Maximum PC

So, a few weeks ago I built myself a new rig with the following components:

CPU: Intel 3960x
MB: MSI Big Bang-XPower II
Ram: 32GB G. Skill DDR3 1600 (8x4GB)
Video Card: XFX Double D Radeon HD 7970
OS Drive: Samsung 830 256GB SSD
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W
OS: Windows 7 Pro

Everything went fine and loaded up Windows, installed all Windows updates first, then installed all my drivers starting with the chipset, sata, lan, etc. When it came to installing the latest catalyst software suite (12.2) for my 7970 is where things have gone terribly wrong. At first I was getting an error message saying the AMD display driver was not installed, so I removed the entire CCC suite, booted into safe mode and used Driver Cleaner to get rid of all the remnants. I then re-installed the entire CCC suite, which seemed to resolve my problem. About 5 min later my screen goes black and then refreshes and an error message pops up saying “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”. So, I repeat the process already outlined above to un-install and then re-install CCC, only to have the same issue. I figured a fresh OS install was in order at this point, so after doing that I'm now having the same issues with the display driver. The only thing I can think of that I have not tried yet is to update my BIOS, although there is nothing in the BIOS revisions stating they have addressed any sort of video card/display driver issues.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Forgot to mention I have already checked the ram with Memtest86 and 0 issues were found there, so I don't believe that is causing my problem.

Did you try a different pci-e 16 slot, the one you are using could be bad.

How many amps on the rails you are using to power the video card?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd- ... -review/27

Check the hard drive with its diagnostic software. It can be had from the hard drives website. You may have a bad cluster or two.

Like you said, update the bios before trying anything else.

Try an earlier driver if one exists, if that don't work, I would call the video card manufacture. You may have bought a defective card or the drivers for the card aren't mature enough for the card.

Nasty

I had this same problem with my rig just looking at JPEGs with Windows Picture And Fax Viewer (XP Home SP3). The only way I was able to solve the issue was reverting to the version 11.8 Catalyst suite.

Asrock 880GM-LE mobo
Athlon II X4 640 (3.0GHz, no OC)
4GB Kingston DDR3-1333 RAM
Integrated AMD/ATI HD4250 graphics

I'm not sure going to 11.8 would work for me as I don't believe those drivers are compatible with the 7970.

Been extremely busy with work the past few weeks so I haven't been able to get on an respond to this thread for an update. So, after I created this thread, I believe the next day or so an update was available from AMD (12.3 CCC). I removed 12.2 and installed 12.3, and it seemed to have resolved my problem, until the next day when the display driver started crashing again. I still have not updated my BIOS as MSI's instructions have totally confused me. I'm going to give it a go this week and hope that resolves everything, if not I think I'll give XFX customer support a call.

Answer's in bold. Also forgot to mention that with the latest version of CCC (12.3) I'm able to play games just fine, for hours at a time. The display driver only seems to crash when I'm doing something directly within Windows. My GPU temps stay low, even after a long gaming session they never get over 52C, and idle around 32C.

If you are overclocking the video card or the whole system for that matter, go back to stock settings and see if the issue goes away.

Nasty