Windows 7 64 and ATI 6950 Sleep/Boot Issues

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benhizen

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Jul 31, 2009
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I am out of ideas.

I have a computer with the following specs:

Corei7 920 CPU
EVGA X58 SLI mobo (3 SLI)
Sapphire ATI HD 6950 2GB (10.12 hotfix driver)

I just recently bought a 6950 (had a GeForce GTX260 before) and before I installed the ATI card my PC would sleep/wake up/boot up with no problems. After I installed my ATI card my PC had problems. I could get the PC to go to sleep but it would not wake up, most of the time it would just fire up but with no signal to my monitor (either revving up the video card's fans to 100% or not), making me perform a hard shutdown and reboot to get it back up. Only very few times does the PC successfully wake up from sleep. Sometimes on boot the video card turns the fan on to 100% and nothing displays on the monitor, a reset fixes the problem.

I have tried the newest drivers from AMD, the hotfix driver from AMD, playing with the mobo's BIOS sleep settings (currently on S1 & S3 with reset VGA BIOS when wake from sleep option enabled) and I have formatted my HDD and reinstalled Windows 7. Nothing seems to work.

The card works very well in games and applications, the ONLY thing wrong so far is my sleep/boot issue. I bought the card from NewEgg and have until the 24th (I think) if I'm going to use an RMA to return/exhcange the card, I'd rather not box it up and ship it off if I don't have to but I'm running out of ideas here. Is this an inherent problem with ATI cards or is mine damaged in some way?
 
Sleep doesn't work on most systems with vista/7. I think it affects both nvidia and AMD. Solution: Don't use sleep!
 
My computer sleeps without issues, running Windows 7 (64 bit). Running 2 480's in SLI in Eyefinity Portrait. I have read issues reporting that same issue as your reposting. I would just wait for newer drivers, I doubt if you replace the card it will solve your problem with another 6950.
 
I have a 5870 and haven't had any problem with it with window 7, but I have heard of others with that problem, what driver are you using?
 
No problems with sleep and my 6950's and W7 64 here either. I have read some complaints about sleep problems with Windows 7, but I have yet to experience it.
 
I'll point out that the issue with my system and sleep is not that the system will not wake from sleep, but rather that it will wake up within 5-30 minutes of going to sleep by itself. A common bug with sleep in Vista/7.
 
Windows 7 has more than a few sleep bugs. My newer system it works on , my older system it doesn't. Its weird like that.
 
I enjoy using the sleep function, I use it on my gaming rig in my bedroom, it's so much faster than shutting down and rebooting. I have always used NVIDIA cards until I found such a good deal with the Radeon 6950. Never had a problem with sleep with the NVIDIA cards, just this ATI card. Is there a stable driver someone can recommend? I've heard of people using older drivers like 10.10 and 10.9 and saying they're stable.

Why would my card give me boot problems?
 
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samuelmorris said:
I'll point out that the issue with my system and sleep is not that the system will not wake from sleep, but rather that it will wake up within 5-30 minutes of going to sleep by itself. A common bug with sleep in Vista/7.
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This happens occasionally with my 5870 and 7 64bit. Only twice I think did it ever fail to wake up from sleep. For awhile there I had C1E disabled and of course the problem went away.
 
Motherboard BIOS.

I know on my DFI it had issues, a BIOS patch fixed it, and haven't had them since, either the 4890 or the 6950.

I do occassionally come out of sleep and my USB devices won't recognize / initiate, so I just reboot at that point instead of digging behind. I just don't have the patience to unplug 2 things ;)
 
I have sent the graphics card back. I really think it has to be a hardware issue. I will let you guys know what happens when I get the new one.
 
I highly doubt that there is/was anything wrong with your GFX in regards to Sleep functionality. Your issue has everything to do with your Motherboard's power state support and your settings in Vista/7. Some motherboards have to be set in the BIOS to a specific power state setting (S3 or S4) in order to be able to support sleep functionality. Others may work out of the box at default settings.

Another thing to try is once you've checked on your Motherboard's settings, check the Win 7/Vista power settings and try either Hybrid Sleep or Hibernation instead of Sleep. There are differences in how these functions are handled and one might work while the other doesn't.

Lastly...if you have an unclean power source, experience any power spike or surge, then your computer will likely not wake up from sleep/hibernation or have issues when trying to do so. I would recommend a minimal UPS (a small price to protect your 'investment') to avoid these issues.

Good luck!
 
I have a nvidia gpu windows 7 and have the same problem. Spent a day trying to figure out how to fix it but nothing came up so I decided to not use it at all. I think thats the only way to "resolve" it for now.
 
g-money said:
I highly doubt that there is/was anything wrong with your GFX in regards to Sleep functionality. Your issue has everything to do with your Motherboard's power state support and your settings in Vista/7. Some motherboards have to be set in the BIOS to a specific power state setting (S3 or S4) in order to be able to support sleep functionality. Others may work out of the box at default settings.

Another thing to try is once you've checked on your Motherboard's settings, check the Win 7/Vista power settings and try either Hybrid Sleep or Hibernation instead of Sleep. There are differences in how these functions are handled and one might work while the other doesn't.

Lastly...if you have an unclean power source, experience any power spike or surge, then your computer will likely not wake up from sleep/hibernation or have issues when trying to do so. I would recommend a minimal UPS (a small price to protect your 'investment') to avoid these issues.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I believe it's my GFX card for one big reason, my system has trouble booting with the card installed. Even from a shutdown state it doesn't always turn on correctly.

I've played with the sleep settings in the mobo (S3, S1, S3&S1, and run VGABIOS out of S3 option) with no luck.

I've turned off the hybrid sleep mode in Windows 7 with no luck, played with all the advanced sleep settings and haven't made any head way. No matter which one I do (sleep, hibernate, hybrid sleep, shutdown) the PC never boots or comes up right.

I do have a 1100Watt UPS on my PC, it isn't overloaded, I'm barely using 30% of it's capability. Still, no luck.

I have returned the card, according to NewEgg they have just received my card and are processing it. I should be receiving my new card here in a few days, perhaps Monday. Hopefully a new card will fix the problem. I will keep you all posted, thank you all for your suggestions.

Hopefully a new card with the new 11.1a hotfix driver will get my sleep and boot functionality back.
 
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I'm running into the same issue with Win7 x64 and my 6950. When the computer sleeps and wakes up, screen is just blank. I'm using the latest driver (11.1a). I'm not having any boot issues though.

It wasn't doing this when I had my GTX460 installed (everything else is the same hardware wise).

I have a P8P67-PRO, there aren't any special settings for sleep mode on the efi bios, also tried disabling hybrid sleep, same issue.
 
I have received my new card from NewEgg yesterday and all my issues seem to be fixed. It hasn't had a boot problem at all and it gets out of sleep correctly. I had it reboot and wake up several times without issue, the 11.1a driver works really well and installed without issue. Thank you all for your input!
 
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