HELP 5870 Issues:CCC resets settings on restart, Partial desktop, Lock in 2D clocks!

[avatar_raq]

Hi everyone
I have some strange issue that I grew tired of in the last few weeks and I hope you can help me fix it.
I recently bought a Force3D 5870 (reference design and clocks) with FSP Epsilon 800w PSU to upgrade my system (see the specs below), installed a fresh copy of windows7 x64 and CCC 10.3, then I started to encounter some strange issue...Sometimes after restarting windows, I see only part of my desktop (~30%) displayed in the middle of my primary monitor (BenQ T2200HD) as a square area and the rest of the screen forming a black frame. When I open CCC and rotate the desktop into portrait mode and then back to landscape, everything will be shown, but the card will stick to 2D clocks and won't go to 3D mode even in games and Furmark!! I also noticed that when this happens, CCC forgets all my settings and resets them to default..After that if I restart the PC, everything will be OK, but if I shut it down, leave it for a minute and then start it again, the issue re-appears.

So far I tried the following to no avail:
1-Disconnecting my secondary monitor (BenQ FP72E) and reconnecting my primary one to the other DVI port
2-Using HDMI to connect to my primary display.
3-Uninstalling and updating my monitors drivers
4-Uninstalling CCC, using Driver Sweeper in safe mode and then installing 10.4 and then 10.4a
5-Changing Scaling options in CCC . Also saving and activating a CCC profile in the hope it keeps my settings and also to raise 2D clocks
6-Updating my mobo's (P5KSE) bios and playing around in its settings.
7-Changing the PSU cables feeding the GFX card then changing the whole PSU to FSP 500w
8-Removing my CPU and RAM overcolck.

Nothing of the above helped, and the issue persisted, so I tried some other things:

9-Using other cards in my system (HD4870-8800GT). The issue didn't appear.
10-Using my card (5870) in my nieces' system (E8400+DFI Lanparty DK-P45 Plus) and the issue didn't appear as well, even when I used my PSU and Ram in their system !!
11-I thought it might be a software conflict, so I did a fresh windows vista 64bit installation, with nothing installed but the CCC 10.4a, and the issue appeared after the first shut-down-startup attempt !!
12-I reverted to the drivers that came with the card (on disc) after driver sweeping and all hell broke loose! Lockups, Orange screens and then 'display driver stopped responding and recovered' messege!

Pleaaaaaase help! What must I do? Is this a faulty card? Or just a software issue? Should I RMA? Any input will be appreciated !
My full specs:
E6750 @ 3.6Ghz, ASUS P5KSE, OCZ reapers DDR2 @ 1081Mhz, WDC Green 1TB, Maxtor 160GB, Force3D ATI Radeon HD5870 (stock clocks), FSP Epsilon 800w, Antec 902, BenQ T2200HD (Primary), BenQ FP72E (Secondary).

 

[avatar_raq]

Guys, anyone?

 

[m1dg3t]

I'm not very smart but sound's like software or bad BIOS on the card? Someone with more knowledge will chime in and set you in the right direction, be patient

 

[avatar_raq]

Thanks buddy, but this issue is driving me crazy !! And no one here seems willing to help!

 

[cadaveca]

Contact the card and motherboard maker. Sounds like either a bios issues with the card, or an issue with the motherboards bios.

You said it's fine in another system, so chances are, it's the ASUS board.

 

[avatar_raq]

Thanks for your reply. I'm hoping it's the mobo and not the card. I'll try contacting asus .I've ordered a P6X58D Premium and i7 930 and they are on their way..I'm afraid the issue will appear in the new system as well..God forbid.

 

[cadaveca]

I have nothing positive to say about ASUS currently, and I'll leave it at that. PLease keep us updated.

 

[avatar_raq]

So how about the steps I took to troubleshoot so far? Were they logical? Can you point me to something I didn't try yet? Any work-around/fix?

 

[No3Dalefan]

Try using your secondary monitor only, maybe somethings wrong with your primary monitor not scaling properly.

 

[avatar_raq]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I tried this as well!! With all the things I did, it's getting messy..Anyhow, it didn't help and the issue appeared even with my 1280x1024 monitor !!

 

[No3Dalefan]

Well, you've done some very intense troubleshooting, I'd agree the problem may lie with the motherboard, you tried the card in another system, where it worked with your ram and psu. Possibly not enough power in the PCI-e slot to allow it to initialize properly. Only thing left to try would be to try a minimal config, just the video card installed, no sound cards or anything else plugged into a slot. Also unplug any usb components except mouse and keyboard, and go down to one stick of memory with stock clocks on everything. Also try loading "safe" defaults in your m/b bios, you have set something wrong when you were playing around in there.

Good Luck

 

[No3Dalefan]

One more thing, switch your monitor driver to generic Plug and Play display, and uninstall Catalyst Control Panel.

 

[avatar_raq]

..... Possibly not enough power in the PCI-e slot to allow it to initialize properly.....

Similar thoughts crossed my mind ! Definitely gonna try what you recommended ! The bios settings, however, are already @ default.

 

[avatar_raq]

One more thing, switch your monitor driver to generic Plug and Play display, and uninstall Catalyst Control Panel.

I didn't understand! Are suggesting this as a prelude to re-installing the CCC again?
If yes, it's the case of fresh windows installation which I already did..
If no, removing CCC will result in the desktop switching to a horrible low rez (800x600) and there'll be no black border and no partial desktop!!
I did try removing only the monitors' drivers, as I said in my first post (Step 3), but I guess It wasn't clear..Sorry! English is not my first language, you know!

 

[No3Dalefan]

OK, instead of uninstalling CCP, prevent it from starting by disabling it in msconfig, your ATI drivers are not in CCP. There may be a bug in the CCP that only appears in your configuration.

 

[No3Dalefan]

When I say CCP, I mean Catalyst Control Center, just to clear things up. I have it disabled on my 2 machines, and they work fine, Crossfired 5570's on one and a 3870x2 on the other.

 

[avatar_raq]

Ok I understand you, worth trying..Man, I like the way you think!
I'm now going into a new direction.. Updating my VGA bios, and since the crappy Force3D doesn't provide any updated bios for dll at their site, I'm using ASUS bios from TPU database. Is this safe? Do all 5870's have the same ram chips? I once updated a 8800 GT and finding a bios from a card with the same memory chips was a must, to ensure proper timings..Is this applicable here?

 

[No3Dalefan]

Be CAREFUL updating the VGA bios. I'm not familiar with that brand of Video card, but if it's not a reference design PCB, you could brick it with a reference bios. If it's got a custom designed PCB, usually accompanied by a different Heatsink and fan, I would only flash it with the same brand bios that it came with, or a newer revision. It could be that the original bios on the card is corrupted slightly, and re-flashing it with the same bios may fix the problem.

 

[travva]

Nothing of the above helped, and the issue persisted, so I tried some other things:


10-Using my card (5870) in my nieces' system (E8400+DFI Lanparty DK-P45 Plus) and the issue didn't appear as well, even when I used my PSU and Ram in their system !!

when you did this, did you use the same monitor(s)? reason i ask is because i had an issue recently where the dvi port went bad on my shitty 22" lcd. i got it working fine over vga now, but when it first booted up, CCC set the res to 1920x1080, which is supported by the monitor but it made it do some weiiiiiiiird stuff. anyway i fixed it by just changing the res in windows 7. if it worked fine on that system then it's most likely something motherboard related would be my guess. maybe you could try hooking it up via vga to see what happens.

 

[avatar_raq]

@travva:
Yes, It's the same monitor, I brought my nieces' case to my home and in my troubleshooting I made sure to reduce the number of variables to one at a time as long it's possible. What weird issues did you encounter?

 

[avatar_raq]

@No3Dalefan:
It's reference, I already flashed it and thank God it went OK, I took a big risk, a leap of faith!
What about the ram chips? I know it's too late for that, but I once read that DDR5 chips are manufactured by one company only, but I don't remember where I got that, nor I'm able to verify it now..So what do you think? I even noticed that RBE doesn't have timing settings.

The issue seems to have gone away, but I'm not fully sure yet,I'll keep testing and tell you the result, maybe tomorrow, it's 1:45 AM here !!
Thanks guys, you are the best

 

[No3Dalefan]

Travva, he's tried 2 other monitors, one did the same, the other did not, but you have a good point about trying it with a VGA cable, I don't think he's tried that yet.

Avatar_raq, I googled your card several places and it looks like a reference design, so any reference card bios should work, but no guarantees of course.

 

[No3Dalefan]

Sounds like the new flash may have fixed it, I wouldn't worry about the ram, it appears to be the same across all reference designs. Now, get some sleep and test it tomorrow...

 

[avatar_raq]

Guys, so far so good.. I did several shutdown-startups and the issue didn't manifest, no partial desktop and CCC seems to remember my settings (though I haven't been able to enable Vsync in BFBC2, but I guess that's another story) so we can safely assume the issue is fixed by flashing ASUS 5870 bios:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/72815/Asus.HD5870.1024.100311.html
This bios works fine on my card so far, Furmark-stable and not only it fixed my issue, it improved monitor scaling even in POST and BIOS screens, it unlocked the core and memory clocks in CCC to 1200/1400 Mhz and helped reduce my max temps ~7 to 9 degrees C by having a better fan profile! I couldn't be happier ! Thank God.
I posted the link in case anyone has similar issue or just wants to try the bios.
Thanks everyone for the assistance! If anything new happens, I'll post here, so stay tuned!

Edit: see the update at the next page.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

What brand of 5870 did you buy?