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Any other 5800 series owner encountered this Windows problem?

D

doozyeff

Junior Member
Hey all,

So I recently took delivery of a 5850 which replaced a 4870 I had before. Generally, all is well, and I'm very happy with the purchase.

However there's a problem I'm having with Windows 7 (64bit), and I'm not entirely sure how to troubleshoot it down to a particular issue and wonder whether any other 5800-series owners have noticed anything like this.

It's persisted through the 10.3 Catalyst drivers, into the 10.4 preview and now the 10.4 release driver. Having an Aero-enabled theme appears to be the one requirement to go about reproducing this.

I can be doing any usual activity - browsing websites in Firefox, chatting on irc, writing up reports in Word, when suddenly the windows display just starts to jerk about, for lack of a better description. Scrolling in Firefox will get jumpy, as if the graphics card is dropping frames while redrawing the screen. Videos playing in MPC will start to jerk about a bit, whether windowed or full screen. This just suddenly seems to start happening - I can't find out the cause, but if I switch to a non-Aero theme and back again, it completely fixes it until some point in the future.

Does any of this sound at all familiar or explainable? 🙁

I also switched from a Core2 Duo system to an i7-860, and the problem has persisted across the motherboard / cpu change.
 
To me it sounds like a faulty card. The memory chips seem to be bad as this is behavior I see when those start to go.
 
what else happens when the "jerk" happens?

Is it just the visuals or does it for example stop your mp3 playing in the background etc? or a file transfer is paused while the jerk is happening etc.
 
I haven't yet figured out exactly what's causing it. At first I thought it was a problem with the Steam Beta UI I switched to, but it's reoccuring without steam open, or running in the background. It doesn't seem to affect anything non-graphical, sound works as normal. If I'm busy doing something and I notice it's started happening I can continue doing whatever I was doing without much of a problem (unless its something graphical / video related).

It does continue to jerk about until I do the aero switch toggle, although I've not gotten around to just leaving it and seeing if it sorts itself out (impatience 🙁 ). Also can't see anything in event viewer logs around the time it happens so really not sure how to troubleshoot it / reproduce it 100%. I've got some time off tomorrow so I'll see if I can figure out a way to reliably reproduce it.
 
Like the screen starts drawing 1 frame per 5 seconds, goes black, then draws some, the mouse has a 5 second lag?

I've had this since I bought my 5770 in February. That stuttering is the driver crashing and Windows repeatedly trying to recover. My Event Viewer shows a bunch of ATIxxxxxx has become unstable and successfully (not true) recovered. It's happened since 10.1. However, it seems they solved it in 10.3 for NON-Aero desktop; it doesn't crash if you use a non-Aero theme. I've not had one major problem in a game that hasn't been recoverable by Ctrl-Alt-Del. I always had to force a restart to get it going again.
 
Imp said:
Like the screen starts drawing 1 frame per 5 seconds, goes black, then draws some, the mouse has a 5 second lag?
Click to expand...

Luckily its not that severe, although I did have the driver crashing while playing around with Flash 10.1, which eventually resulting in a BSOD 🙁

The best way I can think to illustrate the problem is if I try to record my desktop using Fraps. Fraps can record an aero-enabled desktop, so if I set it to record at full resolution (1920x1200) at 30fps, it can't quite manage it - gets maybe 25-27 fps. This essentially locks Windows to that frame rate too and gives almost the exact same chugginess / jerkiness that I encounter randomly. It's as if the graphics card gets stuck doing some processing that shouldn't be there and its impacting on windows display / refresh performance.
 
doozyeff said:
Luckily its not that severe, although I did have the driver crashing while playing around with Flash 10.1, which eventually resulting in a BSOD 🙁

The best way I can think to illustrate the problem is if I try to record my desktop using Fraps. Fraps can record an aero-enabled desktop, so if I set it to record at full resolution (1920x1200) at 30fps, it can't quite manage it - gets maybe 25-27 fps. This essentially locks Windows to that frame rate too and gives almost the exact same chugginess / jerkiness that I encounter randomly. It's as if the graphics card gets stuck doing some processing that shouldn't be there and its impacting on windows display / refresh performance.
Click to expand...

Check your event log like Imp suggested. If the driver is crashing, then you know what the problem is.
 
HumblePie said:
To me it sounds like a faulty card. The memory chips seem to be bad as this is behavior I see when those start to go.
Click to expand...

This. I had to send back a Visiontek 5850 a few weeks ago. I had what you have there, in addition to ridiculous frames on games and benches.
 
Based on posts on the AMD forums, this sounds like it could be due to the card clock speed being too low in 2d mode, or due to insufficient idle voltage. Check the AMD forum, one of the solutions was editing the CCC profile to force higher idle clock speeds, another potential fix was to e-mail your card's manufacturer and inquire about if an updated BIOS is available.
 
QuantumPion said:
Based on posts on the AMD forums, this sounds like it could be due to the card clock speed being too low in 2d mode, or due to insufficient idle voltage. Check the AMD forum, one of the solutions was editing the CCC profile to force higher idle clock speeds, another potential fix was to e-mail your card's manufacturer and inquire about if an updated BIOS is available.
Click to expand...

This.

You can also edit the BIOS yourself and change the clocks, but it may void your warranty. I tinkered with such things for days until I got exactly what I wanted.
 
What a PITA these cards have been for some, you're certainly not alone.Welcome to AT, hopefully you're a new member!
 
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