Another computer problem you say? Yep...

[ThePlague]

Alright. Just a day ago I bought a new MSI HD 6870 from Fry's Electronics for 199 (open box woot). Everything went fine, installed drivers for it and what not. And now today it's screwing up. Whenever I play any 3d game (Bad company 2, Medal of Honor, Crysis 2) after about 5 minutes of in-game playtime, my screen goes black, and 5 seconds after that my computer freezes and I have to restart. I've tried fixing it with 3 different drivers (regular ATI ones, and two MSI specific ones.) and nothing seems to change. Before I had this card in I was using a low profile HD 4650, and that seemed to work fine.

I'm hearing mixed things about this problem. Someone said it could be drivers (which I checked, and nothing). Another person said it could be my power supply not giving it enough power (I have a 500w, one HDD, and a disc drive).

A solution I heard I could try was to do a fresh format, but I haven't tried it yet.

I'm also using the 4 pin to 6 pin converters the card came with to power it, instead of my only 6 pin connector and a 4 to 6 pin. Could that be a problem?

Halp guys :C I want to own at the gaems again.

[Patrickssj6]

Go into the Eventlog...it's probably a driver issue.

[neuro]

ive also got an issue SIMILAR, where my computer completely freezes (usually during games (sc2 is a bad one for me)) completely, EXCEPT FOR MY SOUND.
if i've got music playing, it'll just keep playing. and i can only hit the reset button.

doesn't mention anything in the event log either, short of 'oh the windows was closed UNEXPECTEDLY (reset)'

already looked into a billion threads about this, but never managed to find an answer.
(had this issue for aages now, and it's gotten less over time, but yesterday it decided to pop up again)

[ThePlague]

Yeah, that's exactly what it does. The screen goes black, but the sound still plays for a few seconds. Then it just freezes completely.

[Cortexian]

That's basically the problem I had where I had to RMA.

[ThePlague]

Oh cool...

[Amit]

Open box? Is it refurbished? If it is, that's probably the reason the previous owner took it back.

[Cagerrin]

Try raising the voltage to the next highest setting with ATT before starting the game? Seems to prevent my 5770 from doing the same thing.

[ThePlague]

I changed the power to the same setup as it was with my 5870. Which was a 2 4 pin to 1 6 pin, and a 6 pin directly from my PSU. I also just went to the latest drivers from MSI.

How do you go about raising the voltage Cagerrin?

@ Amit, the box was open but the card looked brand new. I think they just opened it to see what it looked like.

[Cagerrin]

ATI Tray Tools > Hardware > Overclocking Settings. Should be a voltage drop-down menu just above the clock/memory sliders.

[Amit]

@ Amit, the box was open but the card looked brand new. I think they just opened it to see what it looked like.

I don't buy that story. There are tons of pictures of what it looks like online.

[ThePlague]

Alright well played two games of BC2 no problem. Will keep you guys posted.