Sapphire HD 4870 Problems Thread

[dguy6789]

This is a thread for people to discuss the problems that have begun showing up in Sapphire HD 4870 video cards.

The problem involves games freezing and then either recovering or the machine requires a restart. The screen in many cases becomes covered in square shapes just as the crash happens, but not every time. Sometimes VPU recover pops up after a short time and allows you to resume play/pc usage, but not every time. If VPU recover works and you resume playing the game, a crash will happen again in a short amount of time.

This problem happens on machines that pass all stability tests and are rock solid. The problem seems specific to Sapphire HD 4870s so far. The problem is not temperature related.

Some threads from other forums full of people with the problem:

http://forums.amd.com/game/mes...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

http://www.tomshardware.com/fo...140-33-4870-make-crash

I'm sorry if there is already a thread on this, I couldn't find it. I just got my new 4870 and wanted to discuss this.

How to Fix:

Update the Video Card BIOS from the Sapphire website if you have Part No.: 188-01E85-001SA,SKU#11133-00 (or 11133-00-20R) on the green sticker of your box. This will fix the problem.
http://us.sapphiretech.com/driver/478.zip
http://us.sapphiretech.com/driver/479.zip (How to flash VBIOS under pure DOS mode)

 

[Dorkenstein]

The only time I encountered this was when my video card wasn't getting sufficient power.

 

[dguy6789]

There are people with kilowatt power supplies having the problem.

 

[Quiksilver]

Sounds to me that sapphire shipped out a bad batch of cards and nothing more. I mean I wouldn't touch sapphire to begin with anyway cause of their very poor customer support; not to mention gr33ng3cko.

 

[dguy6789]

Any recommendations for me? Send my HD4870 back to newegg and get another? Seems like the best option to me. Gah I just got my pc working again, I don't wanna go without it again for X amount of days

 

[bryanW1995]

you should definitley send it back. see if they'll cross-ship.

 

[dguy6789]

What I am afraid of is since a ton of people with Sapphire are having this problem, that I might just get another card from the same batch. If newegg would cross ship to me, I would be one happy camper. I will look into it tomorrow.

Edit: Looks like Newegg doesn't cross ship.

 

[dguy6789]

Did some power related tests. With my machine having only one hard drive plugged in, no case fans, no disc drives, and the processor at 1.86Ghz and 1.0volts, the machine still crashes after the same amount of game play as when everything is plugged in and the machine is overclocked.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Any recommendations for me? Send my HD4870 back to newegg and get another? Seems like the best option to me. Gah I just got my pc working again, I don't wanna go without it again for X amount of days

I have not had any issues with my Gigabyte 4870 card with the many games I have thrown at it on Vista x64,however this does not help you and I can only see a few options ie try a different brand and see if your stability improves.

 

[dguy6789]

I'm going to try my luck with an RMA to Newegg. Hope I get a good card back.

 

[Don66]

I have a Sapphire HD 4870 also.

The only game I have problems in is Condemed.
It'll play fine for about 20-30 minutes then the game will slow to a crawl, the black screen.
I hit esc. and then alt tab and back out to desk top with the message that the card has had a VPU recovery.

All the other games I play don't seem to have that problem.

 

[Canai]

Aren't all the 4870 cards out right now just rebranded ATi reference cards?

Is heat maybe an issue? The card overheating either itself or some other components near it?

 

[dguy6789]

The problem happened with me on Crysis and UT2004. Totally random how long I could play the game for. One time I played Crysis for 15 mins and it crashed, another time it only happened 2 hours later. UT seems to crash early on every time. Heat can't be an issue. My case has great airflow and I have even tried increasing the card's fan speed to where it idles at 50C instead of 70 and it still crashes just as often. As far as I know, only people with Sapphire models have reported the issue. I returned my card to Newegg this morning. I will report if my new card solves the problem or still has it.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Canai
Aren't all the 4870 cards out right now just rebranded ATi reference cards?

Is heat maybe an issue? The card overheating either itself or some other components near it?

Electronic components have specification, but actual parts may come from many different OEMs.

Sapphire had same problems with X1950 series.

 

[Swampthing]

I'm having this problem as well, just came here to see if others are or not. Seems to be common, going to just return the damn card. I'm not having much luck with cards. I had ordered a 9800gx2 that was dead in teh water and now this.

 

[Dadofamunky]

What about the Catalyst software/drivers version?

 

[dguy6789]

8.8 for me.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
The problem happened with me on Crysis and UT2004. Totally random how long I could play the game for. One time I played Crysis for 15 mins and it crashed, another time it only happened 2 hours later. UT seems to crash early on every time. Heat can't be an issue. My case has great airflow and I have even tried increasing the card's fan speed to where it idles at 50C instead of 70 and it still crashes just as often. As far as I know, only people with Sapphire models have reported the issue. I returned my card to Newegg this morning. I will report if my new card solves the problem or still has it.

You tried the normal things like nothing overclocked including CPU and relax the memory timings on ram in BIOS?

 

[Swampthing]

It's not an overclocking or Power issue. Last night i was trying to run adobe audition and it would do the flickery box thing in that program in the EXACT same place. I duplicated it twice and caused the computer to crash. So if something as undemanding as audition can cause this there's a problem.

 

[chevmaro]

I had the same problem. It was in vista and I woudl get the error your GPU stopped responding and has recovered or something to that effect. I replaced my powersupply and adjusted the gpu fan to 50%. It stopped and im not sure which fixed it but it has been working for a week now and it used to be a daily occurance.

Forgot to mention I am using a Diamond card but the issue sounded similiar. And say what you want but I believe this to be a vista issue. The card, driver or something else in the system may be flawed thats causing it but this never happened in XP. XP might just be more forgiving.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: chevmaro
I had the same problem. It was in vista and I woudl get the error your GPU stopped responding and has recovered or something to that effect. I replaced my powersupply and adjusted the gpu fan to 50%. It stopped and im not sure which fixed it but it has been working for a week now and it used to be a daily occurance.

Forgot to mention I am using a Diamond card but the issue sounded similiar. And say what you want but I believe this to be a vista issue. The card, driver or something else in the system may be flawed thats causing it but this never happened in XP. XP might just be more forgiving.

Very much doubt its a Vista issue,besides I have yet to experience anything similar with my 4870 and Vista x64,also there are a lot of happy Vista users using 4870 cards so blaming an OS is really stupid at this stage,last point if you read the thread links some XP users have the problem too.
Btw its starting to rain here guess I'll blame Vista for that too

 

[eklock2000]

Sounds heat related...no problems for me. Make sure you're using the fan hack thingy to keep temps down.

Peace,

EK2K

 

[Zillatech]

How about the HD4850? Anyone having similar issues with those cards? I'm thinking about picking up a "Dual Slot" 4850 and forgetting the 4870 now. It seems there are more and more issues cropping up and I can't help thinking about how HOT these cards run.

BTW, the fan speed fix is really lame (IMO) on AMD's part. End users should not have to do that, I mean come on! I can't remember ever having to "adjust" the factory fan speeds of any video card I have ever owned!

I still want a 4870 to replace my "Stuttering 8800GTS 512" but dang, when are the AIB's gonna ship some better cooling on these boards???

I don't trust the PowerColor board right now until more reviews come out and that seems to be the only one available. :disgust:

 

[dguy6789]

I have run everything at stock of course to test, but like I said, my machine is 100% totally rock solid torture test stable aside from this video card issue.

Temperatures are not the problem.(Was my first guess as to what the problem was, so I did the fan hack and ran my fan at 60% and brought temps down by 20C. The problem still happened just as often.)

It is not a Vista only issue because I get it running XP 64.

I am certain it isn't a power issue either. My power supply has 54 amps over the 12 volt rail. It's on ATI's site for certified power supplies for the HD 4870 even.

 

[Swampthing]

Contacted newegg today they were nice enough to refund the card as i said i didn't want another sapphire. I just said screw it and went and replaced it with a nvidia 280. This was the first ATI card i've had in years and it really left a bad taste in my mouth. I know it's probably not an ATI specific issue but a sapphire issue but still.