I had heard the rumours, but was hoping I would be spared. Didn't happen. I get a BSOD "STOP" error 0x000000116, file in question is atikmpag.sys. It happens roughly every 30 minutes At first I thought it was just the Windows 7 64-bit drivers, so I installed Windows 7 32-bit. Things went great for the first day, then BAM, same lovely error. The funny thing is, it hasn't happened in-game yet... every time it happened, I was on the desktop. Any cures to this anally transmitted disease?
another curious part of this is that it doesnt seem to be a problem with the AMD drivers. I did a quick google search and there are people getting this with Nvidia drivers a lot too. Actually, most people with this problem seem to be from Nvidia users... Id say it may be you are slightly unstable after the flash and should go back to the stock bios. Flip the switch the other way, reinstall the drivers, and see if you still have the crash problem. Since it doesnt happen in game, it may have something to do with the low power state being used by the card. Open regedit and search for "enableULPS" and change the 1 to a 0. Restart and see if it happens anymore that day It is also entirely possible that your CPU overclock is crashing the graphics drivers. So try lowering that to stock. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/299258-33-0x00000116-errors http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/293538-33-nvidia-7900-stop-error-0x00000116 http://www.overclock.net/ati-drivers-overclocking-software/389264-0x000000116-bsod.html http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/100112-bsod-error-0x000000116.html http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?/topic/156988-need-your-help-with-a-vista-problem/ http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=162915 http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=61786 http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/129827-stop-0x00000116-igdkmd32-sys.html
I turned off Windows Aero. So far so good. Been two days. I'll update if it crashes again. Though I have to say, I get artifacts when running the card on the 6970 bios. Not major artifacts, but they do get annoying.
So either: the shaders that the 6970 bios activates that were disabled on the 6950 bios are actually bad. Or the memory chips on the 6950 arent completely stable when running at the higher speeds and tighter timings that the 6970 bios use. Which means the hardware instability is causing the driver crash.
I was afraid so. I've read stories of others having the same sort of crashes with ATi cards, and after they replaced the card, everything was fine.
Just flash the bios to an unlocked 6950 bios and see if it still happens. With this, you have the same clock speeds and timings as a normal 6950, but all the shaders of a 6970. If you don't get the driver crash anymore, you know the memory chips couldn't handle the tighter timings and higher speeds. If you do get the crash, you know it is the unlocked shaders. This is the one I think you want: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/95218/Sapphire.HD6950.2048.101123_2.html I am almost positive that "Hamilton" is the reference design, "Hill" is non-reference design for 6950's. Reference card Subsystem ID should be 1002. With the 6970's, "Mansell" is reference design and "button" is non-reference. Also possible, when you flashed to a new bios did you use just an unlocked bios or a Sapphire specific unlocked bios? Remember when I said Sapphire does something special and requires a specific bios so that the P States are correct? This entire thing sounds like your P States are borked. As it only happens when you are not doing much, so it isnt really a stability problem at full speed.
The crash still happened even with I switched the card to 6950 bios. They only stopped when I recently turned off Windows Aero (and used 6950 bios). I'm not sure if an Aero-less Windows and 6970 bios will prevent crashes - never tried. But Aero-less and 6950 bios works fine thus far. The artifacts however only happen with the 6970 bios, regardless of Aero being on or off. I think this card is cheaper than a real 6970 for a reason.
Flip the switch on the card to go back to the stock bios. Restart Windows and turn Aero on. Do you still have artifacts and crashes? Also back on the unlocked bios, try turning Aero on, and then in Catalyst Control Center lowering your core clock to 500MHz. I doubt this will fix anything since the card is probably in a lower P State at the desktop anyway, but its worth a shot to see if this fixes things. If it does (and the stock bios also has crashes with Aero at full speeds) then you should RMA the card because it is not functioning properly at default speeds and settings.
Yeah, already tried that. It crashes using the stock 6950 bios and leaving Aero on, however there were no artifacts afaik.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx#1 Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 Windows release includes: New Features: AMD Steady Video Steady Video is currently an AMD exclusive feature based on AMD APP Technology By applying advanced algorithms behind the scenes, users do not have to deal with shaky or unstable video ever again! Capabilities scale with hardware and are end user controlled Image Stabilization brought to YouTube! Decode Acceleration of MPEG-4 part 2 content AMD has enabled decode acceleration of MPEG-4 part 2 content in Microsoft video player applications (through MFT support) for all AMD Radeon 6000 Series Performance Enhancements Performance highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 release includes: Performance gains in Crysis of up to 7% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series single card configurations. Performance gains in F1 2010 of up to 8% in DirectX 11 mode on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in Far Cry 2 of up to 5% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in HAWX of up to 8% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in the Unigine OpenGL tests of up to 10% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series single card configurations.
I wish En Masse would stop sitting with their thumbs up their ass, and work with AMD to enable Xfire for TERA.