Amd 7970 weird driver issues

[DeviLoThorn]

Scratched a trace on my gtx 690 putting on a water block, running on backup power color 7970. Works fine except for games and 3d apps, itll crash but the game is still running. I can still execute in game commands and hear in game audio. When i alt tab out the first time, it will flicker and for a split second i get to see the in game visuals, then it black screens. If i alt tab back in i can no longer tab out, but i can still see and control my cursor...when i uninstalled and reinstalled amd drivers with ddu games will run fine but only once. Trying to relaunch the game afterwards results in same issues. When its running its perfectly fine. Temps are only hitting 60 degrees, ive tried multiple games and it crashes even in firestrike, then black squares start to appear all over google chrome, but no other app and also not on desktop. Once i restart the pc it goes away but running fire strike again will produce the same glitching squares. Tried multiple versions of amd drivers, tried letting windows pull its own amd drivers, tried dialing back the factory oc on the card and am resetting my windows 10 right now. 

System specs

Asus rampage iv extreme

I7 4820k overclocked to 4.5 (could cpu overclock be an issue?)

Ocz fatality 1000w

32gb kingston h20 ram

Intel 730/corsair neutron xt 480gb ssd

Power color 7970

Ive posted to the amd forums but so far no luck. To be honest ive always been a nvidia fan boy, but a few years back i decided to give the red team a try. So far it seems that nvidia deserves to charge its customers a "premium", or maybe im just incompetent. Please help!

[Benergy]

4 minutes ago, DeviLoThorn said:

Please help!

Have you tried old driver versions? 

 

Not only old Crimson, but ye olde Catalyst as well.

 

Download the driver that was released just after your specific card was released

 

[DeviLoThorn]

With windows 10 the oldest driver version i could find was 15.7, will try that later today.

Reinstalling os did not help.

[SLAYR]

1 hour ago, DeviLoThorn said:

Scratched a trace on my gtx 690 putting on a water block, running on backup power color 7970. Works fine except for games and 3d apps, itll crash but the game is still running. I can still execute in game commands and hear in game audio. When i alt tab out the first time, it will flicker and for a split second i get to see the in game visuals, then it black screens. If i alt tab back in i can no longer tab out, but i can still see and control my cursor...when i uninstalled and reinstalled amd drivers with ddu games will run fine but only once. Trying to relaunch the game afterwards results in same issues. When its running its perfectly fine. Temps are only hitting 60 degrees, ive tried multiple games and it crashes even in firestrike, then black squares start to appear all over google chrome, but no other app and also not on desktop. Once i restart the pc it goes away but running fire strike again will produce the same glitching squares. Tried multiple versions of amd drivers, tried letting windows pull its own amd drivers, tried dialing back the factory oc on the card and am resetting my windows 10 right now. 

System specs

Asus rampage iv extreme

I7 4820k overclocked to 4.5 (could cpu overclock be an issue?)

Ocz fatality 1000w

32gb kingston h20 ram

Intel 730/corsair neutron xt 480gb ssd

Power color 7970

Ive posted to the amd forums but so far no luck. To be honest ive always been a nvidia fan boy, but a few years back i decided to give the red team a try. So far it seems that nvidia deserves to charge its customers a "premium", or maybe im just incompetent. Please help!

Glitching squares is most likely artifacting so I would suggest try with a different psu, in a seperate pcie slot, and just eliminate any other factors. 

 

Overall AMD cards have always been slightly more prone to failure, and how the card was treated definitely will effect its lifespan.

[Benergy]

1 hour ago, DeviLoThorn said:

With windows 10 the oldest driver version i could find was 15.7, will try that later today.

Reinstalling os did not help.

You can disregard that restriction, a Windows 7 driver will still work on Windows 10.

 

Perhaps not perfectly - but I've ran one for months without any problems

[DeviLoThorn]

3 hours ago, Benergy said:

You can disregard that restriction, a Windows 7 driver will still work on Windows 10.

 

Perhaps not perfectly - but I've ran one for months without any problems

I got version 13.3 installed and still same issue. Did clean uninstall from both device manager and ddu. 

[DeviLoThorn]

4 hours ago, SLAYR said:

Glitching squares is most likely artifacting so I would suggest try with a different psu, in a seperate pcie slot, and just eliminate any other factors. 

 

Overall AMD cards have always been slightly more prone to failure, and how the card was treated definitely will effect its lifespan.

The times when it does work, it freezes when it works too hard. I had to cap my frame rates in game for it to stop stutter crashing. There was also a distinct whine that would come from the card when its pushed. Could my card just have something dead on it? Tried different pcie slot, no change. Will borrow and try new psu tmrw

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Do you have afterburner or anything like that installed? 

[xAcid9]

Check if Raptr/AMD Gaming Evolved/Plays.tv is running on the background. 

[thekeemo]

run DDU

[DeviLoThorn]

1 hour ago, Pohernori said:

Do you have afterburner or anything like that installed? 

I do, but i uninstalled it for testing, and it made no difference. When it happened for the first time my first suspect was msi afterburner or anything else like that interfering with the drivers. I have closed msi afterburner and cleaned uninstalled it from my system, both made no difference to the persistence of the error.

[DeviLoThorn]

39 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

run DDU

ran ddu over a dozen times. Used ddu every time for driver uninstallation.

[DeviLoThorn]

52 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Check if Raptr/AMD Gaming Evolved/Plays.tv is running on the background. 

they are not and i rolled back to a version of drivers that didnt come bundled with those things...or at least they weren't installed. I've also reinstalled my OS twice so i don't think there were traces of any of those programs left. 

[xAcid9]

5 hours ago, DeviLoThorn said:

they are not and i rolled back to a version of drivers that didnt come bundled with those things...or at least they weren't installed. I've also reinstalled my OS twice so i don't think there were traces of any of those programs left. 

Then i guess it's the card problem.

[BrightCandle]

I saw similar bugs back in the january that the card was released but they did fix those within a few months, I doubt those are still present today. Sounds like the card might be bad, have you applied the bios updated to your cards? That was what fixed a lot of the crashing for me with the 7970's.

[DeviLoThorn]

7 hours ago, BrightCandle said:

I saw similar bugs back in the january that the card was released but they did fix those within a few months, I doubt those are still present today. Sounds like the card might be bad, have you applied the bios updated to your cards? That was what fixed a lot of the crashing for me with the 7970's.

Ok i will look into that later today, thanks for the replies everyone.

 

[DeviLoThorn]

So i got the trace fixed on my gtx 690, and its still giving me the same issues. Can't run any 3d applications, it immediately crashes...what is going on? Both cards can't be bad, there can't be driver bugs from both teams that miraculously result in the exact same problems, right? Those chances are too slim...I disabled the OC on my cpu just to be sure but that hasn't changed anything either...2 weeks ago I was gaming fine off the exact same set up. I havent touched anything in my motherboard's bios and the only change was reinstalling the OS a few times, but it was still win 10 like before. I'm genuinely confused and bummed. 

Edit: downloaded burn in test to test every single component, RAM, disk, CPU, VRAM all pass. Also tested a second PSU, both PSU's are 1k watts so i doubt PSU not being able to deliver enough juice is a problem (some users have reported upgrading their psu have fixed their problem). I've tried running a dual psu system with a secondary psu powering the mobo and the GPU, and that didnt help. Some users online suggested that the cards were crashing due to heat, but my card only reached 61 degrees before the crash occurred, and through the VRAM test (2D graphics test) the card operated all the way up to 100 degrees (I know this is not a healthy temp, i wanted to see what the crashing point was for the card in terms of heat). So i'm going to rule out thermals as the issues for the crashes, i guess? I did notice that 2 RAM slots weren't being detected, although i have all 8 sticks in on all 8 slots...2x4gb of ram was missing. I reseated the RAM but still couldn't get them to show up, but my remaining 24gb of RAM did pass the burn in test, wondering if those two sticks of AWOL RAM could be causing the crashes? Getting two 780's in a week, will use those to test.

Only thing i haven't tried yet is a BIOS update on my motherboard, unless that fixes it, or its the 2 sticks of bad RAM, im really at my wit's end. I wanted to wait for computex, to wait for pascal and polaris, but at this point i might just buy a new 970....

Edit 2: While rerunning the CPU burn in test, i got the error that the display driver crashed but recovered, after a black screen, but this was from a CPU burn test that involved no gpu usage. Afterwards both NZXT Cam and msi afterburner could not detect my card anymore, but its still running fine. So...could it be the CPU? I dont have acces to another cpu for me to test right now so ): but i have not been able to replicate this crash with the CPU test so far, it seemed to be a one time thing. 

Edit 3: Reseated RAM again and individually tested all sticks, every stick of RAM is good, now all 8 sticks are being recognized. Also checked for any damage on my motherboard...none that I can visually see with a magnifying glass and flashlights. Im going to safely assume that this is no longer a graphics card issue, and definitely not a 7970 issue, at least not solely a graphics card issue. I will look to move my post to a more appropriate thread, perhaps there is an answer out there, perhaps there isn't...