Powercolor Radeon 4670 VPU Errors

[+Reaper+]

I had gone over to a friend's house to uninstall his old Geforce 8200 GT and install the new Radeon 4670, trying as best as possible obviously not to touch the 4670's connectors I had touched it by the edges and tried to not apply any pressure to it as it was installed. Screw in and all, turned the PC and it worked perfectly.

The computers specs are as follows:
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3
System Motherboard: G31M-ES2L
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E5200 @ 2.50GHz (2 Cores)
Memory: Kingston DDR2 2046MB RAM
PSU: 400w (card usually only takes 300w)

The powercolor URL to the GPU.
http://www.powercolor.com/eng/products_features.asp?ProductID=4560

The VPU errors occured while in game only. We had tried using the updated drivers from the website itself, powercolor, however after an hour or so the VPU error had kicked in. Uninstalled them and used the disc's drivers, games then went for a good 5ish hours at least before the VPU error kicked in.

We also don't have any heat issues, GPU-Z came up with 60 degrees when in game and besides that, the case is sometimes wide open (no side panel) to allow more airflow as needed.

The most updated driver ver from powercolor is:
Driver + Ver: HD4650/ HD4670 Series PCI-E & Catalyst 9.11 + Version 8.67.
Date: 26/11/2009

Now, I myself am also using a Radeon 4670 only I am using ASUS.
I have never had a single issue and my driver ver+date (dxdiag) is:
Driver Version: 7.15.0010.0176
Date: 2/4/2009

Lucky enough for me, ASUS provides the newest + older drivers unlike Powercolor, so I am unable to find any older Powercolor drivers. We also tried the ATI Radeon drivers but had installation errors, we tried again and this time currently the setup has not generated any errors.

The ATI drivers worked, but then produced another VPU error 5mins later.

Anyone got any ideas at all? This is plain frustrating.

[+Reaper+]

I believe the issue is a PSU failure. I'll run a Memtest just incase, though, I believe that's fine.

He's using a 400w "PowerTek PTI-400AR-T". Now, I haven't been able to find the exact model online but I did find one 770w version on newegg and that power supply got reviews like...

Newegg

Cons: Inserted a EVGA 8800 Ultra 768MB today. After 5 minutes of playing Crysis Warhead on GAMER settings, it smelled like burnt rubber. I sniffed around, smell was coming from a PSU. Turned it off immediately

Cons: The first one blew up and killed my $150 mobo.

Cons: Not worth $1...don’t risk buying this power supply. It has too many defects. Integrated transformers can not withstand to much head...50C? Too much heat? Yes, way too much heat for this power supply...So don’t take a change of burning your motherboard or anything else for that mater.

Cons: After about 4 months it blew up and killed my board.

Any other ideas? Anyone? =/

[-RK]

Hmm, where did you get the drivers from?

What error specifically are you talking about?


Most likely if it was the PSU the PC would simply shut down or reboot. It's possible, but I'd look elsewhere for the problem first.

[+Reaper+]

It's a ""VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands".

Tried the latest WinXP PCIE drivers found on Powecolor's website, as I mentioned first post. Also tried the latest drivers found on ATI's website, along with the powercolor disc that came with the card and, my own ASUS drivers which installed+worked although didn't help.

[+Reaper+]

Now more issues are occuring, after 2days with dealing with VPU errors - now when my friend plays at max resolution, things look a bit pixellated and graphical quality has lowered. When playing at a diff, lower, resolution - things look decent again.

Is this graphical issue with the monitor, or another effect of the PSU? I'm starting to think I bought a failed card.

Any other ideas?

[-RK]

Yup, that's what it looks like. Disable VPU recover from inside the Catalyst Control Center to see if that helps your problem, but if it doesn't then RMA the card and get a replacement.

[ultima]

did you try the drivers from ATI itself ?


i find that manufacturers drivers tend to cause issues

[+Reaper+]

did you try the drivers from ATI itself ?


i find that manufacturers drivers tend to cause issues

1. powercolor driver
2. powercolor disc driver
3. ati driver
4. asus driver

So, yes.

[Radiator]

There shouldn't be any difference between em anyway if it's the same basic driver ... I mean I highly doubt Asus or Powercolour or any other manufacturers workers write drivers themselves .
Just RMA the thing it is most likely a bad card .

[+Reaper+]

He's now uninstalling the 4670 and throwing back in his Nvidia card. I'll try running his card in my PC and see what happens, blue screens and VPU errors of the like.

If it doesn't occur with me, I'll see once more about maybe a windows reinstall for him and/or new PSU.

And if I do have errors, time to RMA it.

[-RK]

Did you try disabling VPU recover yet?

[ultima]

actually manufactures throw in little quirks into "their" drivers
and/or special features

some of which cause havok

[-RK]

@Ultima, No, they don't. They will often ship outdated drivers which may have bugs, but they will not mess with ATI/NVidia's drivers.

Sometimes they include utilities and often those utilities aren't the most stable in the world, but the drivers themselves will still be from ATI or NVidia.

[ultima]

yup thats what i kinda meant

was very tired when i posted

and ya the drivers and 90% of the time outdated

[+Reaper+]

Told you all, tried 4 drivers and no VPU = BSOD yay.

In summary, I have tried the following solutions:
*Tried 4 graphics drivers for it and didn't help.
>Powercolor latest, powercolor disc, ATI latest, ASUS latest.
*Tried turning off the windows paging file and didn't help.
*Made sure the graphics card wasn't overheating, nothing here.
>GPU-Z came up with 60 degrees when in game and besides that, the case's side panel is sometimes removed.
*Tried registry & file sweeping to get rid of ALL graphics driver remains ever used on the system, didn't help.
*Tried reseating the graphics card on the PC's motherboard, didn't help.
*Tried to test system memory via memtest86.com and had no errors.
*Tried disabling VPU but that only caused blue screens of death.
*Tried various graphics driver+game settings and nothing.

And I think it's either:
A) His power supply
B) A faulty card

[+Reaper+]

According to Event viewer:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ati2mtag
Event Category: CPLIB
Event ID: 52250
CPLIB :: OPM - Failed the HFS

Googling came up with:
OPM stands for Output Protection Mecanism. HFS stands for Hardware Function Scan

This error is to do with the card failing it's Content Protection check over DVI/HDMI.

Would the issue be his monitor? A connection problem between the output to his monitor or something? Any ideas on solutions?

[ultima]

other than contacting ATI support directly

nothing i know of off the top of my head

[Radiator]

Just bloody RMA it , it's pretty damn obvious that it's a bad card .

[+Reaper+]

Just bloody RMA it , it's pretty damn obvious that it's a bad card .

One guy had an issue, replaced his PSU with a better more powerful one, VPU errors were gone kiddo.

[-RK]

Yeah, psu problem, replace it.