Radeon 6970 rebooting problem

[mainmanz]

hi everyone.
just joined in hope that someone may be able to help me.

i recently installed a radeon 6970 into my computer and it worked fine, no problems at all for the first day. On the second day the pc rebooted itself as soon as the desktop screen appeared and then worked fine after rebooting. Same thing happened hours later when i returned from work. The problem got worse over a week to the point where my pc would get stuck in a loop, constantly rebooting only to crash again at the desktop screen. Safemode does not work either, Its reboots while loading the drivers. This problem only starts after the graphic cards drivers have been installed. I RMA'd the card whilst re installing my previous card (radeon 4890). My pc worked fine no problems at all. Got a email from overclockers saying they found no problems with my card so i installed it into my brothers computer along with my power supply. It worked fine, no problems at all over 3 days.I reinstalled the 6970 and I tried resetting the bios on my motherboard and to my suprise it worked fine but the clock speed on my RAM was 1066mhz instead of 1600mhz. After a few days i put the clock speeds of my RAM back up to 1600mhz but then the rebooting started again. I have tried only using 6gb instead of 12gb and trying the card into a different pci slot. I have tried increasing the voltage to the card and RAM and still having no luck. Not sure what else i can try.

Any advice would be appreciated
thanks

system specs:
Intel Core i7 920@ 2.66Ghz
Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Radeon HD 6970
Kingston HyperX 12gb @ 1600mhz
Windows 7 64bit
Corsair 850w psu

 

[Zyon]

If the card does not have problems, try using different RAM's and see if it's the RAM's problem (maybe take off your brother's computer RAMs?), RMA with Kingston if that's the case.

 

[mainmanz]

If the card does not have problems, try using different RAM's and see if it's the RAM's problem (maybe take off your brother's computer RAMs?), RMA with Kingston if that's the case.

hi

cant see it being a RAM problem. When i reinstall my old 4890 card all 12gb works fine at 1600mhz. The problem only occurs with the 6970 in, and the ram running at 1600mhz

thanks

edit:
just to add a little bit more info. On the rare times my pc boots successfully with the 6970 in and ram upto 1600mhz, once booted it works fine during long gaming sessions. No crashes at all. If my pc crashes it ONLY crahses as soon as the desktop appears, never anywhere else.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

That is odd. Have you tried a clean driver install?

 

[mainmanz]

That is odd. Have you tried a clean driver install?

hi

yup. i have tried old and new driver versions, uninstalling and reninstalling drivers and several formats still no luck. Problem only occurs once the ram is set to 1600mhz.

thanks

 

[D007]

of course your hooking up both 6 pins to the video card and the additional 4 pin, cpu power cables to the mobo I assume.. Make sure the card is seating all the way and nothing is stopping it.
Reset CMOS and load fail safe defaults then try it.. is the psu old? possibly failing? try another one if you can..
I'd try one stick of ram at a time as well.
May want to set bios to try pcie-x x16 "whichever slot you put it in" 1st. so it doesn't try pci. I don't think that'd cause a problem but better safe.. I'm thinking power related issue or memory.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

hi

yup. i have tried old and new driver versions, uninstalling and reninstalling drivers and several formats still no luck. Problem only occurs once the ram is set to 1600mhz.

thanks

Bump up the vtt a notch and make sure that the memory voltage and timings are set correctly.

 

[mainmanz]

Yup, the card is correctly seated and plugged in. I have tried reseating it multiple times with no luck. I have had a go at manually setting the voltage but to be honest im not entirely sure what settings i should use so any help with that would be appreciated. I was told to set the ram to 1.65v but in the bios i only have a choice between 1.66 and 1.64 and i have no idea what i should set the card to.

Just turned pc on this morning and the problem has started happening on optimized defaults with the ram timings unchanged. This is the first time it has happened on these settings, it has been working fine for days,for gaming and general use. It only crashed before when i adjusted the ram. The only way i was able to get my pc back on was to load bios fail safes instead of optimized defaults, but now im thinking its only a matter of time before it starts crashing on these settings. Strange thing is, it used to reboot but now it shutsdown my pc instead. No blue screen, my pc just goes off when the desktop appears.

Just to clarify, the psu is 3months old. Will be a couple of days before i can get my brothers 750w to try it
Cant remember the make of his psu, but will a cheap brand 750w psu be enough to power my pc?

Thanks

 

[bokou]

it depends on how many rails the PSU has - if it's something like 6 rails you'll have to realize that if the PSU is pulling more than one rail is capable of delivering you may have an issue (that's how I've always thought of it).

I'll say this - I got a 6970 myself and would have it shut down after a minute or two of gaming. I had an 800 watt psu and when I checked the specs it was a 4 rail and had enough on each rail to power the video card. I looked up some reviews and found that under "load" the card was pulling more than my PSU said it could deliver on a rail. I solved it for the time being (until I got a better single rail PSU) by using two different PCI-E power cables at the same time... the 8 pin from one cable and the 6 pin from another. I guess this was essentially using two rails to power the video card and all my problems went away.

 

[mainmanz]

it depends on how many rails the PSU has - if it's something like 6 rails you'll have to realize that if the PSU is pulling more than one rail is capable of delivering you may have an issue (that's how I've always thought of it).

I'll say this - I got a 6970 myself and would have it shut down after a minute or two of gaming. I had an 800 watt psu and when I checked the specs it was a 4 rail and had enough on each rail to power the video card. I looked up some reviews and found that under "load" the card was pulling more than my PSU said it could deliver on a rail. I solved it for the time being (until I got a better single rail PSU) by using two different PCI-E power cables at the same time... the 8 pin from one cable and the 6 pin from another. I guess this was essentially using two rails to power the video card and all my problems went away.

hi

here is my psu : http://www.corsair.com/power-supplies/non-modular-psus/enthusiast-series-1/tx850w.html

Im having a really hard time trying to diagnose this problem. Once successfully booted up my PC never crashes during gaming. Iv had it on for +6 hours and no problems, its only during the startup it crashes. Iv had problems with RAM and power supplies before and they crash anytime, during general use or gaming. But this always crashes at the exact same time, just as the desktop appears. I tried my card in my brothers PC along with my power supply and it seemed to work fine. Cant remember his exact system specs but it was a AMD phenom with 2gb. Could this be a Motherboard issue ?

Update: Sometimes when i power on my PC it then shutsdown after a few seconds just before the POST, there is no pattern, it just happens randomly sometimes.. It has also started crashing no matter what the RAM clock speeds are set to. Again i have had it working fine for the last few days on optimized settings but this morning i had to reboot it +3 times on fail safes and cleared the CMOS multiple times. Seems to be getting worse over time.

Thanks

 

[bokou]

I usually keep a rreeeeeeally old item (read: cheap) of each piece so I can swap out and figure out what's going on.

Try checking the windows event manager if it crashes when windows loads up. It should leave a nice little message for you in there that refers to not having enough power or bad ram or something of the sorts.

 

[mainmanz]

I usually keep a rreeeeeeally old item (read: cheap) of each piece so I can swap out and figure out what's going on.

Try checking the windows event manager if it crashes when windows loads up. It should leave a nice little message for you in there that refers to not having enough power or bad ram or something of the sorts.

thanks for the advice,

i took some screens of the event viewer, these are from this morning and yesterday morning:

http://img846.imageshack.us/i/26411error1.png/
http://img96.imageshack.us/i/26411error2.png/
http://img829.imageshack.us/i/270411error1.png/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/270511error2.png/

did some google searching on Kernal power event id 41 and there seems to be a wide range of problems than can cause this error to occur, from both hardware and software. Im pretty sure its not the RAM or Card causing this because if i install my old 4890, all 12gb Ram will work fine at 1600mhz and if i put the card in my brothers computer along with my psu it seems to work fine also. When i see my brother next ill trade psu's for a few days to rule it out. Maybe 3 days wasnt long enough last time as it took +4days for this problem to occur on fail safe settings.

thanks

 

[H82LUZ73]

thanks for the advice,

i took some screens of the event viewer, these are from this morning and yesterday morning:

http://img846.imageshack.us/i/26411error1.png/
http://img96.imageshack.us/i/26411error2.png/
http://img829.imageshack.us/i/270411error1.png/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/270511error2.png/

did some google searching on Kernal power event id 41 and there seems to be a wide range of problems than can cause this error to occur, from both hardware and software. Im pretty sure its not the RAM or Card causing this because if i install my old 4890, all 12gb Ram will work fine at 1600mhz and if i put the card in my brothers computer along with my psu it seems to work fine also. When i see my brother next ill trade psu's for a few days to rule it out. Maybe 3 days wasnt long enough last time as it took +4days for this problem to occur on fail safe settings.

thanks

Yep ram if it worked in your bros comp for week no probs,but your`s won`t then its RMA the ram time.

 

[mainmanz]

Yep ram if it worked in your bros comp for week no probs,but your`s won`t then its RMA the ram time.

Hi

You think it could still be ram an issue even if i plug in my 4890 and all 12gb works fine.

Just to clarify i have been running 12gb @ 1600mhz for 3months now, no problems at all. A month before that i replaced the psu again no problems. Got the card last month and thats where the problems have started even though the card passed an rma and works fine inside my bro's pc and mine (if it gets past the desktop screen, which rarely happens)

Thanks

 

[bokou]

here's the thread I made when mine was acting up. It was a Kernel Power event ID 41 as well.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142036

 

[mainmanz]

here's the thread I made when mine was acting up. It was a Kernel Power event ID 41 as well.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142036

hi

thanks for the link bokou. Noticed on yours and the other guys thread that you said it crashed while you were gaming and the card was under load. I have had issues with faulty psu's in the past and they always crashed similar to what you were saying, mostly during gaming or randomly during general use. Whats confusing me though, is if my psu is the cause, why is it not crashing during gaming, its always at the same spot. On one of the rare times my PC booted successfully last week with the 6890 in and the ram at 1600mhz, i had the day off work so i was gaming for at least +8 hours and no probelms at all. Games were crysis, rift and fallout new vegas all on max settings. Not a single crash, all worked flawless. Next day i power on the PC and couldnt get past the startup screen without clearing cmos and loading fail safes.

I appreciate the help, just trying to rule things out as i dont want to spend money to replace a component thats not faulty.

update: Just ran memtest 86+ for 1 hour 30mins and no errors. Will do longer tests when im able to

thanks.

 

[MicuAndrei]

Probably you have a compatibility issue. It's not very common, but could happend. Everything are ok, but your parts doesn't work fine together. Basicaly, you don't have enough power. Try to disconnect everything you can and start your PC with just what you need to use it. Unpluged USB conectors, optical drives .... and see what you get

 

[manofthem]

Just a thought:

You said that when you reinstalled it ran fine with RAM at 1066, but your problems came back when you got to 1600. Perhaps your memory needs a little more voltage to run at that speed. I suggest this because that's what my memory needed, little voltage bump to take away problems with lock ups or crashes.
(I'm not 100% sure about Intel rigs since mine is AMD...)
Maybe give it a shot.