Help with an Ati Radeon HD 4850 512MB card

pantsgoochpants · January 4th, 2009, 02:27 AM

Hi all,

I have an Ati Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics card in my PC, it pretty new, 3.0Ghz Pentium Dual Core, and I have problems with it that the maker of my PC is insisting is not a hardware fault.

I have installed Hitman Blood Money and am dying to play it as I think it's one of the best games ever. But I can't get more than a few minutes into it before my PC dies. What happens is during gameplay the screen will suddenly get green and purple lines all down the screen and freeze. This will happen nearly evertime, but if it's not this, it will instead just go black and my pc doesn't respond, even the reset button won't work.

Occasionaly the game will recover from the green and purple line thing and an ATI error message will come up saying VPU recover or something, but after alt tabbing back to the game, it's not long after it crashes for good again.

This seems to me like the graphics card is faulty. The guy who made my pc reckons it's the game, or some setting, or some crap but Dawn of War Soulstorm crashes frequently too, much the same as Hitman does. Does anyone know what is causing this?

ShyguyXPC · January 4th, 2009, 04:53 AM

could be a whole slew of problems, could be video card is overheating. could be bad video card drivers. could be bad install of DirectX...

my money is on one of or both of the first two though... but Soulstorm isn't that intense of graphics for a game, so can't imagine the card would be worked hard enough, but you never know.

try uninstalling the vid cards drivers & reinstall with latest versions.

also see if you can get temp readings for your Video card.

it sounds like a Hardware problem, but that doesn't mean there's specifically something with the hardware thats wrong, drivers would be a software issue affecting the hardware, overheating would be a specifically hardware problem.

pantsgoochpants · January 4th, 2009, 06:58 PM

Thanks for that reply mate, I went back an uninstalled every ATI driver and bit of software on the machine then got hold of the newest catalyst drivers, and problem solved. Installing new drivers didn't fix the problem previously because we didn't uninstall the old ones first I think. Thanks again.

EXreaction · January 4th, 2009, 07:15 PM

Power Supply?

Atomic Rooster · January 4th, 2009, 07:35 PM

Hey EX -

Quote:

Originally Posted by pantsgoochpants

Thanks for that reply mate, I went back an uninstalled every ATI driver and bit of software on the machine then got hold of the newest catalyst drivers, and problem solved.

EXreaction · January 4th, 2009, 07:39 PM

Hmm, don't remember it saying that.

I remember reading:

Quote:

Thanks for that reply mate, I went back an uninstalled every ATI driver and bit of software on the machine then got hold of the newest catalyst drivers

and:

Quote:

Installing new drivers didn't fix

ShyguyXPC · January 4th, 2009, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pantsgoochpants

Thanks for that reply mate, I went back an uninstalled every ATI driver and bit of software on the machine then got hold of the newest catalyst drivers, and problem solved. Installing new drivers didn't fix the problem previously because we didn't uninstall the old ones first I think. Thanks again.

No problem

Martin Tenbones · January 5th, 2009, 02:18 AM

I have been struggleing with what sounds like the same issue for a few months now. When i first got my new computar (similar build as yours it looks like, but with vista), i had Warhammer: Age of Rekoning crash in a similar manner. At first i thought it was just the game, since it was reputed to be very crash-happy. It wouldn't happen regularly though, sometimes it would be a week between crashes, others it would be hours.

Now that I think back, i tried to update my drives, and everytime I did update the drivers, the time between crashes became shorter and shorter. it also began to crash while watching movies or surfing youtube. My supplier tested it thoughly and said it was not a hardware problem. I figured it was a problem with vista and so I just wiped the drive and downgraded to XP pro.

It has been working fine for 2 days, and then today it crashed out again while i was browsing some forums. I did update my graphics driver today, and I also installed VLC media player (my supplier thought that the errors were codec issues with VLC). Imeadiatly after re-booting from the driver install, the screen went blank when window's booted up and i got a bluescreen. It restarted and worked fine for a few hours, then the screen would go black, come back on, go black again, go back on, ect. I thought this was a problem with the monitor though, as my fiancee has the same monitor I do and it had done this a month ago, and it was an issue the the monitor itself.

I have just uninstalled the graphics drivers (not the chipset software, it gave me the option, but I am clueless as to what it is and don't want to break anything) and installed the latest driver clean. I also uninstalled VLC. Hopefully it will clear up the problem, and if it doesn't I'll be at a loss as to what else to try =(

Powderkeg · January 5th, 2009, 04:24 PM

I have EXACTLY the same problem with my system - also a 3ghz dual core with a radeon 4850 512. Soulstorm randomly freezes, then sometimes unfreezes after the monitor has reset itself, but mostly boots me into windows with an error message quoting VPU recoverer.

I will try the advice referred to above and report back.

Cheers

Fizur2002 · January 5th, 2009, 09:33 PM

from my experiences with MY 4850, the bugger gets really really hot, hot enough to actually cause burns. I highly recommend that you run the fan at 40-50% when your doing minuscule tasks like watching movies and surfing the net. And running it at 60% when doing intense games. That alone should solve the problem as it sounds like a HEAT issue.