New VGA (7970) crashes - only in GTA IV?

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Brahman

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Feb 22, 2006
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I've recently bought a new graphic card, a 7970 (see below). Although, I have a problem as the title sais, it crashes in GTA IV. In all other games I've tried it works fine, for example L4D2, BF:BC2, some Total War, WoW, Hitman 4... In GTA I can only play for like 5-20 minutes until the computer freezes and one screen turns black, and the other (the main screen) turns in green and black stripes and the sound loops. The computer stays this way until I resets it.
I've tested 12.11 Beta 8, 12.10 and 12.8 without any difference. What can the problem be?

My previous card, a HD5870, has always worked perfectly even in GTA.

Corsair VX550W
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Corsair Vengenace CL8 1600Mhz 1x4GB
ASUS Radeon HD7970 3GB DCII
1 SSD
1 HDD
1 DVD
 
I'd run FurMark for awhile to make sure the GPU is okay. If it's working okay in other games, an issue could exist with the install of the game. Make sure ALL of your drivers are up to date as well, not just the gpu drivers.
 
I'll try FurMark right away. Tried to reinstall the game several times, both non-steam and steam-install, no difference. Will try to remember all drivers installed to get them updated, the BIOS as well.

One thing I remembered: Each time this happens and I get back into Windows after the reset, the mouse (usb) is not working. Looks like its on, but just not responding until I unplug and plug it in again.
 
Hmm.. update your bios. Are you using our peripherals in usb3 slots? Go to your motherboards manufacture page and update all of the chipset / usb / ect ect drivers.
 
If every other game you've tried runs just fine, it ain't the card or your computer; it's a game specific problem.

For some reason that particular game is causing problems.

If I recall GTA IV is a very GPU intensive game.

Is your 7970 overclocked?
Is your system overclocked?
 
I've ran FurMark without anything happening, should I try run it for a certain amount of time?
BIOS is updated now. So are the chipset, incl USB, ethernet etc. Keyboard and mouse. Nothing in my system is overclocked at all, haven't even tried that out.

Tried to play GTA right after I had done this - it still crashed after about 5-10 minutes.. then I quickly changed back to my HD5870 and with that it just works, wtf? Starts to bother me :p

EDIT: A question: How does the system act if it doesen't have enough power from the PSU? Or should my PSU be able to give the required power to all the components?
 
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Have you tried using a program like drivesweeper to clear out all of your old cards drivers and settings?

I wouldn't think it would cause the issue since you upgraded from AMD to AMD, but it may be worth a shot.

As for the PSU it could be the problem. With your hardware listed NE recommends 629 watts. It also shows swapping the card to a 5870 the wattage drops 81w to 553 watts (I know it's probably not the most accurate way to gauge required wattage but it's a start)
 
In case you didn't do it, you do need to uninstall the old drivers before installing the new card, and then reinstall them.
 
If you uninstall the drivers for the card, be sure you COMPLETELY get rid of all traces of the driver before trying to reinstall it again, including any registry entries for it. Sometimes when you uninstall a driver, bits of it could still be floating around. A quick Google search can give you some options of driver cleaners that work pretty well. I had a similar problem with my old video card, an until I did a complete driver wipe, it acted much like you've described. You may want to revert to an older driver, as well, as sometimes the newest drivers don't always work as they should when they are just released.

As for your PSU, that could deff. be a problem, but I can't see it being a huge difference if you're able to play all your other games. I think DraginDime has the right of it on that front. Good luck!
 
Try installing msi afterburner to monitor the card during game play... If still having problems try RadeonPro to tweek graphic settings for this one game
 
After having tons of problems playing older games on my 7970 I finally settled on the 12.3 drivers... YMMV.
 
Yep, I've tried DriperSweeper. As said earlier the computer was a clean and new install when I first installed this card, so that shouldn't be any problem. I've also sweeped every time I have changed the cards.
I'll try that program Magiashkii, to monitor during the game.

DeathPrincess, you talked about weird memory usage. As my specs sais I only have 4 GB of ram, could the computer act this way if it has too little memory? I can see that it is pretty much on 95-100% of memory usage each time I play the game.
Regarding the PSU, I've thought a long time on buying a 'bigger' one, so perhaps this is the time :) Do you have any tips on a good PSU for my system? And a thing I just remembered, my PSU now do not have 2x8pins, only 1x6+2 and 1x6, so I am using a 2x4 molex converter to a 1x8..?
 
Get a higher wattage power supply. I've had the same problem in the past with GTA iv.
 
Kritter said:
Get a higher wattage power supply. I've had the same problem in the past with GTA iv.
Click to expand...

Great point. OP, what sort of PSU are you using? - Never mind, it's in your original post. I think that PSU would be fine.. I doubt that would be the reason.
 
I seen an HX850 in the for sale section today for $100 I think it was. They have a 7 year warranty by serial number, and they have plenty of video card 6+2 pin plugs (6 of them total I think). That's a pretty decent deal on it, just thought I'd point it out. I've been very happy with mine so far it runs my system flawlessly and i've got it packed will all kinds of crap.

Which there are plenty of good brand psu's out there. I'd shoot for at least a 700w
 
If your PSU was the problem, you'd have issues with every game you play.

Once you enter th game and challenge the card, the computer would crash consistantly; not just in one game.
I would think BF2 would be just as challenging to the system as GTA IV.

I'm just not buying that only one game would bork the PSU and others wouldn't.
 
If you downclock the 7970 gpu/gpu-mem, does GTA IV suddenly work without issue?
 
I've managed to borrow a friends PSU for a day, will get it tomorrow (a AX750), guess its work trying it out if it makes any difference. I am running Windows 7 64 bit!

xorbe, how much do you think I need to downclock if so?
 
eculley said:
Great point. OP, what sort of PSU are you using? - Never mind, it's in your original post. I think that PSU would be fine.. I doubt that would be the reason.
Click to expand...

I had dual 5890s on a 850w psu. IT worked fantastic for everything but GTAIV cutscenes. The system would just shutdown and on reboot report in the event viewer "kernel power failure". I rigged a second power supply to feed the second card and it didn't shutdown on cutscenes. I later installed a 1500w psu and never had the issue again.
 
I have a problem similar to yours,removing service pack 1 has taken care of most.GTAIV is the only remaining problem
 
Update: Now have a AX750 in my system, and an extra 4 GB of RAM. Tried GTA - it crashed, then I installed the recently bought game Natural Selection 2 - and it also crashed, after about 20 minutes (not as fast as GTA)! It feels like its very graphic demanding games that are crashing?

This is how the screens look at crash, stripes.
 
Me thinks there is a problem with that video card. Any pushing on it seems to be too problematic for it. I would look at RMA'ing it and getting another.
 
Brahman said:
Yes, it does. What does that mean?
Click to expand...

Either the cooling is improperly affixed and barely doing the job, or more likely (and all too common) your card is probably "functional" (ie, it hasn't let the magic smoke out) but it's probably "faulty" -- it can't run at its programmed clock speeds (it just can't make timing). Somehow the gpu or a ram chip was marginally binned. That's a valid reason for RMA ... but it's been 9 months since you asked! Still limping along with the crashes?!
 
So basically it's a return back to the manufacturer?
Well, this is how everything went: All of a sudden, shit started to work. It seemed like when I unplugged my loudspeakers (optical) everything worked, it didn't crash anymore. Then I stopped to unplug it after a while and it still worked. And it worked for these 9 months until yesterday, then it started to crash again. Every single time, after everything from 2 seconds to 1 minute.
Then I went back to this tread and checked this, downclocked, and now it magically works again..
 
Yeah I doubt that optical (non-electrical) audio connection had any effect, haha
 
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