HD5850 voltage spike to over 1.6 caused by voltage monitors

[Termie]

I was playing some BC2 today and ran into a very strange and somewhat scary problem: the voltage spiked to over 1.6v on my HD5850 (with reference board/cooler). The first time, I had no idea what happened...the VGA fan just sped up and then the computer crashed. The second time I had adjusted my fans to ramp up earlier, and sure enough, as soon as I heard the fan go wild, I was able to switch to Afterburner to see what the heck was going on. The voltage was at 1.6 (default is 1.087), and the temp was 86 and climbing. I pulled the plug on the computer, not knowing what else to do.

So, after a little research, I think I know what happened. I installed HWMonitor 1.16 this morning, which adds monitoring of the volterra regulator on my HD5850. Well, Afterburner does the same thing, and some googling suggests that running two voltage meters at the same time can cause the voltage spike I experienced.

Needless to say, I've uninstalled HWMonitor 1.16, but I was wondering if any of you gurus had some ideas about why this would have happened.

 

[Termie]

As a quick update, I contacted the makers of HWMonitor (CPUID, the makers of CPU-Z), and they believe a resource conflict could be causing the voltage spike on Ati 58x0 series cards. They've contacted MSI, the makers of Afterburner, to find a solution. In the meantime, I'd recommend anyone using a 58x0 card avoid running two programs simultaneously that poll the voltage on their cards.