Hi everyone, as many of us are suffering from this i'd like to post this solution (even tho it may already be out this tells you everything about it more or less)

Many thanks too machior for putting this togheter

Link : http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118448

 

Or you can read it here without the replies

Problem Description

After a lot of searching and annoyance I have finally found a solution to an issue that kept me from using my new graphics card. As the title already mentions the graphics card I'm talking about is the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870.
The issue I had with the card was the following:

When running any kind of 3D game (WoW, WAR and others) my system would completely lock up after an undetermined amount of time sometimes it would lock up 1 minute into the game, while other times I could play for around 5 hours without a problem. Either way, whenever the lock up occurred all that I could do to fix it was a hard reset.
When the lock up occurred sometimes the screen would go completely black and hang the entire system, other times I would get brown/grey vertical bars over my screen, and other times again it would pixelate the entire screen and then go black again. It was also possible that the game would sometimes keep on running in the background, but without being able to see anything it's pretty hard to play.

The first thing that came to my mind about this problem was that the card was overheating, even though I found it odd as the game could crash not even 5 minutes into the game. But to exclude it I checked my temperatures either way, with RivaTuner and GPU-Z, and found that my temps were indeed not overheating. The hottest temp I had going at any given time was 55 degrees Celsius on my VRAM, the rest (GPU Core etc.) was either at 50 or below. I have to note here that I had RivaTuner apply a Fan profile to keep it running at 40% all the time, hence the pretty cool temps.

After it turned out it wasn't overheating I started searching the Internet for people with the same problem and hopefully a fix. I found that I wasn't the only one, but I also discovered that fixes were not easy to come by. However in the end I found a solution and one that actually works, even better yet I found 2 solutions.
The actual problem, which some people started calling the PowerPlay problem, was that the ATI card would keep switching the GPU clock speed between 500 Mhz and 750 Mhz. This would cause the card to, at some point, stop responding as it couldn't cope with the switches. As these switches happened nearly every second when running a 3D game. The switching is normally required when running either a 2D application (500 Mhz, require less GPU) or a 3D application (750 Mhz, require more GPU).

 

Workaround Solution, should work with any ATI card

The first solution is the easier and safer solution to do. Also this should work on any of the other ATI cards and is not limited to the Sapphire cards only. The solution for this is to fixate the GPU clock speed at 750 Mhz via RivaTuner. To do this the following steps are necessary.

1. Download and install RivaTuner, http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
2. After installation, start up RivaTuner.
3. Click on the expansion symbol, in the greyed out text box. This will bring up a list of icons.
4. Click on the first icon in the list shown, it's called Low-level system settings.
5. In the Overclocking tab, tick the "Enable low-level hardware overclocking" box to on.
6. It might be smart to reboot if you have been playing some games / running some apps, either way let RivaTuner detect the speed.
7. Set the core clock speed to 750 Mhz (the speed required for 3D apps)
8. In the section "Overclocking profile settings", type in a profile name (fex. WAR) and click on the disk icon to save the profile.
9. Press OK to be returned to the main RivaTuner screen.
10. Go to the Launcher tab and click on the green + symbol.
11. Choose to add a "Regular item" and press OK
12. Type in a name (fex. WAR), the other boxes should be enabled now.
13. Tick the box "Associated overclocking profile", and select the profile we made in step 8.
14. Tick the "Associated Application" and fill in the path and filename of the warpatch.exe (fex. "C:\Program Files\Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning\warpatch.exe")
15. Click OK to save the settings.

What we have done now, is create a shortcut inside RivaTuner that we can click on to start up WAR with the changed GPU clock speed. This means that whenever you'd like to run WAR, you should start it via RivaTuner's Launcher tab.
Alternatively, it's possible to have RivaTuner automatically apply the clock speed at the startup of Windows every time you boot. To do this, do everything up until step 7, and then tick the "Apply overclocking at Windows startup" box, and press Save. This will make the GPU clock speed at 750 Mhz all the time. While this is easier, since you don't have to run specific applications, or apply the profile each time, it lets the GPU run at an increased speed even if it's not required.

Permanent Solution, ONLY for Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB DDR5

!Important to note for this solution is that this works ONLY for the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB DDR5!
This is because this solution requires a BIOS update of the card, which is provided by Sapphire.

So, to make sure you have the correct card, it's easiest to consult the box where the card came in. On the box you will find a green sticker with some barcodes and some serial numbers. The BIOS update is only applicable if on your sticker the serial numbers are:

• PN 188-01E85-001SA
• SKU# 11133-00-20R

Also you can check these settings in the ATI CCC:

• Original BIOS on board with date: 24.07.2008
• BIOS version: 011.006.000.003.000000

If all of this checks out for your card the BIOS update can be done. To do the BIOS update we will need a few things:

1. The BIOS update from Sapphire, http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php
2. An alternative download from RapidShare, http://rapidshare.com/files/14833927...rking.zip.html
3. ATI Win Flash, for easier BIOS updating in Windows, http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...h_2.0.1.2.html

With both these we can perform the BIOS update. Note that it is also possible to flash the card via the regular ATI flash but I decided to go for the WinFlash solution. As it doesn't require the creation of a Boot Disk.
The steps to undertake to flash the BIOS.

1. First, make sure to end all applications which do something with the GFX card (such as RivaTuner or any game)
2. Install ATI WinFlash to a "simple location" (fex. C:\WinFlash)
3. Unzip the contents of the BIOS update into a folder
4. Copy/Paste the file named 1e8501sa.002 from the folder where you extracted the BIOS update, to the ATI WinFlash install folder
5. Click on the Start menu and select Run
6. Type in "cmd" (without the quotes) and press OK
7. Browse to the install path of ATI WinFlash (fex. C:\WinFlash)
8. Run the BIOS update by executing: atiwinflash.exe -f -p 0 1e8501sa.002
9. Wait until the flashing finishes, should it fail do NOT reset, yet try to flash again
10. If it worked, reboot your system.

A note about the WinFlash utility, if your card is not in the top slot, or if you want to update two cards you can do so by changing the command line. The third parameter in the list is the PCI-E slot (the 0), where 0 is the top slot, and where 1 is the PCI-E slot below it. So if you were flashing your card in the second slot the command line would look like: atiwinflash.exe -f -p 1 1e8501sa.002

Edit:
Flashing the 4870 in DOS, with a bootable USB stick

As Maeror had an issue with his card where he could not flash it in Windows anymore, I added this section as well. This details flashing your 4870 BIOS via a DOS boot. It requires you to have a USB stick which you can use to create it as a bootable "disk".
Also please note that this solution requires the ATIFlash utility! This is not the ATIWinFlash utility, which I mentioned in the other Flash solution. The ATIFlash is a DOS only program and needs to be run from there. It can be found in the BIOS update that is downloaded from the Sapphire website.

The instructions to do this are as follows:

1. Create your USB boot stick in windows with USB Boot drive (HPUSBFW), found at: http://www.elektroni.fi/Stilt/Asus_Rampage/HPUSBFW.zip
2. Download the boot files and extract them to a folder of your choice from: http://www.elektroni.fi/Stilt/Asus_Rampage/USB-Boot.zip
3. Run the HPUSBFW program. Select the correct USB device from the drop-down menu, set file system to FAT32 and check Create a DOS startup disk. Then browse for the extracted boot files (now in the folder of your choice) and press start to begin formating it.
4. Copy ATIFlash and the BIOS file to the USB stick under Windows
5. Restart the computer
6. Enter the Motherboard BIOS (by pressing the Delete key at startup) and set the first boot device to the USB stick that you created
7. Save that settings in the MoBo BIOS and exit
8. Your PC will then automatically boot to DOS
9. Flash with the command as described: "atiflash -f -p 0 1e8501sa.002" (without the quotes). And then wait till it prompts you that you need to restart the PC
10. When rebooting, go back to your MoBo BIOS and change first booting device back as it was before

After having flashed my BIOS I have been able to play all day yesterday without a single problem. Also the reports I've heard from other people who applied this fix are only positive. Either way I can finally (after having my ATI card for about a week or so) play the game without having to rely on my older card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited: 10/03/2008 at 05:35 AM by trigen

Awesome thread man. I'll try it as soon as I get home from work! I do have one question though. Is it possible to have my core clock always run at 840? I auto tuned my card to run at 840/1120 and I would like to keep it running like that. So will that be possible?

Yes you can

Just use the low level overclock ability with riva tuner and set it to the clocks u'd like and click the box for starting at windows startup

(dont forget to up your fan speed to about 50% while your at it as it can get a little hot under the hood on these clocks, 50% should keep it around 50-60C on full load, i feel its better to have it set manually as the autofan speeds seems to be a little low)

You can use the guide further up the post if you wish to profile those clocks for spesific games, can also be used to set manual fan settings according to temps/core clock as you cant edit the autofan settings

 

Guys I am also experiencing this annoying crash!!! But I have not got the techi abilities that you all seem to possess. Q? Will a driver update probably solve this in the near future who do I have to educate myslef quickly or even send the bl**** thing back whence it came.

Seems wrong to me that ATI do not seem to be even acknowledging this problem or are they and a Catalyst 8.9 will fix it...?

It worked for me, the RivaTuner did anyway. I can't do the BIOS because I don't have Vista Service Pack 1 and when I try to install SP1 it gets an error. Of course its easy to trouble shoot and take the steps to fix it. But go figure it doesn't ***** work at all and my vista refuses to update.

I have a Sapphire 4850 dual slot exhibiting pretty much the exact same behaviour. Would it be possible for me to somehow use the Rivatuner method? I mean, wouldn't 750MHz be overclocking my card quite a bit since it defaults to 625MHz ...? I'm not too well versed in this stuff.

D192049d

This seems to be a bios/hardware error and i doubt it will get fixed with a driver, i cant be sure of this ofcourse but thats my 2 cents anyway, (not fixed in 8,9 and given Ati's amazing ability to fix things i doubt it will be happening any time soon)

 

Rabbit :

Ati win flash not working without sp1 ? sounds a little fishy

You have to start a command promp (as admin) however to make it flash due to the p/n difference

atiwinflash /pa (file) -fp

Jut make real sure its the correct bios for your card

 

As for the your problem alastair jut set the clock to 625mhz as its your cards default, its the same thing

I assume you mean crossfire with the dual slot, i'm unsure of the abilty to set both cards to the same (locked) settings in riva tuner as i dont own a crossfire setup (at this time) so perhaps someone can answer that one.

had a 2900 pro Xfire system and clocking both cards was a ***** next to impossible, that may however have changed

 

 

Hellow guys... I have this problem on my HD4850 as well, although for me it is typical that I get the vrtical bars, sometimes green, sometimes orange.  The sound of the game will usually continue.  I have ATI Tray Tools installed and the OSD enabled to get temperatures.

I will try to see if the core switches frequency as suggested by you... Which would eventually mean we will need an update for all HD4800-series soon.:S

Wow nice work man. I hope this works. I am searching for ages to find a fix for this problem.

Does anyone has some experience with the flashing of the bios of your ATI Sapphire 4870 512MB ? Did it acually worked for everyone?

I am going to try the DOS flashing soon and I hope this is finnaly the fix everone is looking for!

 

 

Hi, Finally I have found someone with a good explained sullotion for this well known problem . Thanks for that. But it still aint working for me I'll tell you what I did: 1. I Downloaded and installed RivaTuner, http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163 2. After installation, start up RivaTuner. 3. Clicked on the expansion symbol, in the greyed out text box. This will bring up a list of icons. 4. Clicked on the first icon in the list shown, it's called Low-level system settings. 5. In the Overclocking tab, tick the "Enable low-level hardware overclocking" box to on. 6. Then I rebooted my system 7. The Core speed was on 750Mhz so I left it that way. Then I ticked the box with "Apply overclocking at Windows startup". And I restarted my system. So eventually I had something like this: http://img338.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fixing4870ij4.jpg Started Counter-Strike: Source, went on a server with de_nuke, and after about one minute, I again get all these strange squares on my screen and everything freezes, so I have to manually reboot my whole system. (Sometimes I get a grey screen, sometimes grey with squares, sometimes just some big squares,...) Can you maybe PM your email adress so you can help me further? Thanks, Ruben EDIT: Look at my monitoring while playing games: http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?image=monitoring4870sh0.jpg So it's clear that it's still not locked at 750MHz which is weird :/ =(

-------------------------
Antec Twelve Hundred - Antec Truepower Quattro 850W - Asus P5Q Deluxe DDR2 - Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 - OCZ (2x2GB) Platinum DDR2 - Samsung 640GB Spinpoint F1 - Sapphire HD4870 512MB - Samsung 206BW - 2x Samsung DVD-RW - Scythe Mugen (Infinity) - Windows Vista Home Premium NL SP1

Edited: 10/08/2008 at 08:16 PM by APO

APO - check your PSU with HWMonitor, it will give you min and max on system temps and voltages.

I don't have power play card but it would seem if you have XP setting power setting under screensaver form right clicking on desktop to home/office desktop or if you have vista setting power management to performance should cure the problem. Do this anyway whenever I play since I use cool and quiet now.

You could also just use CCC to overclock the card and should stay overclocked or does it still use powerplay when overclocking using CCC?????? As long as 3D bos isn't checked I would think the clocks should stick.

-------------------------
#1 EPoX MVP3-G2 K6III+ 550 384MB pc100
#2 EPoX 8RDA3+ xp2600/333@3200/440 1gb Corsair XMS pro x1950pro
#3 EPoX AD580XR/G 5400+ brisbane@3.3GHZ Firestix DDR2 800@970mhz 5-4-4-9-12 2XHIS X1950pro ICEQ 4xWD1600AAJS in raid0

First of all turn off your overdrive in CCC probably why it resets (thinks its on) to its default.

however it seems in some rare cases setting it to 750 (riva) and restarting makes the card think its on default settings, while putting it on 751+ (in riva) sorts it.

Perhaps that will work for you if you havent tried it already

Hope this helps and feel free to ask, must however add that i'm not a hardware wiz but i enjoy problemsolving and will help to the best of my ability.

Hi!

Thank you for this helpful thread but, i still have the same problem playing Crisys(I could play a couple of levels, but now it gets stuck) and Grid (sometimes).

I have my Sapphire 4870 running with a Q9450, Ram: Corsair 4 GB.

Can you help me please?

Excuse my english

Thank you,

Cheers!

Hey Trigen

I just wanted to say you are a legend I have had this same problem with 2X Saphire 4870's in crossfire for a while now and have been hunting high and low for a solution.

The bios update has worked a treat,  no more freezing games for me.

Cheers

Tyvm Trigen, I flashed my vbios with the cmd method, worked like a charm, had to disable UAC though before it worked.

Only little problem I now have is that the booting of my pc is a little screwed up since I flashed the vbios. It starts, gfx fan full speed, then it slows down a bit, but i get no signal, then it shuts down and restarts. This is repeated 4 times, and then it says in red text: overclocking has failed ( this is weird since i didnt oc a thing). Then it sends me to the bios, i pres F10 to save and exit. Then is starts up normaly, and I can use windows and any game without a problem. Any idea what this could be?

EDIT: Just noticed another problem, normaly when i got ot diplay settings it says Samsung 226BW on HD4800 series, now it says standard PnP-screen on HD4800 series. Dont see any problems with this but it isnt like it should be.

My mainboard is: MSI x48 Platinum

Edited: 10/18/2008 at 03:24 PM by ZeRo_StRiKeR

Thank you so much for this thread! It's been such a pain in the neck!!! I've serched the whole net for reasons and solutions, but couldn't find any! I've began to think my new pc got messed up somehow.

 Um...I'm realy emberasedd to ask such a thing. However, could you please show what should I write in command line to launch Winflash exe file from it?

 

Ok, nevermind that. No clue whatsoever about what I typed in, but it worked and updated vbios. now all is left to check out if it helped.

Edited: 10/20/2008 at 03:26 PM by deusex2

trigen you are a legend!thank you for directing me to this fix. My Sapphire 4870's are not crashing and are drooling over the prospect of pwning Far Cry 2 on Friday. This was the main reason I bought Sapphire so that I could do BIOS upgrades.

However was worried i'd destroy my cards in the process.. but thanks to you it is made easy!!


Many thanks

Rish (aka Tejas)

Intel Core Extreme Quad QX9650@3.6GHz 1600FSB// GA-X38-DS4 (Intel X38)// 4GB Gskill 1066MHz PC-8500 RAM// 2X Sapphire ATi Radeon 4870 in Crossfire (Not 4870x2's!) //Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB// Pioneer BD-ROM 202// Corsair HX620W PSU// Dell 2408WFP- HC// Coolermaster Cosmos// Vista Ultimate x64 //

Thanks for the information. I've done the profile .xml work around and it worked for some games, but not all.

However, when I try to use winflash, through the command prompt. I can get it to to start. The load bar comes up everything but, it doesn't really seem to be doing anything. The status bar seems to go until the end, but immediately goes back to the beginning and continues this over and over, and I've left it to do this for 5-6 hrs and still, come to the computer and it seems to be hanging in repeat.

Anyone else have this problem? And if so how did you get around it?

Great topic. Finally a place to start fixing this annoying problem.

I have the Sapphire HD 4870 512mb gddr5 but not the one who's PN number was given

Mine are

PN:102-b50701-10-at

sku:21133-00-20R

bios:011-003.000.001

I've never had any problems with games such as CoD4, Assassins Creed or Frontlines: Fuel of War (one failure during a interlude I think)

All my problems have come during "strategy" games such as Company of Heroes and Cycling Manager.

Big freeze, sounds continues (sometimes) and then a blue screen with 90% of the time a message involving the atikmdag.sys file

I've tried the Riva Tuner bit and it worked for one mission in CoH and then froze half way through the second mission.

I will try upping the fan speed from 30% (start temp 49 degrees) to about 45-50% (and start wearing my headphones to drown out the noise). Maybe that helps, but I'd much rather have a permanent solution from damn Sapphire. Who took my money in the first place.

My question is whether I can also use the USB flash method or is it really only for the PN/SKU numbers given?

This problem is driving me f-ing crazy and is ruining many a good game.

PC info: Q9450, 8gb of ddr3 ram

thanks for the help.

alright,

fan speed at 45% and the blo0dy thing freezes again after one mission in CoH.

I did some google search on the P/N number and came up with

http://www.rage3d.com/Board/showthread.php?p=1335653364

and

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=100760

 

people are saying there is a new bios out for this P/N en sku since septmeber and that you need to look on the Sapphire site. Well, if there is one site in the world useless at being able to find the correct drivers it is the Sapphire site.

 

The current bios is only for FOR P/N:188-01E85-001SA,SKU#11133-00 and there are no otehr bios' to be found in the archived section for this card.

 

Can anyone advice on whether the bios advertised will actually work with the P/N and sku I gave as my card?

thanks (again)