As per Logan's demands I went through the agony of registering an account with RTW. (I'm new here, can't you tell?)
Now I got a question for the users on here since my recent Google searches have left me with no useful information. So Ive been using an XFX 4870 1GB for my build since I put it together ages ago and Ive been running into a reoccurring problem with Directx games like AVP, Mass Effect, & Darksiders. They all crash about five to ten minutes into play. It only happens in those games specifically. HoN, CoD, Amnesia, L4D2 & Dawn of War 2 all function fine, no crashes. I have adequate power, a Corsair TX750. My drivers are up to date according to windows 7 as well as Steam. I don't have any old Nvidia drivers laying on my drive. And my card is clean and dust free.
I am utterly dumbfounded by these crashes, RTW. Maybe you guys have an insight towards these issues. I'm considering spending money on a newer card, but Id rather not. If you need any additional information, please don't hesitate to ask. Ill check this thread daily at best.
You may want to check out the offical amd driver download website and not windows 7 to see if you have the most up to date drivers.
Just google "AMD Driver Download" then pick all your specs.
Currently, 11.5 is the highest pretty sure that sticks to the 4000 series too. If you're running crossfire you'll want to download the crossfire profile too (you didnt mention crossfire but thought i'd mention it)
I have kind of a similar problem, but I think it's a little more mainstream. I haven't been able to find a solution to it unfortunately. My issue is that whenever I play Battlefield Bad Company 2 for an hour or more my video drivers will stop working and my entire computer will crash. From what I've heard, this issue is being caused by the latest BFBC2 update. EA knows about the issue, I guess, but they haven't fixed it.
take a look at your memory usage while playing these games. The Radeon 4xxx series had a strange driver issue that caused really bad memory leaks in some applications, and if thats the case theres really no fix for it. Is it just crashing to desktop or is the whole system locking up?
I haven't tried monitoring my temps in games in those games because most of the time the whole machine will crash, black/white screen replaying audio loop, in only a few minutes or up to 10 or 15 minutes.
Gonna play window'd watching my temps the whole time. Then try at stock speeds for the CPU.
EDIT:
I just successfully crashed her again. GPU temps at idle were 63C and while playing I achieved 84C at peak and on average about 79C. I wasn't watching the memory consumption unfortunately. Could it have to do with the size of my screen, really? My resolution is 2048 x 1152.
That be a dell or samsung lcd, try a registry clean with ccleaner and by the sounds of it sounds like an overheating issue try putting fresh thermal paste on the GPU as the original may have lost its heat transfer properties..
The resolution shouldn't matter i had a 4850 on that res in between cards.
So I smeared on some CM Compound and put the heat sink back on. Temps at idle were 52C and peak temp while playing Mass Effect were 74C. No crashes during the play session I had. Thanks RTW!