Asus HD 4870 Issues

[Gville67]

Hi all! I put together a rig not too long ago and have been playing a few games with it and recently have had some major issues with the Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 card.

The issue is that when I play Modern Warfare 2 or Oblivion the screen cuts to black and says no signal and the sounds hang and I have to do a restart to get it working again. I can play World of Warcraft for hours and have no issues.

Initially I thought it was a power issue so I upgraded from a 550w to 850w PSU. No good. I updated the video drivers to the newest ones as of 11/26/09 and still have issues. I updated the bios just incase. Still no dice.

I am almost positive that it is a graphics card issue of some sort because I put in my older Nvidia 7600 GT OC and it runs the games almost perfectly but I can't max everything out like I could on the HD 4870.

Anyone have any ideas of what it could be or what I can try to get this thing working?

Thanks In Advance.

 

[torrentg]

Heat issue. Use ATI Tray Tools to max out the fan and slightly underclock while playing. If good, then just max out the fan without underclock and see how it goes.

 

[Gville67]

Windows 7 is not allowing the low level driver installation to work with ATI tray tools. I have tried running it as admin to no effect. Is there another way to get it to work?

Thanks again.

 

[torrentg]

Maybe it has something to do with the version you're using. I use this one well on 7:

 

[Gville67]

Sorry If this is a stupid question but I have to ask. I assume that there should be a fan speed shown under the fan tab under Overclocking or am i missing something b/c I get the message that there is no supported hardware found.

 

[torrentg]

Maybe it doesn't work for your type of card. Google for an overclock utility specific to it. There's a few I think.

Rivatuner should work but I never tried that with an ATI card.

 

[Gville67]

Nevermind I don't think that ATT was recognizing my card for some reason. i got RivaTuner and ran that and was able to change the speed on the card. I am testing it now to see if it worked.

 

[Gville67]

Well It ran for about 30 minutes and I didn't see any temps go over 54 and it just froze up and the sound glitched out again. It seemed more stable but I am still confused as to what the issue could be.

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

[torrentg]

Alright, we'll try our best to fix this. Heat isn't an issue at 54 degrees C. It's good though, to still use fan on max while testing other methods and fixes for gaming - so as not to re-introduce a previously existing heat problem, if one existed. Once stable, you can decide how to do with the fan.

Do you ever have bsod?

I have a feeling it's your memory or you're overclocking whether it be intentional or unintentional. More on this later if need be. If you know for a fact you are, set everything to default speeds, including memory, video, cpu.

Install all the latest drivers from here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

 

[Gville67]

I haven't had any bsod issues at all.

I am not doing any intentional overclocking as I don't have the cash to be replacing stuff if I were to burn something up. I will do the asus update now and get back to you. I will check my bios settings while I am at it to make sure.

 

[torrentg]

I haven't had any bsod issues at all.

I am not doing any intentional overclocking as I don't have the cash to be replacing stuff if I were to burn something up. I will do the asus update now and get back to you. I will check my bios settings while I am at it to make sure.

Cool. Ya, I'm also referring to ways of optimizing the specific modules with the motherboard. You can visit the ram maker's site and find the Vdimm and timings for the modules. Then set them manually in the bios.

Actually updating to the latest bios is good, too.

If you are running AVG, completely uninstall that from the machine.

 

[Gville67]

Ok I updated the bios to the most recent, it was only off by one update but we shall see. I also updated the audio and lan drivers just in case. Catalyst is up to date as well. One thing I did check was the ram timings and found that they were set at what the manufacturer recommends however the voltage they were getting seemed to be all over the place, I am assuming that I am reading the entries correctly and that there is a voltage value set for each stick that I have. If so then they are at values of 1.197V, 1.105V, 1.812V, and 1.204V. However I am not sure that I am reading that correctly. I do see that the minimum is set to 1.51050V and the max is 2.809V. Mushkin recommends a voltage of 1.5V. I haven't had much experience with messing with memory timings and voltage so this is unfamiliar territory for me.

Thanks again for the input.

 

[Gville67]

Well I just tried another test of running Modern Warfare 2 and it glitched up again after about 10 minutes so it looks like the things that I have updated so far haven't solved the issue.

 

[torrentg]

Do you have another pc that you could test the card in?

 

[Gville67]

I do have an older PC but I will have to try it tomorrow. I will do that and get back to you.

 

[torrentg]

Alright. Another good thing to try first is to uninstall all ATI stuff in the normal method.
Then use Driver Sweeper from http://www.guru3d.com to clean all the rest of ATI stuff.

After, install only the driver from ATI's website and do not download the CCC suite package. Install only the driver download they have. See how this goes.

 

[Gville67]

Well I have tried installing just the display driver from the website and still having the same issues. I will try the other computer a little bit later today when I have some more time.

 

[Lactobeezor]

Are you in Greenville, NC? If so I have the same card and maybe we can got together for a swap to your machine??? Also you can change the fan speed by rt click desktop, catilst control, graphics, ATI overdrive.

 

[Gville67]

I am in Greenville, NC and that would be amazing if we could try that. It would be great to find out if its just a bad card or not. I have class today but I will be out around 4:30. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Lactobeezor]

Call you later, now edit out your phone number.....