XFX HD 5870 xxx Edition (Grey Screens / Verticle Stripes Problem)

[MaCuS]

Hello all,

First i want to thank Aria for getting the order to me as soon as humanly possible. Every thing arrived in good order as it should have and i was very happy with the service.

The Problem:

The Video card comes factory overclocked at 875/1300 (GPU/VRAM). Everything installs fine and does not show any indication of problems untill the video drivers are installed. At the stock settings the machine is unable to play any games with out grey/verticle stripe screens appearing. I can't even run Windows experince rating system. To get the machine to anytype of stability i had to use safemode under a lower screen resolution and turn of windows aero. I think began reading online forums such as AMD and anything that popped up on google. I was quite surprised to see alot of people sharing this same problem.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...hreadid=124747

The first thing i done (reading from someone else with the exact card) was clock my card to the vanilla settings (850/1200) using overdrive in the CCC. Games and everything seemed to work fine. Although crashing was not completly resolved. I then moved to chipset drivers/motherboard bios etc. I've actaully ended up even buying a new PSU thinking mine might have been lacking the power required and still no diffrence made. I was hoping with most of the reading i've done that i could maybe figure out if it was a driver or card fault but its impossible to know with the amount of posts made by people and AMD saying they are aware of the problem and progress is ongoing. I have tried the card in another machine also which had the same problems. I've treid 3 operating systems Linux/Windows Vista x86/Windows 7 x64. Even linux can flash the bars up. So i've decided to go down the RMA line myself and see if it brings any resolution. I'll be calling on monday to see where i go from there and if it does solve my problem i'll post here and also on the AMD forums. If anyone needs anymore information other than what i have posted please ask as im quite sure there has been other things i have tried. (Most things posted on forum)

The System:

Motherboard: Maximus 3 Formula (Tried all Bios versions)

Processor: Intel Core I7 860 (Tried all chipset drivers)

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 8GB 1600 (Dual Channel) (Tried removing sticks and swapping about and also clocking up and down)

GFX: XFX Radeon HD5870 XXX Edition (Tried all cat versions)

Sound: PCI Xfi Fatility Champion Series / Also On Board Xfi (Removed Sound when testing)

PSU: Enermax 620W (ELT620AWT) (tried card in another machine same OS) (Now Upgraded to Corsair HX850W with no change)

HDD: 74GB WesternDigital Raptor / 2 x 320 GB Western Digital Drivers / 2 x 500GB Seagate Drives. (Used 1 drive when testing)

OS: Windows 7 X64 Pro (I've treid Vista X86 and Linux mint with problems also)

[Tatts]

Have you tried various catalyst drivers?

[marsey99]

sound like a driver issue to me and reading that link confirms it, i would look around for a beta driver to see if its been fixxed or try to findout which update caused it and uninstall that.

3dguru forums are my fave place for beta gpu drivers

[MaCuS]

Yeah i've been thinking that although the beta 10.1 have been tried by others with no fix. Another thing that puts me off a driver issue is its flickering i've seen in Linux also. I've tried all Cat versions yes. Im thinking about waiting for the official release of the new Cat to see if any bug fixing is included. You can get tired of waiting though might RMA it and that would confirm to me if its a driver fault or hardware. I think it could be faulty Vram to as i can adjust the GPU but when i touch the vram it all goes tits up.

[Tatts]

Just a thought but can you clock it down to say 800/100 as the other down-clock helped?

[marsey99]

wonder if its more of a bios balls up?

i would mail xfx and see what they say.

[Will]

I hope I don't get any of these problems when my 5870 arrives

[MaCuS]

Yeah i was talking to XFX. Supplied them with the link of the forum and they are basically reading through it to see if they can find any resolutions which does'nt build my cofidence. Yes i was thinking the Bios with the powerplay clock settings might be presenting a problem. Time can only tell.

[marsey99]

have you left any monitoring software running to make sure all the clocks are going to the right speeds when they should be?

only it could be the clocks are staying at 2d speeds when you need the 3d speeds power.

[Andrew Moore]

I know it may sound stupid but have you installed a 32bit driver on a 64bit OS or a 64bit driver ona 32bit OS.

Its a pain to do but some people can manage it (bless em)...

Just thought I would get the silly Q out the way first.


Andy