Some Radeon 5000-Series Users Experience Grey-Screen Crashes
Some Radeon 5000-Series Users Experience Grey-Screen Crashes
Posted 01/28/2010 at 2:52pm
| by Bart Salisbury
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The Radeon 5xxx series of graphics cards look pretty tempting, both from a specifications and a price perspective. But you might want to hold off on taking the plunge while some recently problems are sorted out. Tom’s Hardware is reporting that “a significant amount of ATI users have taken to the AMD user to user forums to complain about grey screens, crashes and colored-striped hangups.”
Jane McEntegart writes that these reports are appearing in a number of forums, but that AMD's is the best populated, with 40 pages of reports, accompanied with possible solutions. Ultimately, it’s not clear what’s behind all these issues, but the problems seem confined to the HD 5xxxx series (although there are a few mentions of 4xxx cards).
AMD’s response to one user complaint was pretty standard. First, the problem was blamed on a Windows 7 update. Second, ATI is working on the problem. And third, perform a clean reinstall of your graphics drivers. Posters to the forums aren’t convinced, as the problems seem to occur with XP and Vista. Others are suggesting it’s a motherboard issue, possibly related to RAM settings, a voltage problem, or maybe “bad system alchemy.”
In an update McEntegart says: “we're seeing the following model numbers crop up again and again: 4770, 4850, 4870, 5770, 5850 and 5870. The cards seem to be coming from all different companies; the following are the ones we've seen crop up more than a few times from different users: XFX, Sapphire, Diamond, ASUS and HIS.”
All-in-all a little patience for card owners might be in order. AMD's last word on the topic: "As with any issue of this kind, we are testing to determine under what conditions the issue manifests itself, at which point we will be able to determine how to fix the problem if it is related to the graphics card or driver." Translation: stop your whining, we'll get it fixed when we get it fixed.
UPDATE: ATI contacted us today with the following message regarding a fix: “In some instances, systems with ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 and 5700 series graphics may intermittently display a grey screen or vertical banding. We are aware of the issue and have documented it in the ATI Catalyst™ 10.1 release notes. Initial tests indicate that a driver hotfix resolves the issue. We expect to make the hotfix available shortly.”
Image Credit: ificutmyhairirelandwillsink/Flickr
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MrGeek
January 29, 2010 at 1:54pm
I was having the grey screen issue while playing Crysis. Also lots of stutter.
Sownloaded the latest patch yesterday.
Smoooth sailing now. No grey screen yet, finished Crysis @1900X1080 high settings without a hic up.
Edwincnelson
January 29, 2010 at 9:43am
I have been buying video cards yearly for about 10 years and I have had failures from every company at one time or another. About 1 1/2 years ago my 8800GT blew out after about 7 months and I switched to the 4850 which has done pretty well although the driver crashes when the control center is installed (using Riva tuner to control the fans and overclock).
This is the way it was and will always be. Over 2 million 5xxx series cards have been sold so the damage is probably a minority but there's no escaping the possibility of a driver issue or a card that won't hold up.
You could switch to consoles but the ring of death suggests that's no safe bet either. Electronics, especially modular upgradeable electronics like PCs are prone to problems inherently.
Danthrax66
January 29, 2010 at 5:16am
Sounds like user error I've never had a problem with Vista and Nvidia drivers; unless I use the one the manufacturer packages on the disc which you should never do anyway, and even then there is rarely a problem. I have had trouble with ATI drivers including no scaling on windows 7 and a lot of instability. In general Nvidia has less driver problems. And of the hundreds of Vista pc's I've worked on I've never experienced an issue with Nvidia drivers causing BSOD's, or any other problems that would cause windows to not function properly.
satanforaday
January 28, 2010 at 6:21pm
I have the same issue, I have a XFX 5770 and I play Crysis and it Freeze at the same spot every time. I am fighting some Monster on the Ship. I will play it and I just Fezzes on me and i have to restart the game and it does it again. It also shorts out some times in when i am playing around on the desktop. I have Win 7 64 bit and i just Download the new Drives today and its still messing up
Xmodgeek
January 28, 2010 at 6:39pm
I have a 4850x2 (loving my quad monitors =p) I've had a vary similar issues was Crysis where it would crash with that boss on the aircraft carrier but it did the same on my laptop with a 8600GTM turns out it had something to do with the save games or something. I reinstalled Crysis and only loaded the one save game and I could finish the game... finaly...
shooting that thing with missiles for ever just to have it crash was... a drag to say the least.
satanforaday
January 28, 2010 at 6:48pm
LOL thanks man... I got a feeling it was something to do with Crysis... I run it through steam so i thought if it was that, they would just Update what was wrong and reinstall it.....
bikerbub
January 28, 2010 at 5:52pm
Didn't amd just release new drivers earlier this week?
just upgraded to a 5770 myself, haven't upgraded the drivers yet though, and haven't gotten the "gsod." It is crossfired with my 4870, wonder if that has anything to do with it?
bikerbub
January 28, 2010 at 5:56pm
Didn't amd just release new drivers earlier this week?
just upgraded to a 5770 myself, haven't upgraded the drivers yet though, and haven't gotten the "gsod." It is crossfired with my 4870, wonder if that has anything to do with it?
sorry for the double post, a mod can delete this one if need be.
JohnP
January 28, 2010 at 3:46pm
Y'know, I was concerned about this from the moment I heard that ATI and NVidia were getting such low yields on the transistion to 40nm fabs. Low yields means that there are a lot of chips, MANUFACTURED CORRECTLY, that just do not work at the rated speed. Its not manufacturing defects that kill most chips on the wafer, it is that they simply cannot run at the rated speed or some circuits just do not pass tests. I have worked on semiconductor test systems (Agilent) and they can be very good at testing a chip still on the wafer, but never as good as plugging it in and running it for a few weeks on different mobos.
To me, this issue of problems with ATI GPU cards will be eventually be found to be in the GPU on the card itself, period. Low yields, poor working GPU chips. Their may be workarounds but ultimately they are only ways to circumvent the inherent flaws in the GPU chip itself. I mean, how long has ATI been producing graphics cards? And suddenly there is a rash of failures just after using a new manufacturing technique that has is KNOWN to create a lot of DOA chips? Do the math.
There is no voodoo in this. ATI is just going to have to incrementally increase yields and fix flaws on the GPU. Meantime, we are all beta testers for the first batch. Keep RMA'ing the boards until you get a working one.
athlon11
January 28, 2010 at 3:45pm
Odd, I have had an Asus 4850 for over a years and a half now and haven't had a single issue with this, maybe I just lucky or it is not the cards themselves but other issues.
highsidednb
January 28, 2010 at 3:38pm
...often pay for their eagerness. Why jump on the ATI 5-series bandwagon when you have crashes, grey screens, etc. I'm more than happy to wait for Nvidia's next release because chances are the drivers won't be borked.
DOOMHAMMA
January 28, 2010 at 4:14pm
Because some of us bought the card and have had zero issues...Like me :p
Eno75
January 28, 2010 at 3:38pm
I've been lucky I guess. I'm running an HIS 5870 on a P6T and not experienced any problems whatsoever. The card is sensational- so hopefully they get the issues worked out. One more reason to by extended over the counter replacement warranty on items like this.
Eno
"Stay Frosty"
LaptopSWAT
January 28, 2010 at 3:31pm
Been having this issue for about 2 /3 months now . Sapphire 4850x2 sometimes takes few hours of gaming to soon as it loads im done.. so its been around for while.
Danthrax66
January 28, 2010 at 3:30pm
I'm glad to see that ATI with their hands around Nvidia's kneck can still manage to shoot themselves in the foot.
nekollx
January 28, 2010 at 3:57pm
Right cause every product off the fab sould work perfectly, 100% of the time. No Exceptions. Ever. EVA you hear, 99.99% is not good enough!
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Danthrax66
January 28, 2010 at 4:20pm
No it isn't, and it's not the first time ATI has had a driver or some other weird software issue they just aren't consistent. Now lets compare Nvidia issues to ATI issues:
Nvidia-overclocking accidentally disabled
ATI-your card will crash and the screen will not display anything or it will display the wrong thing
Now all I'm saying is it seems like every time ATI gets a head of steam their drivers take them down a notch.
big_montana
January 29, 2010 at 5:07am
And let's not forget the faulty Nvidia mobile graphics chips that are still failing that Nvidia produced across several different models
nekollx
January 29, 2010 at 9:43am
and why Apple droped them for ATI as i recall...
And yeet the CEO if Nvida is a apple fanboy....
A company that uses his competion by DEFAULT
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
MeTo
January 29, 2010 at 4:12am
nVidia drivers were responsible for 60% + of the blue screen of death in Vista was it not?
nekollx
January 28, 2010 at 4:32pm
Goggle disagrees with you
some hilights
Only problem is now im left without a driver(Besides the basic useless one) and everytime I download a new nVida driver I get the BSOD
I have had this problem before: I installed Vista, internet worked, rebooted after installing various programs, internet didn't work. Left it overnight & tried again next day, internet worked. Sometime later after reboot, internet didn't work. I then tried to install the Nvidia chipset driver again, but it froze part way through the install. This is when I wiped the entire hard drive and started again, but the problem is back.
After doing so I was noticing flashing lines on my screen and then the pc would periodically freeze up. Only way to recover from it was to hold in the power button to shut it down.
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
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