Legit Reviews

I've been having some problems with the video card I got in the mail today from the egg. First the drivers kept shutting down. Now randomly I get a flash on the screen for about 1 frame and it's gone. Still loading more games but, I'm sure it'll happen on more than just oblivion. The flashes vary from 1 spot to 10 spots in about 5 seconds. Sometimes they don't even show up. It's not overclocked. My CPU is SLIGHTLY overclocked. Any ideas?

sounds like a possible defective card. if it does it to more than Oblivion, then i'd say so. if you haven't run AtiTool's artifact scanner it would be a good time to do so to see if anything pops up. About the only thing I can think of in my experience with a bad video card.(other than making sure the previous card doesn't have the same issue)

Yea, I kinda figured... I didn't know if these random flashes could be mother board related. I got one of those cheap combo deals and am returning it because it REALLY sucks. VERY flemsy.
The only reason I doubted the card, was because I also have a new PSU, didn't know if it was power related. ALSO I thought mother board because I had a problem getting the screen to work with either PCIe card or onboard. I was stuck for about 20 mins trying to get a picture and nothing popped up. Then out of no where it worked.

it is possible that the motherboard just plain sucks..I did have a board that played tricks like that on me about a year ago almost. coincidentally the same video card i used on that board turned out to be bad as well. if you have another system to try the card on, it should rule out if it's one or the other if not both

I don't know if your 4870 has the same problems the last batch of PowerColor's had. Mine and a co-workers PowerColor 4870 1GB cards had this wierd glitch where the screen would flicker. Turned out to be a problem with the cards memory timings.

I posted a thread about it here. Tell me if thats the same problem you're having.

No skippman it's different. Here is another symptom. I turned off my pc to hook up a new SD firewire and sata reader by ultra. I put everything back together and no video... I tried getting a cRT and hooking it up to the integrated spot. Same thing No video. I started ruling out the card. But, I randomly get freezes in games and they shut down. And one time benchmarking with 3dmark06 it got crazy polygons across the screen and the screen was discolored on the main screen, then when I exited out of windows vista it was fine. Also for some reason I have played Crysis for about 2 hours today on the highest settings and my highest resolution. No problems...... FML... lol
ADD kicked in. After I had no video and triple checked EVERY connection, I decided to try to watch TV for about 30 mins, came back, nothing in either integrated or dedicated. I got frustrated and then went out to dinner. When I got back it was fine. Started right up.

Wierd. Possibly bad RAM. You overclocking this thing at all?

you know, I'm still weary of that video card, but its starting to sound like maybe the motherboard is getting funky if the on-board is doing the same/similar thing.(did you try the video card in another machine?) I mean the only other thing I can think of is using stock setting on the cpu to see if that helps since it is the only thing that you're OC'ing(that you posted anyway).

Yea I can not tell, I'm having a new motherboard in a day or 2 it's a lot better. I eliminated my OC for now and I haven't had too many problems. The only one is boot up and no video (I installed updates and had to restart and that sucked.) But, occasionally I still get random crashes in games. And a hard drive I know is good, is taking FOREVER to load games, when I run HD tach it's fine though. Why is it the only computer I have problems fixing is my own? haha this sucks.

hercules71185 wrote:Why is it the only computer I have problems fixing is my own? haha this sucks.

i think that happens to everyone ..Hopefully the new board works out. if not, well at least the video card should still be under the exchange time frame lol

I'm gonna go out on a limb and blame the northbridge on this one. It's the only common thing between the two video cards as the off board card has it's own memory and the onboard uses the system RAM. Plus the northbridge controls data flow between the southbridge and the proc itself which could account for your slow loading times.

Possible damage from your OC'ing? Did you ramp up the voltage on the northbridge at all?

No, I just got the thing. IT's a cheapo ECS g31t-m. AKA no voltage functions. I can raise the FSB and that is all. I was guessing the north bridge and HOPING the north bridge because I already have a nice motherboard coming in. I'd like to be able to RMA it without having to RMA my video card, I should be sure tomorrow. IF anyone has another ideas on what it could be aside from the motherboard then let me know and we can figure out if the motherboard is the problem tomorrow for future reference. When someone else googles this.