constantly had the grey screen/vertical stripe/looped audio problem. What I am saying is that when I replaced the card with a GTX 285, the problem became constant random BSODs for me at least. I fixed the issue by upping my motherboard RAM voltage from 1.5V (JEDEC) to 1.6V (max Intel recommends). This fixed the BSOD issue that started with the GTX 285. Now since my 5870 is with XFX for RMA, I have no idea if my BSOD fix would also fix the grey screen/vertical line/looped audio crash. It was just a potential fix for you all to try.

May be worth it since I bet most of you have all your DIMM slots filled.

[HeXploiT]

I tried upping my ram voltage from 2.1 to 2.16 and it still crashed in 20 seconds.

[Darxide]

I'll second that afterburner is not the cause.
I had the issue before I had installed it. In fact, I only installed AB to try underclocking the video RAM, but it didn't help.

I never get BSOD's, just stripes, and usually when I first boot up, the driver crashes and recovers within 10-20 seconds of reaching the desktop.

So for, for me anyway, it points to a seriously buggy driver.

[Dahaka]

Same problem here with this rig:

core i5 750 ( no matter if is stock or overclocked )
EVGA SLI P55
2 x HD 5770 ( CF )
Pcpower & cooling silencer 750w
Win7 32bits or 64bits.

Same with stripes, no matter if is AB installed or not. I tried with one card installed and i got the same problem.

Buggy drivers again? Come on AMD/ATI give us some reason to buy your cards over and over again.

[roller11]

, I have no idea if my BSOD fix would also fix the grey screen/vertical line/looped audio crash. It was just a potential fix for you all to try.

May be worth it since I bet most of you have all your DIMM slots filled.

Your case is atypical since everyone who has tried Nvidia cards, with or without full DIMM slots, is having no problems of any kind. So there is no reason to expect that upping the voltage will fix the stripes/lockup problems with ATI cards.
I would like to hear from anyone who has extensively run 3D games under Windows 7, for 30+ minutes at a time, with ATI 5850 or 5870 and not had the stripes problem. About 80% of the time when I get a lockup, it recovers automatically after 5-15 seconds with a "unresponsive driver" message. After the recovery, I can then continue playing my game indefinitely with no further problems until I exit the game. Upon relaunch, I get the lockup again, and so on. About 20% of the time, the lockup does not recover and I must reset the computer.

[HeXploiT]

I'll second that afterburner is not the cause.
I had the issue before I had installed it. In fact, I only installed AB to try underclocking the video RAM, but it didn't help.

I never get BSOD's, just stripes, and usually when I first boot up, the driver crashes and recovers within 10-20 seconds of reaching the desktop.

So for, for me anyway, it points to a seriously buggy driver.

How can you deduce that vertical stripes point to a buggy driver?
You don't know that this isn't a hardware issue.
Now I'm inexperienced with ATi cards over the past couple of years and perhaps you have some knowledge/experience from which you draw this hypothesis. If this is the case please do tell.
For many of us a driver issue isn't such a big deal. I want to know if it's hardware so I can RMA the damn card. If it's software then I don't have to worry so much that I bought a bad product.
So please inform the rest of us as to how you've reached this conclusion as this is the answer many of us are seeking.

[HeXploiT]

Your case is atypical since everyone who has tried Nvidia cards, with or without full DIMM slots, is having no problems of any kind. So there is no reason to expect that upping the voltage will fix the stripes/lockup problems with ATI cards.
I would like to hear from anyone who has extensively run 3D games under Windows 7, for 30+ minutes at a time, with ATI 5850 or 5870 and not had the stripes problem. About 80% of the time when I get a lockup, it recovers automatically after 5-15 seconds with a "unresponsive driver" message. After the recovery, I can then continue playing my game indefinitely with no further problems until I exit the game. Upon relaunch, I get the lockup again, and so on. About 20% of the time, the lockup does not recover and I must reset the computer.

Mine recovers sometimes.(XFX XXX) if I have it on stock clocks (875/1300) it crashes more frequently and will never recover. If I have it clocked down to the normal 5870 speed(850/1200) it crashes much less frequently and is more likely to recover.
See in my case if definitely appears to have something to do with hardware as clock speeds affect the issue.

[Darxide]

How can you deduce that vertical stripes point to a buggy driver?
You don't know that this isn't a hardware issue.
Now I'm inexperienced with ATi cards over the past couple of years and perhaps you have some knowledge/experience from which you draw this hypothesis. If this is the case please do tell.
For many of us a driver issue isn't such a big deal. I want to know if it's hardware so I can RMA the damn card. If it's software then I don't have to worry so much that I bought a bad product.
So please inform the rest of us as to how you've reached this conclusion as this is the answer many of us are seeking.

Well, saying that it 'points' to a buggy driver is a long way from 'deducing' or drawing any conclusions as you put it.
The fact that the driver crashes and recovers so often, strongly suggests that the driver it buggy, therefore, it's a logical place to start as the source of other issues. Again, thats just a suspicion, not a fact.

But please go ahead and RMA your card. I'll wager it'll be send back with a little note saying 'no fault found'.

[Levesque]

I never get BSOD's, just stripes, and usually when I first boot up, the driver crashes and recovers within 10-20 seconds of reaching the desktop.

Exact same problem for me with my watercooled 5970. It was crashing and recovering every 2-3 minutes... Desktop was ''freezing'' for 5-10 seconds, then a brown/grey screen for 1 second. No reboot, no hard lock. Could continue doing was I was doing without any problems.

Disabling ULPS in the registry solved that problem.

After that, I had the ''Driver successfully recovered'' only at start-up like you, and only when getting to Windows desktop on a ''cold'' computer. So the first second I have control of my desktop, I now start Furmark 30 seconds, and never had that message again. Rock-stable for hours now. On a warm system, I can reboot all I want without any messages.

It's definitely a driver problem since disabling ULPS solved my problem almost totally. And with the ''Furmark trick'' at start-up, I'm now totally free of this annoying message.

[Darxide]

ULPS? Do you mean the Firefox extension? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
If so that's interesting, because I use Firefox myself. I'll try disabling it and see what happens.

Anyone else with this issue using Firefox? Probably a long shot, but might be worth exploring.

[HeXploiT]

Well, saying that it 'points' to a buggy driver is a long way from 'deducing' or drawing any conclusions as you put it.
The fact that the driver crashes and recovers so often, strongly suggests that the driver it buggy, therefore, it's a logical place to start as the source of other issues. Again, thats just a suspicion, not a fact.

But please go ahead and RMA your card. I'll wager it'll be send back with a little note saying 'no fault found'.

I already RMA'd one with newegg that was doing the exact same thing and they sent me a brand new card.
Sorry if I sounded sarcastic in that last post. Didn't mean to but text doesn't always communicate properly.
Anyway the most frustrating thing is just not knowing whether this is hardware or software.

[Darxide]

I already RMA'd one with newegg that was doing the exact same thing and they sent me a brand new card.
Sorry if I sounded sarcastic in that last post. Didn't mean to but text doesn't always communicate properly.
Anyway the most frustrating thing is just not knowing whether this is hardware or software.

LOL, I know what you mean.
I've only had this 5770 for 3 weeks, so I'm prepared to wait a few weeks before I RMA it, because I hate doing that. I've only had to RMA a graphics card once, an X700 Pro, and it came back like that, 'no fault found'...but it just refused to work in my PC. So I had to take the loss and eBay it.
But seeing so many people with the same issue this time, and the constant driver crashes and recovering, I'm really hopefull thats it's a driver or BIOS issue.

On the other hand, if it is a hardware fault, then this could be a major disaster for ATi.

[Levesque]

ULPS? Do you mean the Firefox extension? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

No. ATI ULPS.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=307309

They are talking about the 4870x2, but it's the same for the 5970.

[NanoBullet]

Guys, since i reinstalled windows 7 but this time the hdd ahci, and installed my asus xonar dx and turn off the one from motherboard i got no issues at all. Don't have to put more voltage on the graphics none off those things!

[roller11]

See in my case if definitely appears to have something to do with hardware as clock speeds affect the issue.

For me, downclocking had absolutely no improvement. I say it's software related because I crash in Windows 7 and not Vista. Also, my 1900 XT crashes in Windows 7 and it has been stable for 3 years in non-Windows 7 OS. Anyone getting stripes in Vista?

[road-runner]

Got my 3rd XFX 5870 today and stuck it in with the 1st one everything is fine with these 2. The 2nd one that come from newegg is on its way back for the flickering, rolling, grey screen...

[Falkentyne]

Got my 3rd XFX 5870 today and stuck it in with the 1st one everything is fine with these 2. The 2nd one that come from newegg is on its way back for the flickering, rolling, grey screen...

Please let us know if you get any more vertical stripes. I'm not spending $400 on a card to get stripes. I spent enough money last month....