sapphire 5770 vapor x ati card.

Well, i bought the above graphic card for my new computer rig. The main reason is the cost $279, the low temperature and low fan noise. The next higher up card would be the ATI 5850 which cost about $419. I think i will game more on my PS3 than the computer.

After fixing up the computer and installing the 9.12 driver. Computer start to hang. Sometimes the error of "graphic driver stop responding and has recovered" will appear.
If the above error happens, the computer will recover after a few seconds. Other times, it will just hang and you can only press the casing reset button.

The hanging will appear at any time, sometimes just moving the mouse, normal surfing, watching some avi files. It was really frustrating to have fixed up a $1.5k computer and to face such a problem.

So i went googling and try a few method which does not work.
1) Change the windows 7 power plan from balanced to high performace.
2) Disable the audio in HDMI and display port
3) Manually change the fan speed in the ATI catalyst

Did not upgrade to version 10.1 as others have reverted that it does not solve the problem.

The only thing that works for me is as below. I just want to document it down here.

link.

Do you have problems in 2d mode (windows desktop)? Vertical lines on your screen? Not happy with your windows experience score for your shiny new 5XXX card?

I was having these issues with my Asus 5870. Very upsetting after paying so much for a new gfx card. my windows experience for gfx went down from 7.4 to 6 after i installed it!! After doing some digging, I deduced that it is due to the ridiculously low clocks the powerplay puts the card into for idle. 157mhz? seriously?

A bios flash might have fixed it but apparently the newer Asus 5870's can't be flashed. Bummer.

I think I found a solution. My windows experience for the gfx is 7.8 after this simple tweak.

I came across this solution that forces the card to idle (2D) at a higher clock. I had to set it to a clock speed that Windows 7 would be happy with. (For me this was 400 when idle, and the stock 850 when running games)

Steps:

1. Open CCC

2. Unlock and Enable Overdrive if they aren’t already.

3. Go to Options/Profiles/Profiles Manager. Create a new profile. Under composition make sure “ATI Overdrive” is checked. Save and Close, DO NOT ACTIVATE.

4. In windows go to: C:\Users\{yourusername}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Prof iles (you will need to have “show hidden files” turned on for this)

5. Open the xml document with the name of the profile you just created (notepad is fine)

6. Change the values of the Clock and Memory speeds to look like this (these specific values are what worked for me and my card, use judgment) EDIT ONLY THE BOLD VALUES.



Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0"

Property name="Want_0" value="40000"

Property name="Want_1" value="60000"

Property name="Want_2" value="85000"

Feature

Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0"

Property name="Want_0" value="90000"

Property name="Want_1" value="90000"

Property name="Want_2" value="120000"



7. Save and close. Go back to CCC and activate the profile you just created.