VPU Recover on Sappfire X800

[Exile69]

From time to time, usually a couple of hours of gaming, everything freezes and it goes black and I come back 5 seconds later to an error screen with the title "VPU Recover". It says my graphics card quit following commands the driver was giving it or something of that nature. Specs in sig. I turned off all my overclocks and I'm using the latest Catalyst driver (5.7) from ATI's website. Please help me.

[hoinar]

Do you see the same errors when you're not OCed? if yes..I'd say give a try to another driver..maybe an Omega.

[cadaveca]

sound like overheating. if the gpu reaches 90c, vpu recover is set to take over. these gpu's are good to 125c apparantly. my sapphire x850xtpe reaches 93c at load , and is subject to the same problems.

I have a few x800's, and i have found that sometimes the thermalpaste on the gpu does not properly cover the entire surface, and this, of course, can lead to increased temps. what you can do is start rthdrbl and atitool(rthdrbl for heat generation, atitool to monitor temps) and leave it for about 40 minutes. at that point your gpu should have hit max temps(rthdrbl uses HDR, and is quite gpu intensive). watch the temps via atitool, and let us know what happens.

[Exile69]

Originally Posted by hoinar

Do you see the same errors when you're not OCed? if yes..I'd say give a try to another driver..maybe an Omega.

Yea, at first I thought it was the OC, so I turned it down. A few hours later (while playing some CS) same thing happens, so I turned to you guys. I'm gonna go get an Omega driver and rhtdrbl now. I'll keep you guys posted.

*edit* Which omega driver should I get? Right now I have 2605a_7z. And where would I get rhtdrbl? Can't find it in the files or search *edit*

[hoinar]

Originally Posted by Exile69

Yea, at first I thought it was the OC, so I turned it down. A few hours later (while playing some CS) same thing happens, so I turned to you guys. I'm gonna go get an Omega driver and rhtdrbl now. I'll keep you guys posted.

*edit* Which omega driver should I get? Right now I have 2605a_7z. And where would I get rhtdrbl? Can't find it in the files or search *edit*

First try Cadaveca's suggestions he's the Ati master around here
I use an old version of the driver cause I have an old card but on your x800 you can try the last omega...5.7 I think...

[Exile69]

Well, first off I need that rthdrbl thing, and secondly I replaced the thermal good on my x800. Don't know if it's going to make a difference because the original stuff was pretty well covered. We'll see. Here's a pic of the reapplied paste.

[cadaveca]

paste on the gpu does not matter....mount the heatsink...and then take it off, and see how much is actually touching.

those heatsinks are so bad, that i don't recoomend AS5 for x8xx cards. white silicon stuff with silver injection is good enough(paste used most often for phasechange as AS5 is not good sub-zero).

find rthdribl here:

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/


very nice visuals too, if your card can handle it(the x800can, btw)


the 7800 series cannot handle HDR and AA....

[Exile69]

Alright, now I've got ATITool 0.0.23 and RTHDRIBL (very cool graphics indeed). Now all I need to do is figure out how to monitor temps with ATITool.

[cadaveca]

on the settings button there will be temperature monitoring settings. enable "both, alternating", and then you can minimize ATITOOL.

[Exile69]

Everything's set and ready to go. I'll let you know in about an hour.

*edit* well, after 40 minutes of full load, it only got up to 57/42c. I've turned off vpu recover for now. *edit*

[Exile69]

From Ati's website.

"This issue affects the following system configurations:
Windows XP
Any ATI display card
Based on our experience, the error "The drivers for the display adapter got stuck in an INFINITE LOOP" is a result of a system communication mishap. On some systems, the error "Unable to complete a drawing operation", or an ATI VPU recover error may also occur.

This error does not occur on all system configurations.

This issue can occur using any motherboard or graphics chipset along with the Windows XP Operating system. It appears that in most cases this problem is due to a BIOS setting, specifically options affecting the way the RAM, CPU and graphics card communicate with XP and DirectX. Improper timing settings can result in system lock ups or random system reboots.

This issue also affects different makes and models of video cards from various manufacturers.

In attempt to gather more information on why this error occurs, ATI developed a component to catch when the INFINITE LOOP occurs. This component is called VPU Recover. If the display driver detects that the graphics processor has hung, VPU Recover will attempt to reset the graphics processor, eliminating the need for a system reboot.

VPU errors can occur mostly while using 3D applications and games. This error has also been known to occur in 2D applications as well.

This error message may occur in the virtual video adapter driver that is used by Symantec PCAnywhere. If PCAnywhere is installed on a computer where this error message occurs, visit the Symantec Web site to determine if there are any available fixes for your version of PCAnywhere.

At the present time ATI is still gathering information on the Infinite Loop condition.

I am seriously considering never dealing with ATI again...

[cadaveca]

no cpu overclock? ram overclocks and cpu overclocks can result in the same error, as can IRQ conflicts.

It's an issue that not only affects ATI, however it IS most prevelent in system configs featuring ATI cards.

the only time i have experienced this myself was using the 77.72 Nvidia driver, and most commonly when overclocking my vidcard.

[Exile69]

Well I'll be damned, I've been going strong for 3+ days now folding, gaming 12 hours+ a day and not a crash, whereas before it would VPU recover after ~30 mins. I actually have my system running at 2.25ghz (250*9) and 225mhz on the ram @ 2-2-2-5 with 3.2v. Wow. My entire system is %100 stable. My graphics card will not recieve another overclock until it's time for a new cooler. Well, thanks for your help, but that's another problem solved here at AOA. Thanks.