COD / ATi woes

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rudirautenbach

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I really hope someone could help me here. I recently reinstalled Vista, and for the life of me I cannot get either COD4 or COD WaW to work. Before the reformat the games loaded successfully. Do not ask why I reformatted...

Every time I try to load the game(s) it returns an error "DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error" and then kicks me out of the game. This is then followed by a warning that the ATi display driver stopped working and has recovered successfully.

I have reformatted and reinstalled Vista a total of 3 times today, and every @##%$ time its the same thing!

I have updated the display drivers and directx to the latest available from ATi and Microsoft.

Specs are as follows:
ASUS P5Q Deluxe
Intel C2D P8500
4 Gb OCX Reaper
Sapphire ATi Radeon 4870X2

I am 100% sure someone will come to the rescue here, this forum has almost always been able to help me out. Please.

Thanks Rudi
 
Have you tried turning off VPU Recover just for the heck of it? Running the latest 8.12 Drivers? :p
 
rudirautenbach said:
Help me here...what is VPU Recover? And yes, I am running the latest 8.12 drivers, downloaded a couple of hours ago.
Click to expand...

You need to get in your Catalyst Control Center, right click on your desktop > CCC , then look for the option called VPU Recover. Then turn it off. Sometimes it works for these kind of errors.

Otherwise it could be a corrupt driver - you need to uninstall it, properly, and install from a clean copy. Or it could be some heat/ram/etc issue. I'm not sure. Last time I had this, it was a V/RAM problem... in a way.
 
rudirautenbach said:
Help me here...what is VPU Recover? And yes, I am running the latest 8.12 drivers, downloaded a couple of hours ago.
Click to expand...

Try 8,11,i have been having a hard time trying to get 8,12 on my machine.
Just try it and see if it work's u have nothing to lose.
 
OK confirmed, the problem stills persists even with XP. Perhaps the 4870X2 is faulty. Its only a few weeks old (bought on 26/11) so lets hope PC International will have it exchanged under warranty.

I am still curious to hear whether others have had similar experiences with this card.
 
ld13 said:
You need to get in your Catalyst Control Center, right click on your desktop > CCC , then look for the option called VPU Recover. Then turn it off. Sometimes it works for these kind of errors.

Otherwise it could be a corrupt driver - you need to uninstall it, properly, and install from a clean copy. Or it could be some heat/ram/etc issue. I'm not sure. Last time I had this, it was a V/RAM problem... in a way.
Click to expand...

ID, I researched on VPU Recover, it seems that it was included in earlier versions of Catalyst. It appears to have been excluded from the newish versions.

As you see my problem persists, and I am now starting to believe that the GPU is faulty. It runs perfectly well under normal loads but soon as you run a game (which puts more load on the card) it fails and kicks me out of Windows.
 
rudirautenbach said:
ID, I researched on VPU Recover, it seems that it was included in earlier versions of Catalyst. It appears to have been excluded from the newish versions.
Click to expand...

Where on earth did you research this? VPU Recover is a core feature that will never be removed lol. It is still present in 8.12 - go look again, it is there. Might be "hiding" under the Advanced Panel/Settings.
 
OK guys herewith the happy ending to my problem. I took the machine to PC International (www.pcint.co.za). Helpful and friendly bunch, they booked my PC in. Phoned me a few hours later to tell me the problem has been solved. Turned out to be a faulty graphics card, which they replaced without a quibble.
Some of you may recall an earlier post of mine regarding the problems our firm has been experiencing with the Lenovo T500 machines fitted with ATI Radeon GPU’s. The problem message (ATIKMDAG.sys has stopped working and recovered successfully) was exactly the same as on my gaming PC. Go figure...
The techie at PC International was somehow not surprised when I explained the problem to him. He later told me that although it is the first time he has seen this on a Radeon 4870X2, he has made a few similar replacements on the Radeon 4870 with a single GPU. His remark was that some of the hardware firms know about certain problems with their products, but still ship them as is and then later replace them with updated models where the problem has been addressed, when the customer complains.
I am sure I cannot be blamed for the reduction in my level of confidence in ATI products, especially after all the problems I have recently seen with ATI products at home and in the office. The worst of it all is that I am not alone judging by the hundreds of other consumers with similar problems with ATI products. Just Google “ATIKMDAG.sys has stopped working and recovered successfully” and you will see what I mean.
[Flamesuit on] For what it is worth, I have two Sony VAIO machines in the household, both fitted with Nvidia GPU’s. I have had one for 5 years and the other for 2 years. Both run COD4 ok’ish, maybe not be the same FPS as the mighty 4870X2 but constantly for years now. Our firm (we are in engineering and run several hundred 3D CAD workstations with SolidEdge) use Nvidia cards and I cannot remember the last time one of my draftsmen had to have a card replaced. I am not criticising anyone’s choices here, merely stating my own observations.
Lessons learnt from this experience:
1. Make sure you research your choice of products well before buying. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t...
2. Make sure you choose a reputable supplier (such as PC Int and many others) especially of you are going to buy online. A no quibble policy is worth more than most other things...
Thank you to everyone that tried to help. Your time is appreciated.

Cheers Rudi
 
Exact same thing happened to me but with a different ati card. Needless to say I've only used nvidia since and have had no problems.
 
You won't need a flamesuit for this, relax.

rudirautenbach said:
I am sure I cannot be blamed for the reduction in my level of confidence in ATI products,
...
The worst of it all is that I am not alone judging by the hundreds of other consumers with similar problems with ATI products. Just Google “ATIKMDAG.sys has stopped working and recovered successfully” and you will see what I mean.
[Flamesuit on]
Click to expand...

I have been spending the day reading up on this "atikmdag/nvlddmkm" error error all over the net.

My conclusion is as such:
Primarily Vista 64 Bit (and a few 32bit) installations seems to be affected. Not an ATI-only problem, a whole slew of users are reporting having a similar problem with their Nividia cards - just nvlddmkm and not atikmdag. Must be a Software problem as it only popped up after a certain windows update for some users.

I suspect it is a conflict with Vista's own implementation of VPU Recover called TDR. That is why you might not see the VPU Recover option in your CCC:
ATI via email: Note, Because Windows Vista provides the same functionality as this option, VPU Recover is not available on systems running Windows Vista.
Click to expand...

So this is not a hardware problem at all but rather a driver/conflict problem imo. No need to lose confidence in ATI products ;)

I don't even feel like commenting on the techie at PC International's remarks. Show me a product out there that does not have some kind of problem of sorts. Of course they'll ship it even if they know of the problem as long as it does not go over some limit. Eg. they'll ship product X if it will work ~99% of the time, not even talking about DOA products. They can still make money off the 99% that will work!

In your case it might have been a hardware problem (hey, stuff fail all the time), not saying that is not the case. Just saying that I have yet to see a card fail with my own eyes. Any GFX card of any make.

Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Red-Blooded ATI fan. But it is connected to a price. About R100 to R200 max. When I buy a 3D card I buy one that gives me the best performance for my budget. ATI just gets that ~R100 advantage. eg when I upgraded few months back I was looking at the GTX260 as well, but at the time the HD4870 was the better choice performance/price wise. Hence I sit with the HD4870 now. I also own a FX5200, 9600Pro and there is a TNT2 in the house somewhere still...

This thread & error just gave me another reason why I must leave Vista alone for now :D

Also, you might want to go and have a look at this website: http://www.repairyourpcnow.com/resources/atikmdag-has-stopped-responding.php
 
Good post ID13. I have noted the problems that Nvidia users are experiencing, similar to what we have seen recently.

In my case I am convinced it was hardware failure. Again, agree with you that I do not often see hardware failures (1 x Sony VAIO CPU fan in the last 6 years is not bad - I used to smoke around 10 a night in its vicinity when I used it for COD and this might have been the exception rather than the rule. As far as the technie goes, these chaps see our problem in multiplication every day, and each person interprets the frequency of failures of a certain product differently. Anyway he helped me and for that I am grateful.

We had the IBM/Lenovo Gauteng Regional Advisor in our offices today, and he appeared shocked at the failures that we have been experiencing with their (ATI equipped) products. Of course our IT Department also tried XP in one of the 5 affected machines, but the problem persists. Perhaps it is a combination of the driver and Vista, and how they exchange information. I don't know, but what I do know as end-user is that we pay for things to work, and the buck stops there.

In the end I am still probably an ATI fan (having a new 4870X2 back in the rig playing COD at full detail with blistering FPS rates is nothing short of amazing) and hope this time I got on of the 99% group and no the 1% group. LOL
 
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