Thinking I need to RMA this board...

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Dan(omite)
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Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Dan(omite) »

So I got a new 7950 the other day along with 2 more monitors so I could get an eyefinity setup going. The first day or two everything ran pretty smoothly, and I was pleased with the performance. Then I started getting a couple crashes, which I've heard others describe as a "pinstripe screen of death." (see pics) From what I read, they never found a definite cause of these crashes.

First thought, bad drivers. I uninstalled all ATI drivers, rebooted, used a driver sweeper, rebooted a second time, and ran the driver sweeper again. All files were removed but it was still showing traces of registry entries. I went ahead and installed the newest drivers again, but the crashes continued.

My next thought was overheating, as I hadn't been monitoring temps yet. My idle temps were around 55 degrees with three monitors and dropped down to about 49 with just one. I realize this is a little high, but nothing that would cause a crash yet. By comparison, the cpu temps were running in the low 30s at this time. I ran furmark with eyefinity enabled and I got the same crash. I then ran it with 2 of the monitors disabled through CCC and again got a crash. Then I fired up BF3 in single monitor setup and again crashed. The thing I noticed that every time the crash occured when the gpu got to 65 degrees (at least, that was the highest logged temp before I was forced to restart). The fan only ever gets to about 50% speed, so I don't think it's a heat issue, as 65% is nothing under load.

I want to try one more time to uninstall the drivers, do a full sweep, then reinstall, as maybe something with those registry entries was messing it up, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

My only other thought is maybe lack of power, but I'm running a single video card with a Corsair 650 PSU and not much else for hardware. All the voltages look fine, and I never had a power issue with the 6850 I was running before.

What are your guys' thoughts in the meantime? Ever seen this kind of crash or heard of possible fixes? Or does it sound like the card is just faulty?
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Stephen
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Stephen »

Most likely faulty card reseat the card and reconnect pcie cables

Also return or sell those extra 2 monitors that card alone cant handle resolutions like that
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Dan(omite) »

It handled it alright... still got good fps with settings up pretty high. Some games I've been opting to run in single monitor mode anyway. The main reason I wanted more than one monitor was for work stuff, which I can just do as an extended desktop.

Basically my point is that I'll sacrifice having eyefinity if I'm not happy with the performance, rather than send back the monitors. I don't HAVE to use them for gaming, but I do really want them for work purposes.
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by madmattd »

Sounds like RMA the card to me.

That card will be fine for 3 monitors if you aren't asking to run Crysis full out in eyefinity, which it sounds like you aren't.
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Stephen
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Stephen »

What size the vram on the card.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550

your basicly rendering 3 seperate screens then syncing them and you expect one card to do all that work its just not gonna happen espically not multiplayer games.
so be expecting to be playing ur games on low-medium settings, unless you dont like smoothness.

bf3 for example uses around 1.4gb of ram at high- ultra settings at 1920x1080 and 1gb at low-medium
now running it at 5760 x 1200 thats about 3 times the ram, youll be running out of vram spilling over into page file. and now your running into problems.

So unless u want bad frames, eye strain from low fps, and errors be my guest

even ask pre how his eyefinity experiance went lol.
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Dan(omite) »

3 GB of ram on the board... MSI R7950 BF3 was getting about 25-30 fps on high-ultra, stayed about 40-45 on medium-high (all with eyefinity). That is definitely not the issue. The same thing happened when I was running Lego Batman 2 on a single screen. Again, I am not even asking about whether the card is good for eyefinity--I don't want to sound like a dick, but you are missing the point. I'm perfectly happy with the performance when it doesn't crash. My issue is that it shouldn't be crashing when the load is not THAT high, which it is. Like I said, I'll even take the card with running no eyefinity at all, but I will still run an extended desktop when working in firefox and excel (which wouldn't stress even a mediocre video card).

That being said, I am going to RMA the board anyway as I did reseat the card, reconnected power cables, reinstalled drivers again, and the crashes still occurred.
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Stephen »

i wasnt intending that eyefinity was the source of the problem, i said most likely faulty card.

but i was just including that that card alone is not ment for eyefinity gaming at any settings over medium

its good card just most people dont know what goes on with eyefinity they just think its bigger screen.

edit: also have you retried your old card to confirm its not other hardware.
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Re: Thinking I need to RMA this board...

Post by Dan(omite) »

I'm in the process of getting the old card going right now, so I will double check. And I realize this card is not going to handle those kinds of games in eyefinity. Ones that play smoothly in it (i.e. Just Cause 2) I will use it for. If it is choppy, I just switch profiles and run it on one screen. The main reason (and only reason my wife would accept) for wanting anything more than 1 monitor was for work as I often have 2 or 3 excel files open at once and hate alt+tabbing. I fully understand that 3 screens means basically 3 times the load, especially for vram.

EDIT: Old card is back in and it's running with no problems. Ran furmark for about 3 minutes, got up to about 85 with no problems. By comparison, the new card would crash after running furmark for about 15-20 seconds. Guess we'll wait and see how the replacement board does...
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