ATI Radeon HD3870 crashes

Hello, and thanks for your time.

My system specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU @ 2.40Ghz
Intel PD35PD P35 chipset motherboard
4 x 1GB DDR2 800Mhz Apacer RAM modules
7 x 300GB Maxtor Sata2 HDD's
1 x ATI HD 3870 512MB 256bit PowerColor graphics card
2 x 19" LCD's
Creative Audigy 2ZS Platinum Pro Sound Card
500W PSU (Not sure of the make...)

I have 2 questions:

Whenever I start Crysis I can play for about 15 seconds to a minute, and then the PC simply restarts itself. I upgraded from a 8500GT 512MB 128bit graphics card. Crysis ran pretty crap on that card... Anyway almost all my games crash in the same way after about 1 minute of playing. My normal Windows usage is fine, no problems at all, it only occurs when gaming.

I have installed the latest drivers from the website, my question is about power.

1) Is my 500W enough to power this whole system? It is about 1 and a half years old so it is not at its best now. I took 2 online PSU tests and one recomended 831W and the other 534W PSU's.

2) I have read about single and double rail 12V lines or something like that, I am not sure what this means. What does this mean, because I do not want to purchase a new 1000W PSU and still have it crash on me? I want to purchase the right product.

Thanks

Chris

well it could be the psu or not...i just got done building a new rig and i have the same card...and all of a sudden i get random crashes...I oc'd it with the catalyst software and it crashed in COD4...but not in crysis...then i removed the OC and then COD4 crashed about 2 hours in.

update the drivers and do a windows update and get any hardware updates...also check AMD.com because i know they released special Crysis drivers.

as per your power, i have a 1000w psu so im good power wise, i think maybe you might want to upgrade, possibly over 700...or you could get a watt meter and see how much your system takes

Cool thanks.

I have found the v1.1 patch for Crysis and will try that out.

Anyone care to explain the whole 12V rail PSU "thing' to me, I have googled it but do not understand how it affects gameplay or what PSU I must buy?

Thanks.

Agreeing with what is being said. The PSU is the main thing here.

for your components to work properly, they need to be delivered the correct voltage, and amps to give them power.

P = I * V

Power(Watts) = Current(Amps) * Voltage(Volts)

I did this previously in another thread

now the 12v rail is the most important in a pc, because your processor, motherboard, graphics card and memory will run off them, and draw power. The Graphics card and Processor being the main 2 culprits. Also in your case your running multiple hard drives. 7 are going to need to be considered with the power as well.

Well for this calculation, i am going to take a standard power draw of 10W per hard drive. Stang and others would be able to give a better idea of power usage on hard drives than me

Processor = 95W on stock
Graphics card = 105W on stock
p35 Chipset = 16W
7 hard drives = 70W

total = 286W

now this is a light assumption to the draw on the 12v from your pc. reason this is, is because there will be other components drawing more than this that haven't been accounted for. Also hard drives are known to peak at 25W each, so that would increase it by a substantial amount.
Ontop of this, alot of PSU manufactures will exaggerate the power they can actually deliver. You can only really trust the named brand ones to get a accurate picture.

Now the rails you mentioned. Within a PSU, they can split the 12v up. The idea behind this is to give each high power consumption component there own rail. This is why we have a 4-pin or 8-pin atx connector to the motherboard seperate. That is for the CPU.

Then the PCI-E connector to your graphics card. That count have another rail.

You will find some power supplies will have multiple rails, and other just one. Both have good and bad points.

multiple rails:

Pro: voltage won't drop to other components when only one is being stressed

Con: May not be able to maximise what the 12v total is.

Single rail:

Pro: Able to consume all 12v volt, no matter what connectors you use

Con: One single component can effect the voltage to all.

Anybody feel free to extent from that, cause that is as far as my knowledge goes in that area.

Overal though, the 500W PSU you have probably won't deliver more than a max of 300W on the 12v. Then you go in crysis, and demand more than this. PSU can't handle it and machines cuts out/freezes. If you keep doing this, you can break the PSU and other components. Poor PSU's have a habit of taking other hardware with them when they die.

Hope i haven't confused matters too much, and that all makes sense!

- Paul

Paul, thanks so much for taking the time to respond.

Thanks for your clear explanation, I finally understand it and get it so yeah now I know what to look out for. It now makes full sense why the PC just shuts off...

Thanks Guys

Chris

UPDATE!!

Okay I have purchased a 1000W PSU and installed the latest drivers from ATI dated Feb. 13, 2008.

If I play a game it still crashes, it gets further now but still just restarts the machine. I have tried the Catalyst centre and all the GPU's pass the test....

Now what...???

hello. I have had the same issue as you but the problem has seemed to go away when I installed dual hd3870s. I updated my CCC software and made sure I had the latest video drivers from ATI. When my PC crashed due to a video hardware failure...according to windows...I checked for a solution and windows instructed me to download the newly released CCC software/driver package (released as of feb 13). Now after updating software and drivers I have been crash free. ATI seems to be sensitive to OC so make sure if you OC through CCC that you have the appropriate PSU and cooling setup. My video card before the crossfire installation crashed in Crysis, WOW, and Bioshock. The crashes were seldom but a pain when they happened. good luck and let me know if any of this blah blah helps!!!

I had a 650W power supply which couldnt run my system due to low Amps on the 12v rail my 580W Hiper PSU has Dual 12v rails and the amps add up to about 36 i think which is plenty.

Im going to bet that the 1000W Psu you bought is a fairly cheap one? Look on the side of the PSU it will have a have a label stating how many Amp's etc there is on each rail look to see how many amps it has on the 12V. If it has dual 12V Rails it will say 12V1 and 12V2 if so add each of the amps of them 2 raisl so if 12V1 has 15A and 12V2 has 15A which is 30A is total and anything over 30 should be fine.

Hi!

I had the same problem with my HIS 3870 ICEQ Turbo, but fortunately I've managed to solve it:
The Card Crashes or Reboots the PC because its overheats...
why? because its auto fan doesn't works properly, it's quite silent but its not so cool.
I have installed riva tuner and used its low level fan controller to control the fan, and in auto mode the temp doesnt goes above 70°C what seems to be stable enough, but if you need cooler gpu then use the fix mode, i was able to set aspeed what remains silent but doesn't lets the gpu temp above 55° at 100% load.
I hope u manage to solve the problem too.
You can still use your vgas warranty service and ask for a BIOS update.

Good luck