The first official "i got a bad 5870" thread (i think)

[faxon]

So yea, the XFX HD5870 i got seems to have a bad memory chip! When i got it i noticed some serious polygon artifacts when i loaded to many times in fallout3, in rapid succession, but i shrugged it off as a driver thing (launch drivers and all) when the first update fixed it. yesterday however, i started getting repeated crashing the second i started up a race (any race) in DIRT 2. so i went on a troubleshooting round, installed 9.12 drivers, and all was good last night. today when i get back however and start up DIRT 2 again, i get some mean texture artifacting, and i crash exactly the same way (picture freeze, followed by sound freeze, and then black screen + reboot) the second i start up another race. took out my launch card, the one i experienced the prior problems with, to run with my card i got 3 weeks later only. passed half an hour on the OCCT GPU tester's error checker with 0 errors, and im in dirt 2 now with no errors.

and the question! has anyone else seen this yet? praying my card is an isolated case now ()

 

[Hauk]

So your first card is suspect then? You remove it and use the new card only and all is well with same system settings? Sounds like you're already doing it, but you'll want to run/test everything with the new card installed, then rerun with the old card only installed. Could be a weak first card, but CF takes everything to a new level. I'd test each individually, then may CF with the suspect card as primary, then as secondary. Fun stuff!

 

[faxon]

yea i havent had time today at all to test the suspect one, was out partying all day since it's the last day of vacation for a bunch of my friends, i will check into it today once i wake up. i ran OCCT again on it 5 hours today while i was out at lunch + at the park with friends, and again no errors, so i will check. my suspect card only exhibited sketchy operation when i was playing or loading stressful games quickly (FC2, FO3, and now DIRT2), and i did get a chance last night to run it through the easily reproducible situations where it errored before, again nothing. gonna give my suspect card the same testing. also, this card was the primary in my CF setup, so i will do as you said and see how it works as the secondary as well. if it's a memory error as i suspect though, putting it in as secondary or primary shouldnt matter since CF uses both card's memory equally doesnt it? correct me if im wrong, but it should show up regardless of if it's primary or secondary, unless im understanding it wrong

 

[HumblePie]

I had the same thing happen with my 4870x2. I had to go through 4 different cards before I found one that was stable at stock speeds. I have yet to OC my card that I've been running for the past 6 months stock because of how many previous cards were not even stable at stock speed.

It happens and it sucks when it does. I was just one of those unlucky people that had it happen 3 times in a row!

Usually if you get artifacts, it's usually best to assume it's faulty hardware if you can't get others with the same card to have the same artifact at the same spot.

 

[lyssword]

hmm my brother had issues getting dirt2 to work on 3650 (crash/sound freeze etc) maybe it's the ati driver/game issue.