Radeon HD 5770 Drivers crashing

[Milks]

I just built this PC this morning, and after installing the latest drivers, they constantly fail and lock my PC if they dont recover. Sometimes, the screen just turns a random color, usually gray or brown with small vertical lines all over the place. Anyone know of a fix, or what the problem might be? Is it a bad card?

Heres my specs:

Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3L
Intel Core i5-750 2.66GHz
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333
Sapphire Vapor-X ATi Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Antec EarthWatts 500W PSU
250gb SATA wd caviar
and a 500gb seagate barracuda
also running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

UPDATE: Fuck it, just going to RMA the card. Can even run the Windows Experience Index.

[Olo401]

Looks like Sapphire has a batch of this particular card with a bad BIOS.. you can fix this with a BIOS flash but you need a USB drive to do it.

Edit: Looks like Newegg's aware of the problem and they've been shipping a free 4GB USB drive with this card just for that purpose. Rock on, I guess?

[Pikarya]

Looks like Sapphire has a batch of this particular card with a bad BIOS.. you can fix this with a BIOS flash but you need a USB drive to do it.

Edit: Looks like Newegg's aware of the problem and they've been shipping a free 4GB USB drive with this card just for that purpose. Rock on, I guess?

This is correct. The card isn't bad, flash and be done.

[Milks]

Wait, what? Mine came with the 4GB free USB thing. I didn't know about this bad BIOS. How can I fix it?

[Pikarya]

"The correct BIOS code can be downloaded from www.sapphiretech.com [Graphic Card -> PCI-E -> Sapphire HD 5700 Series -> Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5770 1 GB GDDR5 PCIE -> Submit -> BIOS] and some partner websites. We regret any inconvenience caused to end users."

[Milks]

Sweet. Gonna try this now. Will return with results.

[Milks]

And newp, fixed nothing. Still crashing. And thatś just with the Windows Index Experience thing...I hate to see what a game or a real benchmark would do :\

Update: Ha, I tried rebooting, and it froze as soon as I logged in. I don't even have to put it in any sort of stress at all now. Going to send back tomorrow if UPS is open.

[toonces]

you tried running windows with the card out? rollback drivers? tried some forceware?

Cuz to make sure is the card, and not software or another piece of HW.

[Olo401]

you tried running windows with the card out? rollback drivers? tried some forceware?

Cuz to make sure is the card, and not software or another piece of HW.

That's true it could be conflicting with other drivers..

[Milks]

Tried different drivers, tried my old GeForce 6800. System runs fantastic with the 6800, and no matter which drivers I use with the Radeon, it crashes. But I can't play games with this piece of shit XD

Many people seem to have solved their problem by RMAing their 5770 to replace it with another one, so I'm going to try that.

[Flatliner]

I originally wanted the 5770, but upon reading all the reviews on newegg I decided against it because apparently it has a lot of software issues that haven't been updated yet :/ Hopefully your problems are fixable though Milks. Gl with the RMA.

[toonces]

yeah sounds RMA or exchange for another card the way to go, gl.

[Milks]

I hope it goes good too. Read some forums and people are saying it's a good card once the problems are sorted out, lol

[Milks]

Mini necro, but I got my RMA in today, and everything is working fabulously. Yay!

[Pikarya]

Good to hear :D

[Amastacia]

Belated, but a major source of driver-lockup issues with 5000 series Radeon cards can be the HDMI Audio driver.

I'm happy to hear that the OP's problem has been solved, but for others experiencing similar issues with driver crashes, there is a potential fix.

Need to get to the Device Manager from the control panel, find the section for Audio, and then right click -> Disable the HDMI Audio driver. A reboot at this point wouldn't hurt.

I had significant issues with driver crashes prior to taking these steps, and said issues have basically evaporated since.

[SaviorSelf]

Is this card really worse than the 4890? I was looking at Toms Hardware and for scores, the 4890 is always ahead of 5770. I fail to see how that makes sense, but I was looking to upgrade to this card before I saw the charts. My card would be bottlenecked by running in a PCI Express x16 1.0 slot too though, not sure if that would be the difference maker.

[Olo401]

Worse really isn't the word.. The 5770 performs closely to the 4870 in terms of graphics, yet is more efficient because it's based on a newer design & smaller process. Similarly, the 5750 is close to the 4850.

[vanidin]

As is echoed in many reviews of the 5770's, what makes them worth getting isn't their performance, which really isn't any better than 4xxxx series in the same price point, but the features you get with it, such as dx11 and eyefinity, less power/heat etc.

from everything I've read (and I've read quite a bit, trying to figure out which one to get for my upcoming build) if you are wanting a card that can play dx11 titles when they start to become more mainstream, you really should look at a minimum of a 5850 unless your planning to crossfire 5770's.

[SaviorSelf]

Well based on pretty much all of the charts on tomshardware, 4870x2 seems to always be at the top of the charts...