Radeon 5xxx Owners Report Grey Screens/Hangs

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I've edited my post to bring the attention to an article on Toms Hardware I recently read regarding my problem.

Radeon 5xxx Owners Report Grey Screens/Hangs

I just wanted to make this first post more relative to the topic which is also what I started discussing here.

A more detailed description of some of the diagnosing I have been doing is described here:

My Troubleshooting


EDIT:

Appears there is a hot fix for this;

support.amd-hotfix

 

[zerocool84]

Have you put back in your 4870 to make sure?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Sadly the 4870 was sold the day after I put my order in for the 5870 at the egg. I do have a 1900XTX though. The only problem is this hasn't crashed for over a week so if I put the 1900XTX in and 2 weeks goes by without a crash and on the 15th day it crashes, alot of time and money could be wasted.

 

[tweakboy]

Of course video drivers can cause BSOD's.

Best thing to do is boot into safe mode, uninstall all nvidia. Run driver sweeper from www.guru3d.com then boot into normal mode and install latest WHQL from nvidia. let us know

 

[happy medium]

Why have I seen this problem before. I've read many complaints like this.
I had trouble with flash videos and games. I have my clocks idle set at 700, 1150 all the time now instead of the power saving stuff and it hasnt crashed since.

My idle 2d card clocks are 700,1150 and when I play a game they go to 870, 1335.
I did the driver sweeper thing and that didnt help.

I think its a video driver problem.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'm going to go pick up a XFX 5870 tomorrow from MicroCenter and test things out. If it crashes again, then I know its not the card and I can either RMA the Sapphire for a new one and sell it or sell the XFX.

In the meantime, I'm going to pull the ram sticks and let them sit for a few and then re-install them - its crazy and a far shot but ya never know. If it's not the video cards, then my next bet is the RAM.

I did try updating to the 10.1 drivers and it crashed again.

 

[happy medium]

I meant a driver problem overall not just for you.
Alot of people are complaining about this.

 

[jpeake]

XP event viewer is worthless for stop errors. you can download the Windows debugging tools, and symbols, and open the dump file for a better look. most of it may be greek, but it will tell you all the gory details.

 

[jpeake]

I can look at it if you want. Set your debugging flag to minidump, and email me the file next time is BSOD's

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

XP event viewer is worthless for stop errors. you can download the Windows debugging tools, and symbols, and open the dump file for a better look. most of it may be greek, but it will tell you all the gory details.

Windows debugging tools? Is that a windows M$ download? Do I need the 64bit or the 32bit? They refer to the processor not the OS

 

[jpeake]

yes, you can get them at the WHDC site here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

you will need to match the OS, not the CPU.

after you install, open the program WinDbg, click FILE menu and OPEN CRASHDUMP.

You need to give WinDbg a location of the Windows symbols packages. you can either point it at the set that MS publishes on their site, or you can download the package to your PC. I usually just download to the PC

Run WinDbg against the latest dump file (which the BSOD generates), and then use the analyze -v option for verbose. it will tell you exactly what went down. Post the result output here and we can take a look

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

In the meantime, I did the Auto-tune in the CCC panel, while p95 was running and it passed with 890Mhz core and 1290Mhz mem. I also stressed the card with the Furmark stability tester while p95 was running and it didn't crash (atleast 30 min 430w load)

10.1 drivers
CPU stock clocks (never have overclocked this thing)
RAM at stock timings and voltages
XP Pro on 150g drive (crashes)
Vista U 64 on 300g SCSI drive (crashes)
Crashes in UT3, COD.WAW...
Crashes in 2D desktop mode
Crashes in 3D mode
The crashes can be as random as every other boot to 1 week

So, I need debugger 32bit for my XP Pro right? and the Symbols download as well?

EDIT:
When it would crash in Vista, the screen would look similar to this with the vertical lines and the colors being grey.

 

[jpeake]

correct

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Ok, well, I went the new card route - trying an XFX 5870

2-3 days left on the Sapphire 30 day replacement only policy (new eggs)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

omg it just crashed with this new test card

 

[mindless1]

This is seemingly becoming a common problem with 5xxx series cards. There are a few links to related topics and resolution attempts at that other hardware 'site.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html?xtmc=radeon&xtcr=1

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

This is seemingly becoming a common problem with 5xxx series cards. There are a few links to related topics and resolution attempts at that other hardware 'site.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html?xtmc=radeon&xtcr=1

Thanks for the heads up mindless. Any information is helpful.

Cheers

 

[happy medium]

I read the entire article and the one thing that stood out for me was the pausing I had happening in Crysis that they do mention.
Tha game would actually stop for 30 sec or so and then continue.
It was like it corrected itself. Mabe its the Ecc memory?

 

[Hyperlite]

I read the entire article and the one thing that stood out for me was the pausing I had happening in Crysis that they do mention.
Tha game would actually stop for 30 sec or so and then continue.
It was like it corrected itself. Mabe its the Ecc memory?

I had this happening on 9.12 in ME2. It would freeze for several seconds and then recover. It became a terminal crash when i upgraded to 10.1. I also had an issue in RE5 where the screen would freeze and the system would be completely unresponsive for about 45 seconds, then RE would crash and i could resume normal operation.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

From reading these forums it seems like ATI cards are much more problematic than Nvidia cards.

 

[ronnn]

Radeon dx11 is likely more problematic than Nvida dx11

 

[happy medium]

I had this happening on 9.12 in ME2. It would freeze for several seconds and then recover. It became a terminal crash when i upgraded to 10.1. I also had an issue in RE5 where the screen would freeze and the system would be completely unresponsive for about 45 seconds, then RE would crash and i could resume normal operation.

I hit escape and it wouldnt crash. It would go to menu screen with Crysis.

Modern warfare 2 would just crash to desktop and give me some driver reset error.

It hasnt happend for a while,but mabe because I finished those games and just been play CSS again.

 

[zerocool84]

Radeon dx11 is likely more problematic than Nvida dx11

Do you think out this post before you wrote it cus it makes no sense?

 

[Will Robinson]

Seeing Nvidia don't make DX11 video cards it's probably just a new troll.

 

[Keysplayr]

I did a google for this issue. Here are a few of the forums that have threads on this.

http://www.hardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1466677

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/275647-33-grey-screen-thin-verticle-lines-5870

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=122932&enterthread=y&STARTPAGE=12

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=309921

http://forums.technicallity.com/showthread.php?p=5913

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=17782

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=9536&PID=109280

http://www.amazon.com/XFX-RADEON-587...ews/B002Q5V704

http://www.overclock.net/ati/650900-gray-screen-explained-5xxx-series-updated-2.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gray-Screen-of-Death-Fix-Being-Worked-on-by-ATI-133582.shtml

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1058256&sid=d20f18132a4b3a1e889253d468561a0b

http://www.semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1224&page=10

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7385&PID=57355

Ok, I got tired of pasting links. Needless to say, this is a very widespread issue.
As I read, I get the feeling that this is some sort of power management problem with the cards. I linked semiaccurate forum thread as well. Charlie Demerjian feels it's some sort of thermal problem of a PC component. But not the GPU (big surprise). "To me, I would bet that it is a thermal problem, a component overheating, not the GPU."

The good thing about this being widespread is that it should get addressed/fixed much faster than normal. I actually had no idea that this was happening. I was considering buying a 5850 to mess around with. I do this every other gen or so from ATI.