ATI Radeon HD4870 Driver Reset

[Airship]

The ATI Radeon HD xxxx Driver Reset thread:

I decided to update this thread a little, now that so much more information has been added to it, and also to help people experiencing the same problems without needing them to scroll through 9 pages of me and others whining

Patch?:
Patching will not help with the issues described in this thread, as of 17.11.09.

Errors:
The problem has many forms, from simple lock-ups to fatal hard resets, on all OS and hardware, and while some of them might not be related, I'll list them all here. If you have anything to add, feel free to post about it in this topic and send me a PM about it.

Game Hangs for a few seconds:
Game will freeze for several seconds, sometimes as much as half a minute, while the sound keep playing like before. This is likely to be the driver being inches away from crashing. You can keep playing after the hang, but the hangs are likely to become more frequent until the whole thing crashes. Keep playing if you like, but be wary, and make a backup of your characters if it decides to crash the next time you're autosaving.

VPU Recover Freeze:
Screen freezes, then goes black after a few seconds, as if you just minimized the game (the reason for this is because you DO minimize it, the important thing here is the freeze ). Audio will keep going like before. When you get back to the desktop, you'll be greeted by a message from the CCC telling you that VPU recover has reset your driver because it stopped responding. This will default many of your gfx settings, but you can maximize the game and keep playing if you'd like. I would recommend you to save and exit immediately .

Black Screen Freeze:
Same as above, though without the VPU recover message. This happens if you do not have the CCC installed, or even in some rare cases when the VPU cannot recover the driver. This locks the computer and you'll have to do a hard-reset.

Color-o-rama with stripes/boxes/stuff:
Very similar to the black screen freeze, but with more colors, stripes, boxes, and other artifacts. Could be related, but could also be a overheating issue.

BSOD:
Sometimes, you'll get a BSOD instead of the above errors. Might be related, but there's too little information about this at this point.


Possible Fixes:
These fixes work with varying degrees of success, from complete fixes of the problem to not working at all. Remember that when you're messing with your computer you'll do so at your own peril, I'll take no responsibility if you break something

Clean the computer:
If dust is clogging up your computer making the gfx card overheat, you should probably do something about that dust. Buy a can of compressed air and carefully blow away the dust. do NOT use a vacuum cleaner, as static from this could wreck your stuff. This will not help if you're card isn't overheating though...

Play in lower resolutions:
Less work for your card to do makes for stable drivers, so this could very well fix the issue for many here. Though, who would want to play on low resolutions when they are using a high-end card?

Play in Windowed Mode:
Some users have reported that this helps, so it's worth a try.

Disabling Catalyst A.I in CCC:
This has helped some people who is using two cards in Crossfire or a dual GPU card.

Playing the game in compatibility mode(Vista/W7):
Setting the game to play in compatibility mode for Windows XP has helped some people experiencing the problem. Only for W7 and Vista users though, obviously.

Host a Private LAN/Internet game:
Oddly enough, the errors seem to be more frequent while playing offline. Don't ask me why, ask Gearbox.

Increase the fan speed:
Again, the best way of doing this is by using RT, and follow this guide: http://www.guru3d.com/article/rivatu...erclock-guide/. No idea why this works, but setting the fan speed to 70% resolved all my problems until I got to Earl's Scrapyard. Might be related to Ati PowerPlay, explained further below.

Lower your card's clockspeed:
A few people has reported success by downclocking their cards. The simplest way of doing this is getting Riva Tuner (http://www.guru3d.com/category/rivatuner/). Lower the core clock by 10-30 mhz by following this guide: http://www.guru3d.com/article/rivatu...rclock-guide/4. Remember, messing with overclocking could be dangerous for your card, though I'd reckon downclocking is pretty safe

EDIT: A lot of users have reported this to work, so this is probably your best bet if you're having problems. If 10-30mhz doesn't do anything, lower it even more. Maybe by as much as 100mhz.

Disabling ATI PowerPlay:
This is what ultimately fixed the problems I had. Ati PowerPlay is a feature that makes your card go into "Green" mode when needed (imo, this should be never). Basically, it nukes your core clock speed down to 300-something whenever you go from a 3d environment to a 2d one. If this happens too frequently, like when PP can't decide if you're in a 2D environment or a 3D one, it will keep swapping between them. This makes the drivers highly unstable, and a crash will occur. Stuff like the scope, map and background are 2D, so people are likely to experience this if they look at these.

To disable Powerplay, follow this guide; http://www.guru3d.com/article/rivatu...rclock-guide/4, but do not clock your card. Just enable low level hardware overclocking and let the slider be where it is. This will essentially lock your card to this frequency, making PP unable to set it to 300 when in an 2D environment.



And that's it, folks. Remember to post anything relevant in this thread, keep it bumped (hell, why isn't this in the known issues thread yet???), and PM me if there is something you'd like me to add. Also, how the hell do I change the topic title?



Regards, and good luck!
-Air.

Originally Posted by Original Topic

Hi, I was wondering if anyone with an ATI card has noticed this annoying feature in Borderlands? If not, what is your driver version? If yes, how do you fix it?

ATI users will probably know what I'm talking about, but for the rest, the problem is this: You play normally for around 20 minutes or so, before the game suddenly freeze, screen goes black, and a message box from the CCC pops ups telling you that VPU Recover has reset your driver due to it having stopped responding. This was quite common in a whole shitload of games a few months back, though one could fix it by setting a fixed fanspeed by using RivaTuner.

Now, I got this error, and this time, RIvaTuner didn't help (even at 60% fanspeed ) I have Driver version 8-something, so what I'm basically asking, is, do newer drivers solve this? I know mine is pretty damn old, I just don't like to update my drivers unless there is a need for it. And the need is there now

Thanks!
-Air

[rennierob]

Hello, same problem here with a 4870 running on windows 7 64 bit with latest release of catalyst drivers, 9.10. This is a known issue with a lot of games on their first release. Anyway my advice for you is to update your graphic drivers, maybe you can solve the problem this way. If it doesn't i suppose we have to wait a solution from game developers or ATI's new driver release.

[Airship]

Damn, was hoping newer drivers would fix this... Allright, I'll try upgrading anyways, fingers crossed. I'll report back if I notice any improvement

[Airship]

UPDATE:

I updated to Catalyst 9.10 Drivers, then updated to latest Riva Tuner. Booted up Borderlands and started playing. Played for quite some time before the driver crashed yet again.

I then set RT to 60% Fanspeed, before playing several hours with a couple of my friends. No driver reset, everything running smooth. Then my friends had to leave (we were playing LAN), and I played some single player. 20 minutes later, driver crashes, but is not restored by VPU. Had to do a hard reset.

It seems like the problem doesn't occur too often, or maybe it just happens in single player (which would be odd, and probably not possible), so It's not that big of an issue for me. I'm looking forward to a fix/New drivers though.

Anyway, I'm gonna play some more SP, hopefully it won't happen too often. (Maybe I should set the fan to 70%? )


Regards
-Air.

[Airship]

Another Update: Set the fan to 65%, haven't seen the thing since. I did see it another time while on 60%, though, before switching to 65%.

Anyways, if you're having this very same problem and don't mind your computer sounding like a vacuum cleaner, just turn up the speed of your fan until the problem goes away, problem solved. If you're using a headset, you won't even notice the sound!



Regards
-Air.

[jungfreud]

Exact same problem, messing with the fan speed does nothing but annoy my girlfriend. 4890 with Win7 RC and 9.10 drivers. I get an average of 5 minutes of game time before the VPU reset, with sporadic hard locks here and there.

[Rue]

I know this is going to sound stupid but check to make sure that you're using a color of 32-bit...not 16-bit.

My laptop originally decided to download some drivers that weren't supported fully on W7...thus, I would only receive 16-bit color.

Rolling back your drivers might help you.

[BadCon]

I have two 4870's in crossfire, and this game freezes up whenever I try to pick up an item, or during reload. I can't even get passed the first camp lol. Updated drivers to 9.10 and it still does it.
Unfortunately, I need to ctrl-alt-del quickly once it freezes, otherwise my computers monitor goes into standbye mode, and I need to force a reset.

I am hoping they have a patch released soon.

[Innuere]

Hello.

I am also having these issues. The game will last quite a while from time to time but for the most part I didn't even make it to a new checkpoint to save my progress.

I installed latest drivers, nothing changed, still freezing and having to hard reset most of the time. Read somewhere that uninstalling CCC removes the file that's crashing, but this turned out to be false.

Spent some time playing various other graphically intense games and did not have this issue so I know for certain it is Borderlands.

I'm using a 4870 also.

[Spork232]

I think I have a solution, at least it worked for me. I was having the same sort of problem, 5-10 minutes of playing, and my video driver fails, normally needing a hard reboot. I am running Windows 7 x32, and have two ATI 4870s with the latest 9.10 drivers.


My solution? Compatibility mode. I have the game via STEAM, so first I went to MY GAMES, right clicked Borderlands and chose to create a desktop shortcut.

Then right click the shortcut and click properties.

Chose the 'compatibility' tab.

Check the box for "Run this program in compatibility mode" and select Windows XP SP3.

Then run the game via this shortcut.


No guarantees that it will work for you, but my system crashed 3 times in 20 minutes until I did this, and then I was able to play for over 2 hours with no problems! Definitely suggested for anyone having this issue and running Vista or Win7, good luck!