XFX Radeon HD 5770 Windows 7 64 bit Freezing

[dd11]

Hey guys, so basically i've been having a few issue's with what I now believe is the drivers for my XFX 5770 card.

I am running Windows 7 64bit and am using the correct and up to date drivers, the initial driver install goes fine and then asks me to reboot, after I reboot the PC and it trys to load into windows, it freezes on the Windows 7 animated flags screen (before the user login) and will go no further untill you restart again. Only about 1 in every 5 to 6 goes will enable you to access the computer normally without it freezing, when I do get into windows the card works perfectly fine as far as i can see.

However, when I uninstall the graphics cards drivers and restart, I no longer have any problems and the pc boots without problem every time. I have tried the older drivers that came on the CD with the card, and the new latest ones from XFX but to no avail. I have also tried this in a machine running the same version of Windows 7 (64bit) & with a Windows 7 32bit machine using the supported drivers but the same problem still exisits.

I have contacted the XFX support and so far all the guy has said is to do a fresh install of the card drivers removing all traces of the previous install. But i've already done that many times.

I've not really found much info on the web about this problem.

Incase it helps:
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (also tried with ASUS P6T SE)
4GB Crucial RAM
OCZ 500w Power Supply

Thanks!

[Graham M]

I have the identical same card running on Windows 7 64-bit with no problems, it sounds faulty to me?

[dd11]

Originally Posted by Graham M

I have the identical same card running on Windows 7 64-bit with no problems, it sounds faulty to me?

I kind of hope it is, so i can get this sorted finally, but I don't understand how when it does decide to let me get into windows how it can work fine as far as i can tell. Like I haven't tried it for gaming, mainly because of the boot issue, but when it works the max i've used it for was for watching a few HD videos.

[Dai]

Originally Posted by Graham M

I have the identical same card running on Windows 7 64-bit with no problems, it sounds faulty to me?

If it's failed in 3 different sets of hardware I'd be inclined to agree.

[DocDutch]

sounds like hardware to me but could also be power on the other pc what psu have ya got in there

[dd11]

Originally Posted by DocDutch

sounds like hardware to me but could also be power on the other pc what psu have ya got in there

The PC im trying to get it to work on is using an OCZ 500W which has the correct connection, but i've also tried it with a Corsair 400w and on a 600 or 650w psu, can't remember that one.

[DocDutch]

how many hd's and dvd drives have you got in the pc??? cuz if I'm reading it correct you got a i5 or i7 which is power hungry and then the drives + the gpu which could be not getting enough power in now.

dude my system prior to the i7 ran 9 sata/ata drives and a 4870 gfx and I tested the draw and it was 380 matts. I have not measured since my upgrade to i7 but its an 130 watt cpu and the 9450 is a 95 watt cpu so the 35 watt extra draw wouldnt make a difference unless running just a 400 watt psu . Both the 500 and 600 watt PSU should be plenty

---------- Post added at 10:47 ---------- Previous post was at 10:43 ----------

btw my draw was measured running various hi intensity apps and playing a game so actually under more load than it would be in normal use

[dd11]

Originally Posted by DocDutch

how many hd's and dvd drives have you got in the pc??? cuz if I'm reading it correct you got a i5 or i7 which is power hungry and then the drives + the gpu which could be not getting enough power in now.

At the mo I have just the O.S drive, 1 DVD drive, and x2 120mm fans. However I do also have 4 drives which I intened to use for a Raid 0 setup, but I haven't stuck them in yet.

---------- Post added at 10:51 ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 ----------

A way of getting into windows last night I discovered was just to boot it into 'Debugging mode', but that's a hassle slamming the F8 key to select it everytime I turn it on.

[dd11]

Ok so ignore what I said about 'Debugging mode', I was just lucky the 2 times I tried it. It's still a gamble wether it loads or not.

However, I was intreged about the power supply talks, so I took the card to work today and tried it with one of the 32 bit editing machines, and to my suprise, there was no problems, the 1st PC t has worked on! and it just so happens that it was has the higher psu wattage out of the tested systes so far, (650w) i had already tried it on a 650w, but it was a bottom end cheap one.

So im now tempted to go for a higher watt power supply, but im a little split about it, surely it doesn't need that much power

well as I said I measured the draw in my machine and its fully loaded and it didnt even need 400 watts so in theory your system should be fine with the OCZ the Corsair could be a little light and if the 650 is generic then that would be pants but ive had loads of OCZ PSUs the one I use now is a 780 modular and I have a 600 mod in my second machine also the 600 ran my main system without issue also

[AntiSilence]

Could it be related to the ATI Grey Screen of Death possibly?

[Matty_]

It may also have something to do with the age of the power supply allthough the one you have does seem a newer one so should be fine in the 12V rail.
See what Ampage the 12V rail has.

Source from wiki
Q: Hang on, isn't a PSU's wattage all that matters?
A: This was partially true for older computers, but recently theres been a big change, suddenly the big power users (videocard,cpu) are all powering off the 12V rail, so it becomes the limiting factor rather than a wattage rating. Wheras before the CPU would power off the 5V rail, with older PSU's designed with that in mind. So try to run that older PSU on the newer system and it often has issues since it wasn't designed for the newer system with an entirely different rail draw (almost all off 12V rail, instead of a mix). Besides most of today's systems have trivial wattage usage, see SilentPCreview (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article265-page1.html) for measured wattage draws of 6 different computers. It's quite obvious from the P4 dual core, that even a quality 350w unit could power it provided it had a big enough 12V rail, since the 12V rail draw was 17A, but only a 223W total wattage draw (DC). so therefore wattage ratings are generally now a poor guide to how good a PSU is (order of importance roughly is: PSU Brand, 12V rail capacity, needed connectors (24pin in particular), Group regulation or not (none preferred), then wattage). As a 'rule of thumb', unless the combined 12V rail capacity is at least 90% of the total wattage rating (eg 30A for a 400W psu) , the 12V rail will be the limiting factor for modern systems (not wattage rating).

[dd11]

Ok so I upgraded the power supply from the OCZ 500w to a Corsair 750w and it made no difference atall.

Out of curiousity I left the computer on the frozen startup screen for a while a couple of times, I then noticed that after a while I would get a BSOD with the error 'atikmdag.sys' which it seems is the issue. Upon some online research of this, I found out it was quite a popular problem and saw various solutions which work for a handfull but not the rest.

So anyway theres nothing much more I can do and i've had enough with it now, so I went back to using nVidia cards and ordered a GTX260 last night which came this morning and has been working flawlessly so far, I finally have this new machine completed! Only problem is it doesn't have HDMI output, so i have to use an DVI->HDMI adapter and use the jack on the mainboard for audio, but hey, not to bothered.

Thanks for your help though guys!

what you done with the other card? has it gone back? if not ill have and and try cooking it lol