For those with Sapphire HD4890 Vapor-X issues...

[Addicted]

It is a nice card when it works properly.

 

[grunt_408]

Have not benchmarked or anything but drivers installed fist go no problems. I have not instaled my XFi yet though

 

[dyermaker]

mine is working fine without the soundcard, but always has problems cold booting.. and also sometimes when i reboot, i have to power cycle by the psu switch, this has completely shorted the system twice and i couldnt start until i left id completely left it alone for a while. got my rma started anyway so im not gonna mess around with it any more. i would refer to this url > http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=116405

Heya,..

OK, for users experiencing the cold boot issue ( or similar type problems ) with the following card -

HD4890 Vapor-X with the following SKU/PN numbers (SKU#11150-05 // P/N:288-1E115-020SA)

please contact your retailer and get it RMA'd ..


If you have a different SKU/PN card of the same model and have similar issues, contact Sapphire's tech team and ask for further advice.

If you have said model & SKU/PN above, please add to this post ( maybe add date of purchase and retailer ) so I can give them a rough idea as to how many cards have been affected and their localisation.

Thanks for your input and sorry for the inconvenience caused by the issue.

 

[warlock]

Since my last post I used drive sweeper and cleaned out any Creative files, card works fine, but this sucks because I lost any EAX support for my games!!!

 

[jaydeejohn]

Anyone tried running Process explorer and checking for Hardware Interrupts?

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Lol contact sapphires support team.Just dont go on the sapphire forum,or the wanker GG will have you.

 

[jaydeejohn]

In his case GG should mean Gotta Go

 

[warlock]

Sh*t! Guess it wasn't a driver conflict, I just powered up cold and blank screen with maxed fan! vista loaded though, I could hear it. Waited about a minute, restarted and everything is normal.

 

[grunt_408]

Mine is good no problems here

 

[dyermaker]

i ran furmark in the background with process explorer on.. no interrupts / dpc spikes whatsoever.

 

[jaydeejohn]

That eliminates IRQs most likely then

 

[droplet]

I have the same card and I suspect a conflict with my X-Fi extreme gamer. I installed an old pci video card so I could access my system, for some reason this seemed to interfere with my sound card. Although this fixed my new 4890. When I tried to reinstall my sound card, the 4890 stopped working and the fan on the video card maxed out. I removed the sound card again and everything went back to normal.
P.S. I purchased it from Newegg on 7/15 Item #: N82E16814102841


View attachment 27352

Hi warlock, I also have the same sound card and I have been dealing with a lot of issues with my 4870x2 from Sapphire. I remember I read somewhere (can't remember the forum now but I'll try to find it out again) that PCI cards from Creative seem to have trouble with IRQs. Apparently they conflict with the video card's IRQ. As far as I remember there is a patch/hotfix for that. You might wanna check it out just in case. Hope it works

 

[stinzza]

know this.. the ati cards at this day compute more power then the nvidia card.. 4000series is a nice and bild on this pcb to the 5000series is a good thing...

 

[dyermaker]

droplet: how does that affect pci vs pci express?
my audigy (pci) worked fine eventually but i still had the other problems mentioned. im changing my card but i like to know whats goin on anyway

anyway at this stage i believe its just a faulty batch of cards, no troubleshooting is gonna fix some faulty hardware.. shit happens

 

[Flyordie]

That GG mod is a tool.

Dont disagree with him on that forum or he'll ban ya.

lol, yep... its why Sapphire canned his ass. Sapphire is getting mad at him too. ;-)
Also, he sent me some rather harassing e-mails... here is GG's e-mail...
mike650cc@hotmail.com
(Under US Law, I am allowed to post this e-mail address as long as he initiated the conversation, which he did)

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Has he gone from there? i just looked and it dont look like it.I swear i would kick his arse if i met him,hes a prick.

 

[warlock]

I've been running without any pci cards in my system and it still does it when I 1st boot up. Let it run until you hear vista load, wait a minute, power down completely and reboot and everything is fine! Now I'm going to reinstall my X-fi and see if I can boot up in this manner. I'll post again after I reinstall.

 

[Mussels]

I've been running without any pci cards in my system and it still does it when I 1st boot up. Let it run until you hear vista load, wait a minute, power down completely and reboot and everything is fine! Now I'm going to reinstall my X-fi and see if I can boot up in this manner. I'll post again after I reinstall.

the power up -> shut down -> power up again is very common on intel chipsets. Every intel board i've had since P965 has done this.

 

[droplet]

know this.. the ati cards at this day compute more power then the nvidia card.. 4000series is a nice and bild on this pcb to the 5000series is a good thing...

having the arguably best hardware is not all...you need to have more than that, like in this case it would better drivers and the later is what ATI lacks.

What is the point in having a ferrari if it comes without proper seats, wheels, doors, etc.?

I'm just saying that in my opinion NVidia makes much better cards overall even is their CPUs are beaten SOMETIMES

 

[droplet]

droplet: how does that affect pci vs pci express?
my audigy (pci) worked fine eventually but i still had the other problems mentioned. im changing my card but i like to know whats goin on anyway

anyway at this stage i believe its just a faulty batch of cards, no troubleshooting is gonna fix some faulty hardware.. shit happens

I agree with you on the last sentence. To me many of the problems we are facing with these cards are a result of a faulty batch. Hope ATI and its partners know of the problem and can fix it soon

 

[Blacklash]

As far as drivers go, there is always someone crying about that regardless of which side of the fence you are on-

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=134868

Often video card drivers get blamed for odd system performance when it is actually left overs from an anti-virus uninstall causing the problem.

Creative drivers have a much longer history of causing system instability than nVidia or ATi.

 

[ijskist]

Same problems here.
couldnt get my two new Sapphire Vapor-x cards to work, just a black screen.
Inserted a cheap backup card and it boots without any problems.

Bought it from Pixmania, France
I think I ordered it the 17th of july.
Same SKU / PN number as reported by the others.

 

[droplet]

Same problems here.
couldnt get my two new Sapphire Vapor-x cards to work, just a black screen.
Inserted a cheap backup card and it boots without any problems.

Bought it from Pixmania, France
I think I ordered it the 17th of july.
Same SKU / PN number as reported by the others.

If I were you I would filled a RMA immediately, as suggested in ATI's forum.

 

[Hanam]

Bought one on 7/31 and it had the bad PN/SKU and newegg is taking it back without questions. I also get a free shirt

 

[janersa]

Same problems here.
couldnt get my two new Sapphire Vapor-x cards to work, just a black screen.
Inserted a cheap backup card and it boots without any problems.

Bought it from Pixmania, France
I think I ordered it the 17th of july.
Same SKU / PN number as reported by the others.

Hello everybody. Have the same problem as you. Bought a Sapphire HD4890 Vapor-X 2GB from Pixmania. Installed it properly according to all rules (first removing old card and drivers using Driver Cleaner Pro and all that stuff etc etc, been through this hundreds of times), but at boot-up the fan spins 100% and screen is black. Windows XP loads as usual though (can hear my HD working). Old PCI-Express card (X1950 Pro) works like a charm. My rig meets all requirements (have checked carefully). Have played around in BIOS etc etc but to no avail.
BIOS gives one long and eight short beeps on boot-up which in my case means the video card has a problem, but what sort of problem? Will test my card tomorrow using a friends comp just to see if the problem persists.

My card is:
PN 288-4E118-000SA
SKU# 11150-09-20R

Have already prepared an RMA-ticket at Pixmania since there are a lot of posts on various forums dealing with this specific problem. Unfortunately a lot of people here in Sweden who bought defect stuff from Pixmania have had problems with that retailer's delaying or even ignoring the RMA-process.