Picked up a 4890.. puzzling troubles

[CraigRT]

So I picked up a used Gigabyte 4890OC the one with the Zalman cooler on it.. Sweet card!

The card was to replace my Sapphire 4850 in my days old new i7 rig. The Sapphire card was running problem free in my i7 and my old Opteron system before the 4890.

The problem is, oddly enough, all but 3D.. All 3D games play perfect and are smooth with no issues at all. Except for things like... Playing Left 4 Dead 2, finish a campaign, after the stats, as it were to be going back to the lobby, just exits out to desktop (closes the game).... Tested Sapphire 4850 afterwards, no issue there.

Left my PC be as went to work, etc.. came home... was not responding... monitor light just flashing. Had to hold the power button down to get it to power off, then it came back up and ran fine.. Tested Sapphire 4850 afterwards, same scenario, no issue there.

However, in-game and when you think you would ever have issues with a new videocard, is all trouble free. It's this other dumb stuff.

System specs:

Gigabyte P55A-UD4P
G.Skill NQ 4GB DDR3
i7 860 not overclocked yet
Seasonic S12 600W with dual PCI-E connectors.
Win7 Pro x64

Anyone heard of anything like this? I don't want to sell the card and write it off all together, but I'm a big fan of having things work properly obviously.

 

[Tempered81]

Try some different drivers. Next try out a newer or different bios. IF all fails, get a different card.

You're using the dual PCI-connectors?

 

[CraigRT]

Try some different drivers. Next try out a newer or different bios. IF all fails, get a different card.

You're using the dual PCI-connectors?

Yep, using the dual PCI-E connectors on the S12 PSU.

And yeah, the drivers I tried were admittedly the newest ATI drivers available as of just the other day (dont recall version off hand)

Where does one find older drivers? Does Guru3D still have older drivers on file for situations like this?

 

[Tempered81]

Yup _ I have to mod drivers > 8.10 to get them to work for this mobility 2300. Plenty of experience with old drivers

 

[CraigRT]

Yup _ I have to mod drivers > 8.10 to get them to work for this mobility 2300. Plenty of experience with old drivers

Alright. I'll give the 9.xx series drivers a try when I'm at home later then Thanks for the insight.

I'll still take more though if anyone else has anything!

 

[Tempered81]

Well being as you've narrowed down the problem so well, it leaves few options for the explanation. IMO, it's either a game-specific bug that shows up on rv790, but not on rv770 when using current drivers, and that it could possible be fixed by using some older cats like 9.9, 9.10, 9.11. OR, the card is just faulty and needs to be replaced.

 

[CraigRT]

Well being as you've narrowed down the problem so well, it leaves few options for the explanation. IMO, it's either a game-specific bug that shows up on rv790, but not on rv770 when using current drivers, and that it could possible be fixed by using some older cats like 9.9, 9.10, 9.11. OR, the card is just faulty and needs to be replaced.

It's not just the game though.. It's also this unable to send signal to the monitor after it powers down problem. It's just a simple 20 minute idle monitor power down setting via Win7. It fails to wake up after this and the system is unusable because of it. (gotta hard boot it)

But even with L4D2, the actual gameplay is flawless. It's just when the game ends and drops back to lobby. Instead of getting lobby and setting up a new campaign, I'm back at desktop. Never quite seen anything like it myself. Might send an email to Gigabyte to see if they have any insight.

 

[Udgnim]

make sure you're using 4890 drivers. they are different from 4850 drivers.

 

[tigersty1e]

Yeah, the fact that you said you swapped the 4850 after the 4890 failed implies that you didn't change drivers.

 

[Jovec]

Catalyst should automatically use the drivers for the correct card when you switch, though you'll need to reboot once or twice. I've removed a 4670 and used the 3200 IGP this way a few times without issue, and upgraded from 4850 to 5770 and 4870 to 5850 no problems either. I wouldn't think the 4890 would be different.

However, there's no harm is completely removing the drivers, rebooting, letting Windows detect a standard VGA device (or use it's own ATI drivers), reinstall, etc.

Since you bought it used, I'd check the bios, voltage, and 2D/3D clocks to make sure they are "stock." Hopefully someone didn't pass off a failed bios mod card on you...

 

[shangshang]

o oh... "used" video card. Did some one on Ebay suckered you?
Anyway..

For the monitor turning offf issue, try this.. when the monitor is blanked out, wake up the PC (by hitting any key on the k/b), and then turn OFF the monitor and turn it back ON. See if this works. This could be a specific monitor issue with the card.

As for the rest of the other isuses, I'd suggest you reinstall Windows and see of the issues go away. If they don't, then I think you got a lemon.

 

[CraigRT]

Yeah, the fact that you said you swapped the 4850 after the 4890 failed implies that you didn't change drivers.

I did, and it says they are already installed, but I over-wrote anyways. The driver details showed no difference at all over the 4850's drivers. I was lead to believe they were different too, but I really did not see otherwise after re-installing with the fresh downloaded "4890" driver. Even the file size/name was identical.

 

[CraigRT]

o oh... "used" video card. Did some one on Ebay suckered you?
Anyway..

For the monitor turning offf issue, try this.. when the monitor is blanked out, wake up the PC (by hitting any key on the k/b), and then turn OFF the monitor and turn it back ON. See if this works. This could be a specific monitor issue with the card.

As for the rest of the other isuses, I'd suggest you reinstall Windows and see of the issues go away. If they don't, then I think you got a lemon.

You cant even wake up the PC.. Hitting the power button or reset button does nothing (they work) you have to press and hold the power button for it to do anything (full shut down)

I bought the card off Redflagdeals from a reputable member.

How do I check the BIOS on the card? I wondered about upgrading it.. I am not sure how to obtain a firmware/bios update for it though.

 

[CraigRT]

Did some reading. This describes fairly closely what I am experiencing.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...&highlight_key=y&keyword1=idle%20freezing

Anyone here have any experience on this? More or less looks like I either have to try some goofy workarounds or just get another kind of card. It appears the card is not actually faulty but just causes issues in certain environments.

I BELIEVE my 4850 does not have the same GPU power save/idle modes as the 4890, thus the reason I do not have any problems with it. I am not currently at home to do more testing but I'll put the 4890 in later and try setting the GPU speed at a constant factory rated speed.