Another AMD HD6970 user

Marakker · Post by **Marakker** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:50 am

Hi there

First of all, a big thank you to everybody offering helpful advice in this thread.

I am playing v1.828 and am also experiencing the system freezes reported by the OP and others.

My trouble started after updating from catalyst 12.1 to 12.3 yesterday and the freezes continue to happen even after downgrading back to 12.1.
Before the update, I was able to play for hours on end with maxed out graphics settings in the game.

My system specs are:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit SP1
ASUS HD6970 2GB GDDR5
Catalyst 12.3 / Catalyst 12.1
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P IP45
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
Mushkin EM 996655 DDR2-800 4x4GB
Corsair TX850W Power Supply - 850w
HP ZR30W connected via Displayport

I completed the ATI survey as suggested by Vice.

My next troubleshooting steps are:
Do a registry cleanup
Re-seat the graphics card
Re-install Windows

I will report back once I have tried these things.

Marakker · Post by **Marakker** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 10:26 pm

I am happy to report that a Windows re-install fixed the problem.

Have been playing for 3+ hours now, without any trouble

Fers · Post by **Fers** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 4:28 pm

Hi!

I have the same problem with my Radeon HD 6950 with the latest drivers (12.6).

My system specifications are:

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Radeon HD6950 2GB
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.5GHz

Post by **Vice** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 7:00 pm

I've been collecting some information on these cards (6900's series) and have some details to post that may help some users. Apparently, these cards require a lot of power and are sensitive to specific power settings. A weak power supply, lack of a proper 150-watt 8 pin power connector, and/or an improper voltage setting may impact its reliability and one of the primary symptoms is freezing. Apparently, some of these cards may come preset from the factory with a voltage setting that could cause freezing and crashing problems in games. First, make sure your power supply is sufficient (550 watt would be bare minimum, 650-750 watt quality brand preferred). Next, make sure you've dedicated one of the PSU's 12v rails to the card on its own and that it isn't sharing it with other components in the system. From there, checking the voltage on the card is an option. Some may be underclocked/not set to standard defaults. Most of the cards use 1.100 for a default voltage setting (the 6950 appears to use 1.100 and 6970 uses 1.175). So if you find your card is set to something lower or higher and the other specifications are not a factor on your system, this option may help.

Utilities for managing video card settings (improper use can damage your system, so make sure to research what settings you want to try and use at your own risk, make sure you know what you're doing) Also, if you choose to use one of these programs, be sure to only install and use one of them at a time:

MSI Afterburner - http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
Sapphire Trixx - https://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx
AMD Overdrive - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/ ... rview.aspx

Proper voltage selection has solved the freezing issue as reported by one user so far (after setting their voltage to 1.050, increasing it from an improper 0.900 initial setting). Please reply with your results or send them to me via e-mail.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 2:21 am

Howdy. I just signed up to the board because I'm also having this problem with an AMD 6970 @ 1.175v on a 1000w 80 plus certified 12v psu from the very reliable Corsair. I'm running w7 x64 with 16gb of ram. My computer can run every game out there without a hitch and even the really demanding ones can go for 6 hours or more without any overheating or other problems. I've tried all kinds of catalyst drivers ranging from 11 up to 12.7 beta, but nothing seems to fix the computer from locking up after 30-60 minutes of Evochron Mercenary. Another thing I've tried is playing the game in VMware on a different OS, but that didn't help either. I assume the only option for me is to buy a new video card, but that is out of the question at the moment.

I really enjoyed playing this game while it lasted and don't regret my purchase. But I hope somewhere down the road a game patch will fix this problem so that I may return, as I've never had this happen in any other game I've played, old and new.

Post by **Vice** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 2:37 am

Thanks for the report. What other voltage settings have you tried? Unfortunately, I have no idea why this problem would exist with only these specific video cards outside of what appears to be hardware/setting flaws, so there currently isn't a way to provide or otherwise set up some kind of game-side fix or work-around. The same problem seems to occur in certain other games, although it appears limited to perhaps specific motherboard/CPU combinations, but not others. Plus, there doesn't seem to be any potential cause on the software-side of things (again appearing to be related to voltage settings), otherwise I'd at least have some information to go on from those games that might provide a clue as to how to work around the problem for this game.

Have you tried running the game in the 'Locked (FS)' screen mode? Is your CPU overclocked? If so, try running your system at stock clock speed. Have you tried locking the Vsync in the Catalyst Control Center? If you haven't tried these options (which has helped solve the problem in other games), give this a try and please report back your results.

The best chance for fixing it outside of selecting different voltage settings appears to be reporting the problem to AMD directly as they may be able to resolve the issue driver-side. Oddly, none of the 6800 series on down or the 7000 series on up encounters the problem, it only appears to occur with the 6900 series and voltage/power seems to be the most likely cause as changing the setting has fixed the problem on a few systems so far with no reports of recurrence yet.

To report the problem to AMD, visit this link: http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EAC

Zero · Post by **Zero** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 11:23 pm

Sorry for the late response. After a couple days of trying a lot of things when I had time, nothing seems to have worked. I tried all different settings in the game, fullscreen/window mode with vsync on/off. Every possible game related setting in my catalyst drivers were played around with. I also tried not using any catalyst drivers and just played the game with the video drivers in Windows 7. I tried switching PCI-E slots for the video card and even removing my sound card and resetting my CPU clock speed (i5-2500k) back to default.

Unfortunately it looks like it may be a complete hardware issue with the 6900 series video cards. On the bright side; I got around to cleaning the inside of my computer. When I get some money, I'll upgrade my video card to the 7000 series or higher. This game is worth it.