I have been experiencing an overheating condition while playing this game whereby the screen goes black for a few seconds and then returns.  It can do this multiple times in a short period of time and then seems to stop for awhile.  I have a temperature monitor running in the background and it says the temperature gets up to 180 degrees F at its peak when the blackouts occur.  I am running Windows 7, 64 bit Home Premium with Radeon HD6870.  Machine sits on top of desk where air can flow freely.

How can I prevent this condition from happening?  It has done it in CIV V as well but much less frequently.  Both games are within STEAM.

Need to supply basic info  http://forums.amd.com/game/faq.cfm

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180 f  ( 82 c)   is not  hot enough to  cause a  over heat crash on it's own  ,  maybe the vrms are overheating but i doubt it !    (cause they can handle up to 115 c )

sounds like you have other issues besides overheating

like  stumped  mentioned  ,  please post that  important info

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is it common problem for HD 6870 ? i have that problem too a while back, "display driver stop responding and have recovered" with the screen goes black for a few second like you have, thank god the problem's gone after i get another HD 6870 replacement. 

82c is normal i think, when i got my replacement my tempt went to 80c, but now it never goes that high after a week, strange .

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I've experienced the "display driver stop responding and have recovered" and black screen a couple times on my HD 6870 and 5850's.

For me, it had to do with the card jumping between the 2D and Idle clock speeds. I get this problem most of the time when running a browser-based Java applet or some kind of Adobe Flash content. On the new cards, the idle speeds are too low for 2D stuff, so the drivers freaks out. This problem doesn't happen on my older Radeon HD 4850 becuase the speed only drops down to 500MHz core / 750MHz Memory (3D speed is 625/933) [vs like 175 / 300 on the 6870 / 5850's].

Do you have your game running in Windowed mode or full screen? Windowed mode can cause your problem. Also, what programs do you have running in tbe background?

Things you can do:

1. go into the regestry (regedit) and disable ULPS. http://www.overclock.net/t/667144/crossfire-disabling-ulps

2. Make / change the idle and/or 2D clock speeds with MSi Afterburner.

3. Disable Hardware Acceleration for Flash content.

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