My Radeon HD 4870 X2 has taken to a habit of randomly stopping the display (black screen) and powering up its fan, frequently leaving the rest of my computer system frozen.

This happens a few minutes after starting up the computer, regardless of anything I do, including booting up in safe mode.

Running Windows 7 64-bit.

Any other details you need?

Notes:

I have tried reinstalling drivers multiple times. I can't tell if it works or not. My computer system's stability seems compromised at random times, completely arbitrarily.

EDIT:

Actually, my computer seems problem-free so long as I leave the driver unupgraded.

However, I have another problem.

How can I manually set the fan speed to my graphics card? I suspect that it is running a lot less than it should.

I have tried ATI Tray Tools (does nothing) and CCC (piece of shit that doesn't even start up).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 30 2011, 4:23 pm by Sand Wraith.

Maybe your graphics card is completely fucked and you need to get a replacement? If you've reinstalled the drivers and your computer still freezes, that could be the problem. ;o

Computer keeps dying still, with old or new drivers.

Clean out the fans.

Already clean.

Put an ice-pack (wrapped in a towel to keep it dry) up to it to cool it.

You're kidding me, right?

This behavior sounds like a driver issue.
Just for confirmation, when you're using the Win7 native drivers the PC is stable but problems start once you download and install ATi drivers, right?
Did you try downloading the driver package only (without the software suite, CCC, etc.)?
What about an overclock tool like AMD Overclock or EVGA precision? Maybe underclocking the card puts it into a stable condition. This would most likely be due to a cooling problem.

You should try a system restore to a date way before the errors occured for the first time.
Then you could boot with a linux distro or some other maintenance boot CD and do some stability and stress test there. Most likely the problems will be gone. If not your card is probably broken.
After that I'd try a clean uninstall of the driver. You should be able to google the process.
If everything fails you'll have to reinstall Windows. Don't forget backups and transferring your settings.

Will try those programs.

Worse case scenario (which isn't all that bad), I backup my data, format my harddrive and see if that helps.

Maybe a cable is loose or a hardware defect? (You say the fan won't power up like it's supposed to)

I doubt it. The card's fan seems to be able to power up just fine, but it simply does not power up as much as it seems that it should.

Sounds like a graphics card overheating problem. Is it *very* hot to the touch?

Not like it would burn me.

sounds like it's not on if it won't burn you, or you're not touching the heat sink.

Well my GPU temperature reading says it runs at 60ºC idle. I touch the heat sink and it is hot to touch, but I wouldn't say it would burn me (unless I kept my hand on it for like 30+ seconds, but you wouldn't do that).

Dual GPU cards are notorious for dying. I'd recommend testing the PC with an alternate GPU if you have one.

Didn't know that, thanks Ex. I'd probably never spend the $$ to get a duel-GPU card anyway, particularly as I don't really play any of the latest games anyway (never played Crysis even though I've got an 8800GTX).

Its all the heat and voltage of two GPUs going into a single PCB, so of course they're going to wear out a lot easier. It's also very hard to keep them cool. A good thing to remember is that even if your GPU's core temp is low, the VRMs and RAM chips can get hot enough to kill the card.