Powercolor HD 5850 crashing and being annoying as balls - Hardware & Software

Hey. I'm writing this quick as I'm about to head out the door, hopefully I can get useful stuff in this post without making you guys confused. I have a Powercolor HD 5850 (cheap brand, I know :( ) and it's been happening for awhile where my card for ANY game (Minecraft, GTA IV, Wurm Online, Haven and Hearth, Company Of Heroes, for some examples) the screens will freeze, then either will turn a color related to a game I'm playing (ex, a tree in H&H is brown, screens turn exact same brown) then turn black, and either will cause a BSOD (Albeit rarely, and it states the drivers timed out) or everything will come back to normal and windows will say that my video card drivers stopped responding. Weird. Another thing it does is sometimes when I'm playing games, the screen will go black, and a few seconds later, cuts out all audio, and just hangs, along with the monitors losing signal. A variation of this is just at an instant, everything turns black, audio cuts out, and my card's fan will ramp up to 100% and it sounds like a jet engine taking off in my house, scaring the shit out of me. With either of these 2 problems, a simple reset button press will handle it. Is my card just haunted because I chose a shitty manufacturer? Could it have been faulty on arrival? Does Lassie save the boy trapped at the bottom of the well? If any of these are true, maybe you guys can suggest me a new card? Maybe a little better than the 5850? (ATI/AMD preferably, my mobo is awesome at crossfire APPARENTLY) Thanks for any assistance you can provide. :D Also, a sidenote: Why the hell is Google Chrome only loading about 3/4 of a page on FP, then just stopping? Thanks :D

Temps before and after running a intense game, please, and other specs (including your PSU brand and wattage) as well. Are you sure this happens in Minecraft, too? That's a little odd since it doesn't seem to use much GPU.

Yes, it happens in Minecraft, its really annoying because I have to close Minecraft through task manager and restart Minecraft. Probably something to do with Java, I assume. PSU: Cooler Master 600W (RS-600-PCAR-E3) <- if that helps. it also came with the case (cooler master Scout) Before running a game (Good Ole' Crysis Warhead :D): [img]http://i.imgur.com/MnRpf.png[/img] (overdrive is DISABLED or LOCKED or whatever, I can't change clock speeds.) After Playing Crysis Warhead for a bit(no crash, BTW) Temp 70 C Activity (cutscene after mission) 93% which is a bit surprising, because in game it's around 75% Fan Speed 35% If you want, I can do a Speccy

Well this is worrying when I JUST bought a powercolor 6870... it $100 off, so maybe it was one of the good ones?? :ohdear:

It just went on me in Minecraft again. Gahh, so annoying sometimes...

HWMonitor of the GPU temps after running a game for a while, it logs the highest and lowest temps. Just leave it running.

or just get furmark, which makes a nice graph of you temp.

[img]http://imgur.com/dvolW.png[/img] After playing about half an hour of Crysis Warhead Ending is kickass, BTW.

It's true i had a CrysisGasm. Try updating drivers

I have the latest CCC and the latest drivers off of AMD's website. The problem has transferred between all upgrades and downgrades I've done. Does that mean my card is a POS?

Check your event logs, maybe there's some helpful info in there.

I guess you could try updating your motherboard drivers. Sometimes the motherboard bios is outdated and causes issues with new graphic cards.

I did both, and updating the mobo's bios did nothing. Checking event viewer the only error it gave me at the time was "The computer lost power without completely shutting down."

Run a nice, long FurMark burn session and see how high it gets. I have a Powercolor 5770 and I have no problems with it.

What do you have for a PSU? Thats the only thing I can think of.

[img]http://imgur.com/ynq4M.jpg[/img] The benchmark had reached peaks of what I had ran before, a half hour burn-in. My PSU is a Cooler Master RS-600-PCAR-E3, 600 watts. Taken from "Hardware Secrets" "[i]Why manufacturers like Cooler Master are still carrying power supplies with fake wattages is a mystery to us. We know that this is a very low-end power supply, but this doesn’t give the manufacturer the right to lie. This unit should be labeled as a 450 W unit and sold for half of its price. Being labeled as a 600 W product and sold for USD 70, it is a complete rip-off."[/i] That's nice. I guess it's the PSU then. I assume the lack of voltage it's been getting is damaging or has damaged the card?

Lack of voltage? What? Also, your GPU shouldn't be reaching 87.

For some reason, the drivers seem to stay at 40% fan efficiency regardless of temperature. Shouldn't the drivers automatically change the speed higher for higher temps?

Download MSi Afterburner, and regulate the fan speed from there. Dust of the heatsink aswell.

Out of curiosity, what would be ideal temps for my computer? This is what I have now. [img]http://imgur.com/acCAF.jpg[/img]

I have it so it's at 100% at 70c and past that.

[QUOTE=nikomo;29095460]I have it so it's at 100% at 70c and past that.[/QUOTE] Seriously?