MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

[brduk]

IntelCore

i5 2500K unlocked
4GB 2x2GB Corsair CMX4GX3M2B1600C9 Memory
Coolermaster HYPER 212 PLUS COOLER
MS Win 7 Home Prem 64bit OEM
Samsung 22" Syncmaster 2253BW

I'm a bit of a noob, but reading around you may want this further information;

CPU Core voltage 1.240
QPI/VTT 1.05



Large images here - Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket - The first image showing the voltage across the +12v as being 3.79v occurred after three temp crashes in quick succession.

Some things i've noticed that i'm unsure about;

1. The Corsair CMX4GX3M2B1600C9 Memory is labelled as 1.65v, when using either 'fail-safe' or 'optimised' defaults in the BIOS they always go to 1.5v, also there is no option to set it at 1.65v in the BIOS, it goes from 1.64v to 1.66v - i've read there may be some issues with this memory and it's compatibility, would be good to hear some informed feedback.
2. If you find the screencap image (link above) of CPU-Z on the graphics tab (8th image along) the revision and clock information is missing completely, is this normal, or would it point towards a fault?

Any help appreciated.

TIA

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

You have 8gb ram installed? There is an option to manually set your rams voltage,set dram voltage to 1.66v for 1.648v in Windows,are you using xmp?

Could set qpi/vtt voltage to 1.08v and see if it still freezes

Btw is ram running at 1600mhz?

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

No, 4GB RAM, 2 x 2GB Corsair CMX4GX3M2B1600C9. 1 stick in slot 1, the other in slot 3 to enable Dual channel. I have tried both XMP disabled and enabled with no change. I've tried running the RAM at Auto (it selects 1333MHz), 1333 & 1600, again the temp/driver crashes keep happening.

You have 8gb ram installed? There is an option to manually set your rams voltage,set dram voltage to 1.66v for 1.648v in Windows,are you using xmp?

Could set qpi/vtt voltage to 1.08v and see if it still freezes

Btw is ram running at 1600mhz?

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Ok,set it to 1600mhz and set dram to 1.66v,set qpi/vtt voltage to 1.08v,if still freezing try 1.10v qpi/vtt

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Thanks. Tried all those settings, World of Tanks and BF3 BETA both lead to instant crashes. BF3 BETA brought up this;



I noticed while changing the QPI/VTT to 1.1v that the CPU core voltage had risen to 1.305 (it was set on auto)

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Could set CPU voltage to normal in CPU voltage list,then it shouldn't go so high,I don't know what that error is lookslike a direct x drivers error? Could try googling latest direct x drivers and re-installing them,does it crash on any other games?older games?

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Update:

If I turn off anti-aliasing, games appear to play fine (excluding BF3 BETA). Pretty sure I noticed this before (should have mentioned it in the OP), earlier drivers where you could turn off AA altogether meant I was able to play the likes of World of Tanks, however there was instability with 2D applications, especially switching between 2D and 3D applications. The newer drivers dont allow you to turn off AA altogether, just allow you to use low/application defined settings.

Any idea what it could be?

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Did you download install the direct x package? It's about 100mb with all the monthly versions and it updates any out of date versions,anti aliasing stresses the gpu more than normal so it could be gpu or voltage or memory related,how hot is the card getting? And are you using latest mb BIOS?

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Downloading the Direct X package now, rev. 9.29.1974

The highest i've seen the card hit is ~63 degrees during a Furmark benchtest, which I believe is acceptable.

I'm using the F5 BIOS, a beta F6 came out a couple of days ago, but I try and stay away from Beta products (other than BF3 lol)

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Beta bios's are safe to use,I use them all the time,its worth trying to see if it stops the freezing,if not you can always flash back to your old BIOS,I also noticed in that error above it says "total resource memory 0" but that could be down to driver error Idk,63c is fine my card hits 70-72c without issue

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

I'll perhaps look at the beta BIOS later on.

There has been the suggestion on another forum that the power supply may not be powerful enough to supply the card, what do you think about this? There isn't much going on inside the box, GFX card, CPU, 1 x SATA HDD, 1 x Optical drive, USB front panel, USB mouse & Keyboard, stereo jack headphones

The review for this card at 3DGuru estimates the power consumption of this card as 137w under full stress at the out of the box overclocked settings - MSI Radeon 6850 Cyclone Power review

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

I don't think its psu,if your pc isn't overclocked then 600w is more than enough,does it say on the graphic card box the minimum recommended psu?

[brduk]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

Minimum recommended supply by the card manufacturer is 500w, folks on the other forum said you should always add 30% onto this figure...I can pm you the link to that forum if you'd like to view the discussion there (I dont think TT would take to kindly to me posting a link to another tech forum publicly).

Forgot to mention, the card has been at it's most stable when using older drivers with AA turned off, AND when the card has been underclocked to the 'standard edition' defaults of 775Mhz Core and 1000Mhz Memory. The 'Limited Edition' OC out the box defaults are 860MHz Core and 1100Mhz Memory.

[wazza300]

Re: MSI Cyclone R6850 Power Edition OC - Freezing and Driver recovery problem

the only way to know for sure is test with a bigger psu,maybe because the card is overclocked its using more juice