Recently I got a HD 5850 as a replacement of HD 5670.However I found that my system started giving me issues, intermittent issues I must say. Please see the link of the issues that I started receiving. HD 5850 Flickering Issue - YouTube. I also put the issue as a query on the forum and received numerous replies. This was not limited to gaming, I also recieved such flickering while in BIOS. Sometimes my PC wont even POST. Tried different solutions ranging from driver re-installation, trying another PSU, trying different RAM, Different Processor, tweaking up voltages, tweaking HT Frequencies etc. I resolved the issue through this method, see below. Let me explain my findings.
Probable Cause:- The graphics card lately have become a lot heavier,now that may not be an issue on a newer motherboard, but on a older motherboard, which had some lighter gfx card installed before, the plastic PCI-E slot may expand under heat. Its not noticeable to naked eye, however that happens. Now when we install a bigger and a heavier dual slot card, the mounting screws may or may not be able to hold the the card with a perfect fit in the slot. Again, that's not noticeable but there might be a loss of contact in one or more pins with the PCI-E. This causes it to lose power under stress.
Symptoms:- No POST, flickering issues, GSOD, BSOD, display going black etc.
Solution/workaround:- Many people advise of updating drivers, issues with PSU, Motherboard, CPU etc which may be true in some cases but its difficult to guess. In such cases we can just try to place the cabinet horizontally so that the entire weight of the card comes on the motherboard and it does not hang on the PCIE, in most of the cases, the stability would improve. It improved for me a lot, but still wasn't perfect as the card would vibrate again under high RPM fan usage. So we can try this step of providing support to the gfx card, which costs nothing and look at the results.http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1269/20111003195054160newdel.jpg I am sure a lot of issues can just be resolved by providing support. I just put a stick to provide support and then ran Furmark to test for 4 hrs, without a single flicker or GSOD. I am really happy with the solution and its been an entire day now when my PC hasn't crashed, or flickered even a single time even under 100% GPU/ CPU load.
Please share your feedback and refer to any such innovative idea which you might have come across to fix an ongoing issue.
Probable Cause:- The graphics card lately have become a lot heavier,now that may not be an issue on a newer motherboard, but on a older motherboard, which had some lighter gfx card installed before, the plastic PCI-E slot may expand under heat. Its not noticeable to naked eye, however that happens. Now when we install a bigger and a heavier dual slot card, the mounting screws may or may not be able to hold the the card with a perfect fit in the slot. Again, that's not noticeable but there might be a loss of contact in one or more pins with the PCI-E. This causes it to lose power under stress.
Symptoms:- No POST, flickering issues, GSOD, BSOD, display going black etc.
Solution/workaround:- Many people advise of updating drivers, issues with PSU, Motherboard, CPU etc which may be true in some cases but its difficult to guess. In such cases we can just try to place the cabinet horizontally so that the entire weight of the card comes on the motherboard and it does not hang on the PCIE, in most of the cases, the stability would improve. It improved for me a lot, but still wasn't perfect as the card would vibrate again under high RPM fan usage. So we can try this step of providing support to the gfx card, which costs nothing and look at the results.http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1269/20111003195054160newdel.jpg I am sure a lot of issues can just be resolved by providing support. I just put a stick to provide support and then ran Furmark to test for 4 hrs, without a single flicker or GSOD. I am really happy with the solution and its been an entire day now when my PC hasn't crashed, or flickered even a single time even under 100% GPU/ CPU load.
Please share your feedback and refer to any such innovative idea which you might have come across to fix an ongoing issue.