SOLVED: Computer crashing since installing new video card (Radeon 7770)

6/7/2012 Update: This was apparently a driver issue. Everything is fine with the newest drivers.

Any idea why this is happening? I recently made two upgrades to my computer -- I transferred my system partition from an HDD to a Crucial M4 SSD, and I replaced my Radeon 4670 with a Radeon 7770. I installed the SSD before installing the new video card. There were no problems, and I'm quite certain the SSD isn't responsible for the instability. Nothing went wrong until installing the new video card. Since installing the video card, my system is crashing pretty frequently. The crashes aren't triggered by load -- in other words, I will just be browsing the internet or whatever, and the system will suddenly crash -- or I might play a video game for several hours without a crash. Also, this isn't from overclocking -- I have overclocked the card, but after reverting back to stock speeds, my PC is still crashing. Originally, I was using MSI Afterburner to overclock the card. When these crashes kept happening, I reset the core and memory clocks to the 7770 standards. But my system kept crashing -- and inexplicably, I could no longer open MSI Afterburner -- my system would crash if I tried to open it. So I uninstalled MSI Afterburner -- which did not help. My system is still crashing.

Any ideas?

Are you running the latest Radeon driver from the Radeon website? Did you do a full uninstall of the 4670 video driver before installing the 7770?

If not (or perhaps even if you did) I would do it again. A full complete uninstall and then reboot then latest driver install. And never ever install drivers from windows update

ellory said:   Are you running the latest Radeon driver from the Radeon website? Did you do a full uninstall of the 4670 video driver before installing the 7770?

If not (or perhaps even if you did) I would do it again. A full complete uninstall and then reboot then latest driver install. And never ever install drivers from windows update
Yes. I had 12.4 installed, but I uninstalled and re-installed 12.4 when installing the new card. I will try it again, though.

Could be the power. Also could be a defective video card. Also a little troubled by the overclocking and wodering whether you in fact restored the card to its original state. Do you have another machine you can verify this card in?

No its not.

rockymast said:   Did you re install windows after installing the card? That's necessary.What is your source for that assertion?

Flatbob said:   rockymast said:   Did you re install windows after installing the card? That's necessary.What is your source for that assertion?
Maybe he was watching the techs at BestBuy.

Sorry for abandoning this thread for awhile, but I haven't been able to determine the problem yet, so I haven't had anything to add.

forbin4040 said:   Umm...as the 4670 needed a 400w PS and the 7770 Needs a 500w or 600w power supply I will assume you did buy a new PS when you bought the card?
Otherwise, that's the problem, the PS can't handle it.
That is absurd. The 7770 is a very low-power card, and as I already mentioned, the computer crashes when idle. If you think that my PC (with "only" a 450W power supply and an old Intel E2180 processor) is crashing while idle because it is drawing too much power, then you don't know nearly as much about PC power requirements as you think you do. My PC isn't drawing anywhere CLOSE to that much power at idle or load. The 7770 is rated at ~80W (load), and the 4670 is rated at ~75W (load). And you think that I need a new power supply with an additional 50 - 150W power to keep my computer from crashing while idle? Seriously?? That is NOT the problem. Just to give an example of how absurd it is for any of you to believe that I don't have enough power, guru3d measured full system load at 155W idle and 231W stressed with a 7770 video card. And Thermaltake (a company that sells power supplies and likely overstates PSU requirements) recommends that I have a 334W PSU if I upgrade from my current 775 Allendale system to an Ivy Bridge system with an i5-3570K overclocked to 4.6GHz @ 1.3V. Still think I don't have enough power, guys? At idle, my system is probably drawing well below 150W -- and it sure as hell isn't requiring more than my 450W Corsair PSU can provide.

There is one other problem that I didn't mention before, just because I wasn't sure how to describe it. The screen has been periodically... sort of "jumping up" or something; like the image on the screen very quickly moves up or changes shape slightly, but it's a very quick, short change. Sorry, but I don't know how to describe it any better than that. And to provide a better description of the crashes, this is what typically happens:
- The computer locks up; the mouse cursor does not move with the mouse, commands cannot be entered, etc.
- Horizontal "black bars" appear on parts of the screen image
- The entire screen goes black
- I must perform a hard reset
Anyhow, these problems have absolutely nothing to do with power requirements. I appreciate people trying to help, but you guys are nuts if you think that I need a 600W PSU to use an 80W video card (even while idle).

Today, I installed the Catalyst 12.6 Beta drivers. So far, I haven't seen the aforementioned "screen jumping" weirdness, and there hasn't been a crash yet. I'm going to keep the PC on and awake for the next ~48 hours or so. If it crashes, then I'll update the thread to let everyone know. If it doesn't, then I will assume that this problem was driver related and will update this thread to say so.

ellory said:   Do you have another machine you can verify this card in?
Actually, yeah, I do. That will be a last resort. If nothing else works and the card seems defective, then I can put it in my other system. I hope it doesn't come to that. I'm really hoping that the driver change has fixed this. I will update this thread when I know.

Flagg said:   I installed 12.6 beta, and so far so good. The notes for this driver specifically say that the new drivers resolve the hanging problem:

AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards hang when system goes to sleep.
You and I may be experiencing different problems. My SSD prevents my computer from sleeping properly, so I already had sleep disabled before installing this video card. There is a tip (or tips) in the Crucial forum for getting sleep to work with M4 SSDs, but I've been too lazy to test it (them). Anyway, it is unrelated to my problems with this video card.

have you trolled guru3d.com, are there any BIOS updates for that card?

MechanicalMan said:   Flagg said:   I installed 12.6 beta, and so far so good. The notes for this driver specifically say that the new drivers resolve the hanging problem:

AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 cards hang when system goes to sleep.
You and I may be experiencing different problems. My SSD prevents my computer from sleeping properly, so I already had sleep disabled before installing this video card. There is a tip (or tips) in the Crucial forum for getting sleep to work with M4 SSDs, but I've been too lazy to test it (them). Anyway, it is unrelated to my problems with this video card.

No, it's the same. I also had problems with my computer sleeping, so mine is set to never sleep also. Even still, my computer was always hanging whenever the system wasn't used for any length of time. I believe it was caused by the video card trying to go into it's ultra low power 'Zerocore' state, so even though your system isn't sleeping, the video card still is.

Anyway, I used 12.6 beta, and have since upgraded to the 12.7 beta, and have had only one system hang in over a month. The driver definitely resolved the problem for me, and I assume it will only get more stable when I upgrade to the stable release of the driver.