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7 and ATI 4870x2 - Hard Locks
I originally did a clean install to a new HDD using 7, Microsoft's default drivers and ATI's 7 Beta graphics drivers, and the system randomly hard locks while gaming. Different games (WoW, The Witcher, Bioshock, etc) net the same result. Works very well for some random period of time. Then the entire system locks, necessitating use of the reset button. GPU temps are in the high 30's to low 40s (idle) to the mid 80's (under load) and Processor temps in the 30s (idle) to 40s under load, as provided by Everest Ultimate. 900 Watt OCZ Power Supply fed from a UPS, mild~ish overclock (3.2GHz - 8 multi/1600 FSB - on a Q6600). This system has been rock solid under Vista 64 for the last year+
Under normal usage, it runs well. Of course, the issue with a hard lock is no error code or .dmp is generated, so I wasn't entirely sure it wasn't an issue with the standard chipset drivers or something else. The Action Center is/was no help in solving this.
So last weekend (31st~1st) I did a thorough reformat of the hard drive containing 7 and cloned my very stable Vista 64 install to it using Acronis. Then I used the Upgrade option to take the whole thing to 7. The reasoning is/was doing that would eliminate both MSFT's standard chipset and ATI's 7 Beta drivers as a potential cause because at that point there can be no trace of them anywhere on the system. So now we have an upgraded Vista 64 install, using the factory drivers designed for my DFI LP P35 mobo, and ATI's newest 9.1 VGA drivers.
But No Joy. The system is stable under all conditions using Vista 64, yet still hard locks while gaming in 7.
The two installations are physically identical. The only difference being which Seagate 7200.11 HDD gets the nod while booting. No RAID. So in my mind it's definitely a driver problem between ATI's stuff and 7.
If it were a cheaper graphics card, I would consider dropping it for one that works. But that's not an acceptable solution.
Has anyone had a similar issue? And yes, I understand the answer may well be "Sorry Scott, you have to wait for ATI to fix their drivers for 7"