Strange power issue

[Mellon Head]

I'm having a bit of weirdness with my machine the past few days.

I just picked up another Radeon 4670 for Crossfire on Friday, and since I installed it, I've had some odd power problems. Before the install, my machine would go to sleep normally, and wake on a key press. Since I installed the card, it has failed to wake up three times. Once I had a BSOD which stated "Internal Power Error", and twice it has just failed to resume, forcing me to press the reset button to get it to wake up. In one case, starting up all of the fans and USB devices, but no hard drive activity and no video.

I've got an OCZ Stealthstream PSU, which is less than a year old, and I can't believe that I'm short on power. I did the PSU calculations, and at full load, I'm using around 510 Watts. The PSU is good for 600. I lowered my overclock to reduce the power consumption, and I had previously moved 2 of the drives to another machine. The only other addition was that I replaced my PCIe x1 serial card with one that was just PCI because my GPU fans eat my extra slots.

The thing is, when it's running, it's stable as anything. I ran Memtest86 and then Prime95 for a couple of hours without errors. If there was a power issue, it should have browned out during the Prime testing.

I'd expect this from a cheap PSU, but not when I'm almost 100 Watts under the maximum. Could this be sleep or hibernation messing up somehow? I'm at a loss.

Any thoughts?

 

[mpcrsc562]

This is a guess, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it may be the video drivers.

From what I have seen with my CrossFire setups, the driver is automatically supposed to recognize the new card and that it is in CrossFire when it is installed. But sometimes something doesn't go quite right in the detection or with the interaction with the other AMD drivers: chipset, northbridge filter driver, etc.

You know, when you install the Catalyst Suite for your videocard, if you select Custom during the install, you have options for other non-video related drivers, right? I think that some of those other drivers don't work the way they're supposed to when you change the system config from single card to dual.

When I ran CrossFired 4870s or even with my current CrossFire setup, I have never had any problems that you have described concerning power issues, but I have had numerous BSODs that were always traced back to the video drivers. Each and every time, the problem was remedied by uninstalling Catalyst and the display driver, rebooting into safe mode and running Driver Sweeper, then rebooting again and installing the current Catalyst drivers.

I would try to uninstall Catalyst and any other AMD driver (from the Custom selection during uninstallation) that is not an *integral* system driver then going the route of Driver Sweeper in Safe Mode, then rebooting and installing the current Catalyst.

 

[Mellon Head]

This is a guess, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it may be the video drivers.

From what I have seen with my CrossFire setups, the driver is automatically supposed to recognize the new card and that it is in CrossFire when it is installed. But sometimes something doesn't go quite right in the detection or with the interaction with the other AMD drivers: chipset, northbridge filter driver, etc.

You know, when you install the Catalyst Suite for your videocard, if you select Custom during the install, you have options for other non-video related drivers, right? I think that some of those other drivers don't work the way they're supposed to when you change the system config from single card to dual.

When I ran CrossFired 4870s or even with my current CrossFire setup, I have never had any problems that you have described concerning power issues, but I have had numerous BSODs that were always traced back to the video drivers. Each and every time, the problem was remedied by uninstalling Catalyst and the display driver, rebooting into safe mode and running Driver Sweeper, then rebooting again and installing the current Catalyst drivers.

I would try to uninstall Catalyst and any other AMD driver (from the Custom selection during uninstallation) that is not an *integral* system driver then going the route of Driver Sweeper in Safe Mode, then rebooting and installing the current Catalyst.

I took your advice and updated my video drivers. Turns out I was a couple of versions behind. I've put it to sleep four times this afternoon since doing that, and I haven't had the problem yet.

I have my fingers crossed that that might be it. Thanks.

 

[mpcrsc562]

No prob. Hope it stay "fixed" for you.

 

[Mellon Head]

No prob. Hope it stay "fixed" for you.

And "fixed" it has stayed. Thanks for the great advice.