HD7870 PCS+ Problems

[Krangence]

I have recently purchased a ATI Radeon HD 7870 PC+ 2GB off ebuyer.

Since I purchased the card, it has been randomly making my PC BSOD/Crash.

I get a bug code of 278 - Basically the Graphics Card fails to refresh or something.

I have sent it back to ebuyer to be tested on 11th April. This morning (18th April) I have been informed by ebuyer that there is nothing wrong with the card.

My Rig has the following specs

Asus M4A79 XTD EVO Motherboard

AMD Phenom Black Edition x 4 955 3.2GHz

4GB Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz

2GB HD 7870 PCS+

120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

1 x 500GB HDD, 1 x 1TB HDD

850W PSU

Antec 1200 Case

The old card I have is 1GB HD 4890.

The new card 7870 has 2 x 6pin Power Connectors and my old card has 1 x 6pin and 1 x 8pin Power Connectors. So the card should work perfectly fine. The New card boots perfectly fine into Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit and will happily sit and play MW3 and SWTOR, the only problem is when I leave the computer unattended for 30 Minutes or so. This is when my pc crashes and restarts.

I have the most up to date drivers from ATI.

Any help would be appreciated, as I am really confused at the current moment as to what to do.

Either buy a new Mobo and CPU or upgrade the PSU are my only choices available left I feel

[Rastalovich]

Is your computer set to either power save or sleep in 30 mins ?

[Krangence]

I believe not, as i leave it on over night some nights downloading game updates.

Would power save affect the graphics card refresh timer?

[Rastalovich]

Jeez, who knows when something is going wrong.

What you could try is to eliminate all forms of power saving by opening cmd.exe (type cmd in the start->search and it should come up) under administration (right click on it and run-as), then when the cmd opens type:

powercfg.exe -h off

Which should remove all the hibernation factors. Be sure to then go into control panel-> power settings and make sure your computer is on performance and not balanced or something else.

(assuming you want to take all the power saving things away from your computer, you can always enable them again afterwards)

[daletur328]

Did you sweep the old driver from your system? I had no end of random crashes, some similar to yours, random shutdowns, when I installed my new ATI card. I replaced an earlier gen ATI card but had latest driver, and just removed it under windows before changing card and installing driver again. It was a pain until someone suggested using drive sweeper, getting rid of all traces with cccleaner and then reinstalling driver with new card. Been great since then.

And do you have problems when running a Gpu stress test, I did but after the sweep fix not a problem. If you can run stress test for more than your 30 min window and no problems, it may not be your Gpu.

[Krangence]

i'll try running cmd prompt thing and control panel settings

@daletur328 - i have recently formatted my computers OS drive (the SSD above) just be on the safe side and it still did it then ... but if you can link me something to do a 30 min GPU stress test and for the cccleaner i will be most grateful

[YogevSkill]

Originally Posted by Rastalovich

Jeez, who knows when something is going wrong.

What you could try is to eliminate all forms of power saving by opening cmd.exe (type cmd in the start->search and it should come up) under administration (right click on it and run-as), then when the cmd opens type:

powercfg.exe -h off

Which should remove all the hibernation factors. Be sure to then go into control panel-> power settings and make sure your computer is on performance and not balanced or something else.

(assuming you want to take all the power saving things away from your computer, you can always enable them again afterwards)

yep the above is a good place to start.

eliminating the sleep/Hibernation feature.

you should also:

1. chang different refresh rate's. and check .

2. same for screen resolution's.

3. use driver sweeper or Catalyst Control Center remover. and re- intall the driver only. and check.

4. plug back your old card and repeat step 3. after removing CCC plug the new card. install drivers.

5. try a different power cable from your PSU.

more info on the Shutdown is needed. do you have BLUE SCREENS?. is it a windows shut down or a sudden one?

good luck for now.

[Krangence]

its just a sudden shut down like a system crash ... both of my monitors go black and then the computer automatically reboots, as if i had just turned it on

[YogevSkill]

Originally Posted by Krangence

its just a sudden shut down like a system crash ... both of my monitors go black and then the computer automatically reboots, as if i had just turned it on

You got two monitors hooked up you say?

maybe i miss it, but have you tried one monitor via dvi\ hdmi?

i had a video card that had a similar problem where , when i pluged in my secondry LCD TV display via Hdmi a blue screen pops up and the computer crashes,

when you sent it back to eBuyer they probebly checkt it with a single monitor.

try using one monitor on every output on video card one at a time and check .

one of the output might be the culprit.

p.s are the monitors the same brand and model?

[Krangence]

Yes the monitors are both the same brand ... they are ACER 21.5" Monitors.

and yes they probly did, i might ring the them as I dont have the card back yet and ask if they can try the card with 2 monitors