XFX HD7970

Catalyst vers. 13.1

Windows 7 64bit

So I recently bought the HD7970 to upgrade my HD5870. After some days of playing various games I have noticed some issues.

First issue I noticed was that whenever I played The Witcher 2, I would have sudden freezes that last for 10 seconds or so before my screen flashes black like it's turned off for a second.  After this little spasm, the game runs just fine until the next spasm.  I fiddled around with the visual settings but it didn't stop it.

Next I was playing Anno 2070.  It runs great, then it completely freezes, except the mouse cursor changes to a loading icon and I can move the cursor around. I end up having to close the game through the task manager.

During an Anno freeze, I Alt-Tabbed to see a Windows message, "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered.".

After checking the logs it seems both instances of these freeze/crashes, this happens.  I confirmed it through the Event Viewer.

These freezes are unprovoked.  The games don't have intense visual effects when it happens, the card is at decent temperatures, and other games that I've played (League of Legends, Counter Strike: Global Offensive) don't have this issue.

Now before I do anything like reinstall the driver, is there anything to know?  And is this a known issue?

Also any tips on a proper reinstall?

Perhaps some of your other hardware is to blame? Fill the **STICKY** | PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING.

ASRock X58 Extreme (BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. P2.20, 10/1/2010)

i7 950 3.06ghz

Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W (Discontinued but here is a Newegg page (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153136))

12 GB DDR3 1333

1x 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (Anno is on this one)

1x 500GB Western Digital 7200rpm (the drive Witcher is on)

HT| OMEGA CLARO Plus+ sound card

It seems it is worth mentioning that I did NOT have this problem with my old card, the 5870.  And literally the only change is the video card.

My card does this if I overclock it too much. Mostly it remains stable and can bare very high clock speeds, but as a result, similar issues do happen. I noticed this while playing Skyrim.

Any overclocking on your part? Factory overclock maybe?

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 @ 3250MHz | RAM: Kingmax 2x2GB DDR2 800 @ 833MHz| MoBo: MSI K9A2 CF v1.0 (BIOS: 1.D)| GPU: Asus HD 6850 1024MB (DirectCu) @ 850/1100MHz | Display: Chili Green Vision L24FHD | PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad | OS: MS Windows 95 x64 Edition

CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood S478 @ 3200MHz | RAM: 1,5GB DDR 400| MoBo: Gigabyte GA-8S661FXMP-RZ | GPU: Abit Geforce Ti 4200 | Display: Dimarson 19" CRT | PSU: Noname 400W | OS: MS Windows XP Pro, Fedora 18

Factory overclock

So after reinstalling the drivers it still happens.

After a quick Google search I saw this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/349774-33-radeon-6870-display-driver-amdkmdap-stopped-responding

It seems a fresh install of windows is needed...  Sigh... A little too much work it seems for a driver issue.

but this problem is happen with me too but with only COD black ops 2 with my 5770 .. and i did not overclocked anything

Asus EAH 5770 CU core , Intel i7 3770 @ 3.90 GHz 8M Cache , GA P75-D3 , Corsair 8 GB DDR3 RAM , Cooler master extreme 500 W PSU , Win 7 64 bit ultimate SP1

It's a generic error which can be caused by a million things. OS reinstall may or may not help. Usually it does not.

Try underclocking the card, and if it helps, get it replaced as faulty.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 @ 3250MHz | RAM: Kingmax 2x2GB DDR2 800 @ 833MHz| MoBo: MSI K9A2 CF v1.0 (BIOS: 1.D)| GPU: Asus HD 6850 1024MB (DirectCu) @ 850/1100MHz | Display: Chili Green Vision L24FHD | PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad | OS: MS Windows 95 x64 Edition

CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood S478 @ 3200MHz | RAM: 1,5GB DDR 400| MoBo: Gigabyte GA-8S661FXMP-RZ | GPU: Abit Geforce Ti 4200 | Display: Dimarson 19" CRT | PSU: Noname 400W | OS: MS Windows XP Pro, Fedora 18

I had similar problems but after upgrading to a 5870. It came with newer drivers and I found certain games, Skyrim in particular unplayable. After trying the standard solutions I eventually unistalled CCC, cleaned the system of CCC artifacts and installed CCC 12.8 and haven't had any problems since.

Uninstall: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=162444&enterthread=y

Driver 12.8: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2162/AMD_Catalyst_12.8_Software_Suite_Vista7_64-bit.html