Diamond HD3870 Failure?

[tshannon92]

Ive been building my own systems since I started messing with computers but Im sorta stuck here.

I bought the Diamond HD3870 on 11/15/07. I got it on the 21st or so and all went well. Fantastic card imo.

I got the Idea to Crossfire 2 of them so I bought an ECS KA9 Extreme and I recieved that 3 days ago. I moved everything into a full tower I had bought a new PSU also.

New install of Vista 32 and all runs really really well for 24 hours.

Last nite I was watching a an .MKV, and my system got really slow and I got a "your display adapter has stopped working" and crash.

I restart and Its slow and crashes again. I tried to uninstall the CCC and disable the card and start over and the 7.11's say I have no hardware... It has defaulted to "Standard Display Adapter" in the device manager.

I reinstalled another PCIE gpu I had laying around and all seems fine. I tried the HD 3870 after Driver cleaner and safe mode and still Catalyst says it cannot detect hardware. Weird thing is I still have a vast choice of resolutions with the failed one, if it is failed...

My main moniter is a Magnovox 26 inch HDTV using DVI. My secondary is Sharp Aquos 42 (for Bluray and HDTV, H264)

Anyone have it fail, but not burn up before? It wasnt even that hot when I took it out and I had been monitoring temps using Riva tuner because I didnt like how hot the default HD3870 card got without a bump in the fan.

Im so mad... I have set up an RMA but Id prefer not to have to do that, any ideas?

Thanks so much love this forum.

 

[thilanliyan]

I keep getting the Driver Stopped error in most games except Crysis as well. I've tried so many different combinations of software that I'm starting to think maybe it IS the card. I may have to RMA as well. Oh and mine is a Diamond card as well.

 

[tshannon92]

I think my mistake was to try to immediately wipe it and start fresh... because I cannot get the drivers to even see the card anymore, and they did before I uninstalled it. I wasn't playing a game but I was sorta stressing it a little? I was streaming the .mkv to the Aquos via HDMI and running something else ( dont remember what) on the other HDTV (reg monitor) I have been thinking about losing the 26 inch because though its great for movies it sucks as a regular monitor...

I had been playing Bioshock before the movie but I actually checked temps before and after, I always do that with a new build outta habit and all was fine.

The specs are:
AMD 62X2 5600 (stock)
ECS Ka9 MVP
2G DDR2 800
HD3870 ---> Now a 8600gt :-(
Thermaltake Crossfire 550W
WD Raptor 74
Sata 300g
Clean Vista 32

 

[Griswold]

I had the "driver stopped working" message after 2 days of no issues at all with my HIS 3870 and Crysis. The only apparent reason was that I installed RivaTuner and monitored the temperature and clock speeds on a second screen while playing. Back on the desktop, the error started to appear. After a couple of these pop-ups the system froze. After reboot, I didnt touch RivaTuner again and all has been fine since then.

This is with Vista64 and the Crysis "hotfix" driver which is just a newer/modified 7.11 anyway.

 

[tshannon92]

Interesting, but you guys can still use your cards, my drivers refuse to load. In fact it says I have NO Hardware though my resolutions choices are still there. I ran DC in Safe Mode 2X as after I installed the GF8600 I decided to try again. I may try a fresh install as my motherboard driver CD isn't working and the download from the website is just amazingly stupidly slow. I have a spare HDD I may just run off a fresh XP install and see what happens maybe my mobo got corrupted for some odd reason. Though I don't know why the 8600gt would still work if that were the case...

 

[tuteja1986]

Okay :! advice

Clean Format
Install Windows XP
Install all windows update
Install Cat 7.11 driver
Turn on Crossfire

 

[Puffnstuff]

Sounds like your card has failed. Most electronics fail early in their life if they are going to fail and that is a good thing. RMA your card back and relax a bit.

 

[james1701]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
Okay :! advice

Clean Format
Install Windows XP
Install all windows update
Install Cat 7.11 driver
Turn on Crossfire

Pull one of the cards on reinstall. After you get everything working, then put in the second card.

 

[tshannon92]

UPDATE!

OK I must say I don't use Crossfire yet, I wasn't clear on that, sorry. I will be soon I just got the mainboard after the card and will buy a second 3870 soon.

Im going to be specific in case someone else has this problem and needs help. I truly cound't find anything on Google about this, it stumped me but maybe someone will read this and itll help them.

It was a combination of Me+Vista that was the problem. While packaging my HD3870 last nite I had an Extra HDD laying there and said wtf lemme try XP, I want an XP install anyway because I have something old that isn't supported under Vista so I unplugged all my Sata drives and booted up an XP install.

When I got in it showed "standard VGA adapter" and I proceeded to put on the main board drivers and vga drivers and...CCC found and installed no problem. I setup the XP system for a bit and honed it to where I like it (after doing this at least 25 times it only takes an hour or so) I then installed WIC and ran benchmarks on High settings and adjusted the fan using Rivatuner, no problems at all.

It got me wanting to find the Vista problem as I was sure it wasn't the card now. In the end I just reinstalled Vista and had no problems at all.

I think that when the problem happened it was I who messed it all up. When it froze I went to the device manager and "uninstalled" it immediately. I was afraid of damaging it and meant to disable but after I did that it froze and I had to crash (unplug) it. I believe something with this device was fundamentally screwed after that. Like I say it still worked but only as "standard VGA adapter" not as r670/HD3870.

After reinstalling Vista I ran overdrive and tweaked a little and ran 3dmark06 4 or 5 times while keeping CC open to monitor temps and all went well. I was at 10000, and thats the same score I got the other day before the problems happened.

At this point I don't think Im going to RMA it... It was me who did something Ive never done before on an OS I have not really gotten to know like I did XP.

Thanks for the help and if anyone has had this happen, or something like it please tell me. I'd still like to know why the driver failed in the first place though I think maybe the problem you guys had was mine but I never tried to play games after that because I uninstalled it...Thanks so much

Edit: spelling

 

[clickynext]

Originally posted by: tshannon92
UPDATE!

OK I must say I don't use Crossfire yet, I wasn't clear on that, sorry. I will be soon I just got the mainboard after the card and will buy a second 3870 soon.

Im going to be specific in case someone else has this problem and needs help. I truly cound't find anything on Google about this, it stumped me but maybe someone will read this and itll help them.

It was a combination of Me+Vista that was the problem. While packaging my HD3870 last nite I had an Extra HDD laying there and said wtf lemme try XP, I want an XP install anyway because I have something old that isn't supported under Vista so I unplugged all my Sata drives and booted up an XP install.

When I got in it showed "standard VGA adapter" and I proceeded to put on the main board drivers and vga drivers and...CCC found and installed no problem. I setup the XP system for a bit and honed it to where I like it (after doing this at least 25 times it only takes an hour or so) I then installed WIC and ran benchmarks on High settings and adjusted the fan using Rivatuner, no problems at all.

It got me wanting to find the Vista problem as I was sure it wasn't the card now. In the end I just reinstalled Vista and had no problems at all.

I think that when the problem happened it was I who messed it all up. When it froze I went to the device manager and "uninstalled" it immediately. I was afraid of damaging it and meant to disable but after I did that it froze and I had to crash (unplug) it. I believe something with this device was fundamentally screwed after that. Like I say it still worked but only as "standard VGA adapter" not as r670/HD3870.

After reinstalling Vista I ran overdrive and tweaked a little and ran 3dmark06 4 or 5 times while keeping CC open to monitor temps and all went well. I was at 10000, and thats the same score I got the other day before the problems happened.

At this point I don't think Im going to RMA it... It was me who did something Ive never done before on an OS I have not really gotten to know like I did XP.

Thanks for the help and if anyone has had this happen, or something like it please tell me. I'd still like to know why the driver failed in the first place though I think maybe the problem you guys had was mine but I never tried to play games after that because I uninstalled it...Thanks so much

Edit: spelling

I might have run into a similar problem before in Vista. When you uninstall a hardware driver, if you choose the option to delete the driver, sometimes Vista seems to have trouble installing drivers for the same piece of hardware later on. It really shouldn't happen, I'm not sure why it does. I'm on an NVIDIA card. I think how I resolved it was by going to the device manager, and choosing "Update driver" on the "Standard VGA adapter", and then choosing to specify the driver files manually.

 

[bryanW1995]

yet one more reason that I'm still using xphome. that and the high cost of vista...and performance hit...

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: tshannon92
After reinstalling Vista I ran overdrive and tweaked a little and ran 3dmark06 4 or 5 times while keeping CC open to monitor temps and all went well. I was at 10000, and thats the same score I got the other day before the problems happened.

At this point I don't think Im going to RMA it... It was me who did something Ive never done before on an OS I have not really gotten to know like I did XP.

Thanks for the help and if anyone has had this happen, or something like it please tell me. I'd still like to know why the driver failed in the first place though I think maybe the problem you guys had was mine but I never tried to play games after that because I uninstalled it...Thanks so much

Edit: spelling

Could you try Call of Duty 4?? I reinstalled Vista...installed driver normally and still get the driver stopped error unless I underclock my ram.

Some other person at Xtremesystems has had the same problems with CoD 4...every other game (mostly older ones) are fine but CoD4 gives the error. I actually get the error with all new games (CoD4, GoW, Pro Street) except Crysis...where I can overclock my core to 891 and memory to about 1330MHz without issue.

I haven't had a chance to try XP yet....gotta give it a try.

 

[tshannon92]

Clicky: That was going to be what I tried next but even downloading just the Cat driver was still a package so It would have taken fiddling.

Thilan: I have COD4 and will try it when I get home or tomorrow. When it happened I was playing (that day or the day before) COD4,Fifa08, Hellgate: London, MOHAA, Crysis, and Bioshock. But it was a movie that did it!

I repeated what caused the problem (thought it shouldn't have if the 8600gt could handle it) I was watching an HD vid on the 42" and surfing on the 26" and watched the whole movie no problem.
I ran 4 more 3d mark06 tests all 9880-10003 on clocks between 777/1150- 860/1300 and all went well. Then installed MOHAA and played for about an hour or so while Rivatuner2.06 logged the temps and clocks, all well again.

Looks as though it was just one of those weird computer things. I actually took the whole thing apart yesterday to install a FDD and reseated everything on the board and the PSU also just for the heck of it. Im gonna stick with the Vista for now but I installed the FDC so I can just boot the XP Pro from a floppy when I want and since Ill not be using it much Ill avoid the boot mngr.

 

[tshannon92]

Ok I installed COD4 and ran a few "levels" up to getting on the heli with Nicolai and all was fine. In fact when I looked at the settings it bumped up my AA more than with the last vista instll dunno why?

I ran 3dmark06 a few more times OC my 5600+ to 3000mhz and It jumped up to 10790 man that thing is processor marker. First 5 times I kept pushing the video card more and more to get 10k but a small OC on the Proc and BAM almost 1k more...

Thanks to everyone who helped

 

[taltamir]

that driver stopped working and was restarted message is a misleading one... it is actually the VIDEO card that stopped working and was restarted... Vista + new drivers can do that... what would have been a BSOD a year ago but now it makes it power cycles the video card only (and restarts the driver) and gives you that message. So the question is, why did your video card crash? heat? overclocking? defective card?

 

[tshannon92]

Taltamir: Yeah I read that. I also read somewhere that due to the nature of Vista and Video card drivers that only one App can use it? I think in the end it was me uninstalling it (by accident) right as it froze instead or doing something smarter...then it crashed as I did that so something was seriously fundamentally ruined. If the XP hadn't worked I wouldve tried filechecking next and then repairing but It wasn't necessary. I have tried to recreate the problem and I have OC the hell out of it since to see if that was it and no joy.

When it happened I was at stock setting 777/1100? (fan included :-() Last nite I was stressing it at 862/1320 or so and it ran cool and great during benchmarks and during gaming. I decided to use some thermal paste on the GPU also and that dropped it a few degrees.

And also when I tried a fresh install of XP on a separate HDD it worked right away but then plugging back into the damaged Vista system it still refused to work, or be discovered by vista at all.