Got a new box a little while ago, and now that I'm into the full swing of using it, I've found that the graphics cannot do shit. Basically whenever doing something that requires the card to actually do any work, everything will run normally for 5-10 minutes, until the card will freak the fuck out and do either one of 2 things.

First will cause a game freeze, where the video will freeze, and a sound loop will begin repeating whatever was going on at the time (i.e. a loop of a gunshot or a music chord) and I'll experience some system slowdown, i.e. doing something like alt+ctrl+del will take 30+ seconds to have any effect.

The second thing is pretty much a blackscreen with the aforementioned system slowdown.

After I do an alt+ctrl+del, if it actually bother to work I'll be shunted back to desktop with the program that had a bitchfit closed and a very unhelpful message will popup in my tray. It basically says "The ATI display drivers were not responding and have fixed themselves", at which point the comp will work normally, sometimes. Other times my mouse and keyboard will be unresponsive and I'll have to restart.

I've made sure test this with a couple games (Alien Swarm and Dragon Age) and it seems pretty consistent that it'll brick about 10 minutes in.

Heat doesn't seem to be an issue, and I've made sure to grab all updates for the drivers (10.6) and made sure my Windows 7 is up to date. My only guess could be an insufficient power supply not giving enough juice to the card causing it to cut out, which then messes up the drivers or something.

Help is appreciated, thanks.

Heres the comp configuration

MB: GB P55M-UD2
CPU: i7-860
RAM: Corsair 4GB CMD4GX3M2A1600C8
GPU: ASUS EAH5770CU2DI-1GD5
PSU: Antec TruPower 550W

 

I'd say your card might not like your motherboard, or your card is either not getting enough power (I think most cards want you to plug-in a 4 slotted plug into the video card these days, mine does), or the vid card does not like another piece of hardware. Also, getting the latest vid card drivers doesn't always mean it'll work. I'm currently using the 1.9.7 version of the Ge-Force driver, and it works fine for me for the most part. Maybe an earlier driver version might work for you.

 

I am also thinking its a problem with the power, nonetheless you could also try running GPU-Z and CoreTemp to log cpu/gpu temperatures just to see if its a heat issue.

 

Mine does this every so often (usually after having spent ~4 hours on TF2). It is heat-related in my case. The stock cooler on my GPU shit out, and I think part of the card got burned. It's even more susceptible to heat now, which sucks.

I now have a Zalman VGA cooler, and it's epic. Only bad thing is it's manually controlled, so if something bumps the knob (if you have it externally mounted like I do) you could be fucked. Happened to me once so far, further burning my card I'm sure.

 

What sort of heats were you getting that caused the problem?

The card gets up to about 58 degrees C before all of the problems start to surface.

 

58 Degrees C shouldn't be anywhere near high enough to cause problems like that. My Asus CuCore 5770 idles around 38 degrees C, but people have reported getting stable load temps up to 85 degrees C on stock with a roomy case.

 

I did a quick internet search, and it seems variations of this problem are as common as dirt. Here for example. The discussions have people mentioning the occasional "workaround," but all I saw was a bunch of voodoo, instead of a reliable fix.

In the mean time, there are hardware things you can do, as people above have discussed. 550W is a bit borderline for a system like that - if it were mine I'd want a good quality 650W or more in that sucker. To test for heat, some people have tried a ghetto procedure: open up the case, and aim a huge box fan or whatnot at the GPU. :awesome Your GPU temperatures don't look bad at all, but sometimes those temperature diodes can be a bit unreliable.