4870 Xorg.conf

[oblidor]

try a different power supply. Something non-cheap. And a bit more powerfull. You are using a powerhungry card on a powerhungry board.

Yes I would also have tried a bigger PSU. Do you notice more instabilities when you have a load on the card? Didn't you mention that playing Crysis in Windows worked nicely? If so maybe it is not the PSU after all... And you don't have a nForce motherboard so it is not that either. Also have you don't any changes to the fan setup? I mean flashed the cards BIOS in windows with better fan settings? I have heard that the stock cards run at 80C idle and some thinks that the stability problems during load is due to very high temperatures.

Anyway I guess flashing BIOS voids the warrenty. Stupid really when ATI cannot manage to get it right when designing the cards... I for sure, am going to flash mine. No way I'll have a 80C hot component in my computer to heat up my q9550 and other components...

Just hope my TX650W Corsair is good enough...

Some things you can test. Does the computer crash or only X? look at the log files in /var/log to see if anything is writen after the time of crash.

[zhark]

Yes I would also have tried a bigger PSU.

The Mist is actually a very good (and expensive) power supply, it shouldn't be the cause of the problems, but you'll never know.
(Norwegian review: http://www.hardware.no/artikler/seks...ninger/25879/8 )

Does the computer crash or only X? look at the log files in /var/log to see if anything is writen after the time of crash.

It doesn't even respond to icmp echo requests

[oblidor]

The Mist is actually a very good (and expensive) power supply, it shouldn't be the cause of the problems, but you'll never know.
(Norwegian review: http://www.hardware.no/artikler/seks...ninger/25879/8 )

It doesn't even respond to icmp echo requests

I see. Yes, the Mist are good and as you can play Crysis... You could of course get a power consumption reader to put in the socket of the wall and see how much watt the computer pulls. Clas Ohlson has them for some NOK.

Keep an eye on the Xorg logs in /var/log when you experience crashes too see if leading up to it there are some similarities... The machine is not OCed I presume?

About BIOS flashing: http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?sh...434&start=4436 (in Norwegian)

[zhark]

Yes, of course the cpu is overclocked
I found the source of the instability to be the card beeing defect. I reluctantly booted Windows, and used some tools to extract, modify, and flash the BIOS of the card with non-OC edition core and memory values (750/900MHz), which fixed the issue. The original core clock of 780MHz was the source of the problem. RMAing is to much work
Its been stable ever since.

[Aostrich]

zhark, I had some random hang-ups with black screen after I tried to flash ASUS HD4870 TOP bios into my card. With my native bios (I have a reference ASUS HD4870) and other bioses I tried I have no such issues.

[zhark]

Ok. It seems some 4870's run at 780MHz gpu and some don't. My card was sold with 780MHz so it should be able to work at this frequency, it's probably MSI that haven't tested mine properly before selling it. I have a friend which have a "normal" 4870 which runs fine at 780MHz.

[Aostrich]

zhark, the issue might be even not in a frequency itself. My card is rock-stable in all games/benchmarks/stability tests at 825Mhz (however it's watercooled), but with ASUS TOP bios it hangs up even at lower clocks almost each hour while just watching a movie with mplayer. So I assume that some bioses have bugs somewhere in firmware, etc...

So, if your problem is the same, I mean hang ups with black screen and one of the leds lighting, than it might be a hardware (firmware) related issue. If it is something else, than it is probably your software problem.

Mine is stable now, but I don't use compiz or any 3D hungry applications in linux. Just watching movies using mplayer -vo opengl.

Just for the refernce, I use Slamd64 (64-bit Slackware port) and Xserver 1.4.2.

[zhark]

Interesting. When my card hang the symptom were just that everything just froze, mouse cursor not moving, not responding to ping, etc. (In Windows VPU-recover interfered and reset the card every time, so I could continue to use the computer. But before this, it was frozen, same as in Linux.)
As I said, underclocking the gpu solved the problem in my case. It's been stable over a month afterwards. Anyways the problem could of course still be firmware related. I contacted MSI about getting a new BIOS since they later changed the default clock frequencies on this card (mem down from 1000 to 900) a new BIOS should exist, right? According to the friendly staff at MSI support, a new BIOS didn't exist, yeah right.

[Aostrich]

zhark, then your problem is really too high clocks. For me 1000MHz VRAM is not stable, may be it is your case as well. You can try to find a proper video bios hereTechPowerUp Video BIOS Collection, or modify your original bios with RBE tool.

[zhark]

Yeah, mine is rock stable at 750MHz/1000MHz (core/mem). I already used RBE tool to modify the BIOS with these settings.