6870 potentially unstable?

CardboardSword

CardboardSword

New Member
I've been occasionally getting horizontal black lines across the screen, or the screen shifting and appearing on the other side (So if I want to click the start button, its on the right side of the screen, and I need to move my mouse out through the left of the screen to get it.) This is only fixed by a reset. I'm starting to think it's the card itself, as I was just chalking it up to bad drivers before. The card handled 2-3 hours of Kombustor and FurMark fine, as well as multiple run throughs of Unigine Heaven. It just randomly does it. However ATiTool Finds a bunch of artifacts immediately, but also gives me a system driver error, which again leads me to question drivers.
I'm kind of at an impasse here. I really don't want to have to send away my card, but since it's giving me such mixed results, I'm not sure I can wait for new drivers to come to be sure.

I should also mention that the lines tend to only appear in games, and interestingly enough, more often in older and less demanding ones. (Warcraft 3, Hunting Unlimited. )
 
my usual test for stability is furmark, but if its artifacting, and you have tried a fresh driver install, id say the card could likely be bad
 
Its run FurMark with no troubles. Did a driver sweep and re-installed. Ran ATiTool for an hour and a half flawlessly. Thought I had it fixed but I just tried it again and I've got artifacts again. Temps are fine and it's at stock clocks. Why is it it works some times and not others?! AGH! You'd think if the card was bad it'd give the artifacts consistently if nothing else.

EDIT: The ATiTool stress test seems to pass fine for an extended peroid of time after a system reboot, but after I leave the computer on, say, overnight, then the card fails this particular test. I've yet to have it fail any other test, and as I mention in my OP, it seems to only do the lines occasionally and on oldish games. Also forgot to mention that the display driver occasionally stops responding during games as well. It will lock the game, but usually recover in 30-60 secs and become playable again, sometimes it won't recover and I have to reboot.
 
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Well my 4850 was great. Ran at like 25*c idle with their fancy "Ice Q4" system. Those cards were even known for running way too hot, whereas mine never breached 55*c on 40% fan speed. But seeing as how I ordered two of these cards, and both of them are bad, I think I'm gonna avoid HIS for a little while. If nothing else avoid their reference cards.
 
AMD 6870 Artifacts and screen shift

Cardboardsword,
I'm actually in the same situation as you are. If you have since solved the problem I would be very happy to hear it. Please post some feedback so I can figure out what is wrong with my card!

Also, here are a few links of other threads I have discovered with people having the same problem (maybe we can solve this bugger):

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3885393

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/951798-ati-hd-6870-artifacts/page__st__15

The second link talks about artifacts (the lines and stuff) but doesn't mention the screen shifting. I'm not sure whether it relates to our issue, but maybe it does? I'm not sure how to manually set the voltages for my GPU though...

Any feedback from ANYONE would be helpful! Thanks in advance.
 
I got an XFX 6870 and haven't had an issue yet (had the card about a week and a half).
 
Well I've since moved on in the graphics card department. I sent my card back, but found I had artifacting after a while anyway, even with my GTX570. I determined this to be an overclocking instability elsewhere in my system so rather than increase voltage willy nilly I decided I'd just back it down and only overclock higher when I'm running benchmarks. However as far as the screen shifting goes, it may have been a bad card, it may have been a driver issue, but either way it only happened a few times before it got sent away. I was running 10.10e at the time, if your drivers are up to date beyond that then it's likely the card. Its replacement has been running on 10.10e for about a month and a half now and I've gotten no complaints so that might be indicative of a bad card as well.

Try calling customer support before you ship it back. Maybe they've heard of this before and there's a simple fix. Best of luck!
 
Some possibilities: (A few things to check)

Use a molex splitter to power the card.... heard it helps with SOME PSU's to do this as it supposidly provides more stable power to the card....

Maybe reformat with fresh install of OS to eliminate driver conflicts if gpu's have been swapped... some use driver sweeper but to each his own...

Run memtest and cpu stress test to ensure stable overclock... this can hinder the GPU from functioning correctly...

Make sure pci-e slot is clean with no bent/misaligned pins...

You may have to restart your machine after gpu driver is installed...
 
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