Radeon 5xxx Instabililty/Corruption Issue

[swaaye]

The instability of these cards reminds me of the nebulousness that was NVIDIA's BSOD days with early G92 hardware. That was also a hardware problem sometimes; my bro went through two 8800GT cards. He started getting instability with the card and so RMAed it and problems went away.

I say that if you're having frequent problems with your video card, return that thing ASAP. Hardware defects aren't likely to get better with age. And we've already had a few driver releases that were supposed to fix these problems for the 5xxx series. Actually, I've run across people who have no problems on older drivers but new releases bring GSOD/corruption! The notebook I returned was doing that, 10.3 no go but 9.12 all good.

 

[Albuquerque]

I see a number of people who seem to accept it, maybe in hopes of some future driver solving the problem.

I don't think you're replying to me specifically, but just in case, I'm very willing to 'accept it'. The single time it has affected me was also while overvolting and overclocking and having played for about 360 minutes straight

I'm not so sure I'd be as forgiving if it were stock clocks. If I were encountering GSOD's with just the basics and within a few days of purchase, it would most certainly be going back for replacement. In that, I agree with you 100%

 

[swaaye]

I don't think you're replying to me specifically, but just in case, I'm very willing to 'accept it'. The single time it has affected me was also while overvolting and overclocking and having played for about 360 minutes straight

No wasn't directed at you no. It sounds like you've got some good cards there! Don't blow them up!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think his was directed at people like me. But in my case, it's now to the point where I've only gotten one grey screen in the past 20 days (prior to coming to Japan). While I'm here I'm using a smaller desktop (fits in a backpack) with a 4890 (5870 too long for this micro-ITX case). And prior to that zero grey screens for over 3 months when using Hibernate versus Sleep mode.

In my case I'm not entirely convinved the video card is defective in any way. MB bios was conflicting with Video card for much of the errors. Numerous MB BIOS revisions addressing memory and multimedia playback issues (unrelated to the video card) solved most of the issues. ATI driver improved stability. And finally setting HPET from 32 to 64 bit solved virtually all remaining issues.

Interesting when I was looking into HPET, incorrect settings or implementations (MB BIOS) with that in prior operating systems would cause significant problems with sleep mode for both Nvidia and ATI cards.

Anyways, even if there is a hardware fault, by the time I head back home, SI should be released or close to release.

Regards,
SB