FIX: Black Screen of Death for ATI Radeon HD cards. : V - Skyrim

» Fri May 25, 2012 1:20 am

Remember, I'm just trying to help.

Telling people over and over again thier problem is overheating most certainly isnt helping anyone.

when the nexus,beth and amd boards all have huge threads on this issue and all acknowledge this is a game engine problem then i dont think "blow the dust off your card" is really any help.

especially when you are ignoring the posts telling you it does it at low temps and then leaping on anyone you think is fair game by lecturing them on heat issues nobody has.
ignoring the answers you dont like is why i think you are trolling the threads where people are pissed off.

» Fri May 25, 2012 7:54 am

Turn on crash error reporting and see what Event Viewer shows.

the problem is its giving no error messages at all,not in event viewer or third party diagnostics,its literaly turning the pc off before anything can be recorded,and when records are checked its just a blank log at the point of crash.

this is why most are angry,unable to trace the fault to find thier own solutions.

» Fri May 25, 2012 7:13 am

Hey you misunderstood me.
what you say is true, could be overheating.. but this is not the point.

The point is, I expect their fix a game that to me (and others) first was fine.

Because I have to manipulate my fans to run Skyrim? Skyrim only?
Because I have to test for days to fix their bugs?
Because manipulate a PC that works fine for running a game broken? ... is absurd

and I invite all the other players that have the black screen not to get angry with their computer because their computer is fine.
it's just a bug of the last patch that makes conflict with it.

You say I'm trying to help
but many think to change your graphics card for Skyrim

really? really? really? really? REALLY?

really for Skyrim? If they had made ??a good programming Skyrim
work also on a Game Boy.

All I'm saying is that Skyrim has somehow managed to cause hardware failures or driver failures.

There's three possible solutions:

1) You override your hardware settings (fan speed) to reduce the likelyhood of hardware failure.
2) Bethesda releases a patch that no longer runs code that causes hardware/driver failures.
3) AMD releases a new driver that doesn't allow code to run that causes hardware failures.

Which would you rather wait for? Eventually Bethesda or AMD will release patches that fix the issue. Personally I'd rather be playing Skyrim without crashes rather than wait for months for them to identify and fix the problems.

» Thu May 24, 2012 8:38 pm

when the nexus,beth and amd boards all have huge threads on this issue and all acknowledge this is a game engine problem then i dont think "blow the dust off your card" is really any help.

I haven't seen any threads or official posts stating that this is a game engine problem from Bethesda yet. Could you please post a link?

» Fri May 25, 2012 10:00 am

I'm kind of surprised that you assumed that I'd done any sort of modification to the INI files. Or done the 4gb patch. Or played with overclocking hardware. I've done none of those things, and I'm using the recommended system settings that the skyrimlauncher.exe chose for me, though I did turn anti-aliasing from 8x to 2x. I laughed out loud when I read your comment about fans producing heat. It's true that fans produce trivial quantities of heat, but the increased airflow enormously overwhelms the heat generated by any fan motor.

You should know that I've got a bachelor's degree in computer science from Oregon State University, and I'm currently working on my Master's degree with an emphasis on computer graphics. I came to the conclusion that Skyrim wasn't at fault for the BSOD issues when I thought about one simple fact: It's practically impossible for any program to cause a total system failure, especially on a well-designed operating system. The only thing that can cause a BSOD is a hardware failure, driver failure, or invalid low-level hardware commands.

I didnt assumed anything, I simply covered all bases, since I m not familiar with your graphic card model
NOW - YOU DID LINK TO AN OVERCLOCKING UTILITY -

» Fri May 25, 2012 6:12 am

6950 oc

only had ctd (before 4gb) and about ~6 freezes which had me CTRL+ALT+DELETE to turn of the game in the process stuff, no restart of PC etc.

» Fri May 25, 2012 8:59 am

Currently using an AMD ATI Radeon HD 6950 2gig GDDR5 by Sapphire Graphics. I have it modified with the 6970 bios mod to fully unlock the core. I am using the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus air cooler. Fan speed is set to 30% in the Catalyst Control suite. I play Skyrim and every other game at 1920x1080 resolution on Ultra Settings. Other games include World of Warcraft in 25 man heroic raiding, Starcraft II, and EvE Online. The max temps I see on my card are around 57 degrees celsius.

Whole point is if you are using the stock cooler on any high end graphics card you are going to have issues. If you want to bring the temps down, then the noise will go up. As things currently stand, finding good aftermarket air coolers can be an issue. I personally find Arctic Cooling coolers to work best even if they aren't the snazziest looking. For other brands, I'd get on a site like overclocking.com or xtremesystems.com or another high end performance PC community forums and ask their members what their advice and recommendations are. Perhaps a new company has entered the field since I got my cards back in Janruary. Maybe one of the other air cooling companies like Cooler Master or Thermaltake have a new good product out for performance graphics cards, I don't know.

If you don't like using air cooling then I'd definitely recommend checking with your favorite performance computing community for advice on water cooling. Be warned though, water cooling done right is expensive.

Finally, keep an eye out for those extra special cards, like the ASUS limited edition cards with custom cooler. Those coolers tend to do very well besides being on an insanely powerful and highly tweaked card.

» Fri May 25, 2012 12:59 am

NOW - YOU DID LINK TO AN OVERCLOCKING UTILITY -

While I am not part of the what you two are talking about, I do feel it needs pointing out that tools like the MSI program, GPU-Z, the ASUS ROG tool, and the AMD Overdrive tool all are recommended not simply for overclocking, but as well as for benchmarking.

» Thu May 24, 2012 7:33 pm

Here's what I did:

1) Downloaded http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm.
2) Checked GPU temperatures while running skyrim. Temperatures hit 85 degrees celsius within 5m of game time.
3) Used MSI Afterburner to enable user defined fan speeds (settings -> fan). Set the card to go to ramp from 20% fan speed at 40 degrees celsius to 100% fan speed at anything over 75 degrees celsius.
4) ????
5) Profit.

Just registered and wanted to say: THANK YOU! for finding this out. I've been having a lot of problems when entering the map, then crashing. I'm using a HD5870 Viper-X and setting my own fan-curve has completely fixed my crashing issues. Once again, thank you.