Vista and 7.3 Display driver atikmdag stopped responding error

simland

It's been a long time since I last posted.

Thought I would give an update. I finally got a chance to test a different card and at the same time test my crap Visiontek 4870 in a friend's system.

After about 10 minutes he hit the atikmdag error.

I was able to enjoy full AA in a wide variety of games with his card. (MSI 260 GTX)

Conclusion: It is the card. WoW and AA do something to the card that make it die. I'm not sure what they hit harder than games like crysis, fallout or TF2, but it's enough to cause ATIKMDAG. My guess is almost certainly overheating VRAM, but can't be certain.

I've ordered a 4890 from a different company that will hopefully work. At the same time I will try to see if Visiontek can replace my 4870 via the lifetime warranty. After living with this broken card for 8 months, I hope they can do something.

E-D@N

you did what????????

4870 and 260 GTX are not the same... 260 GTX = nVidia, 4870 = ATI/AMD

what makes you think that 4890 will work for you if the 4870 isn't working??
call off the deal... and get the nVidia one if it works good for you...

TheJakeOtt

IDK, dude...I think you can safely say it's that card being the source of the problem since it started misbehaving immediately in the other machine.

It's probable that it's overclocked right out of the box. Seriously, USE A BIOS EDITOR AND FLASH THE BIOS so it runs consistently at more appropriate clock speeds. Don't ditch the card, it's not that complicated or dangerous. I must've done it 10 times in a few hrs before I found settings that left me TDR free. There's tutorials all over the web.

The 4890 seems like a decent pick though...It benches higher than that 260 you tried...

ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 - TechSpot

The 260 is in this comaprison, ranking higher than the HD 4870 - so it seems your line of thinking might be off. It can't seem to be said enough that this error happens to BOTH ATI AND NVIDIA! And sometimes it IS caused by a broken card...broken right out of the box isn't impossible either.

The Geforce 295 freakin smokes on this one, though. Holy crap, dual gpu Nvidia cards kill people with speed. I wish I had one. I would kill people with it's speed.

simland

Seriously? I realize that nVidia and ATI are different. I've had dedicated graphics since the 3dfx Voodoo.

It isn't an issue of preferring one company to another. Both brands will error if the problem is another piece of hardware in your box. In this case it only happened with one card. If the 4890 throws a fit, I'll have learned an expensive lesson: My Mobo hates ATI.

The real reason for the 4890 is xFire and the 4890 was $190 w/MIR compared to the 260 OCX which was $180 w/MIR. My MoBo only supports xFire and not SLI. Therefore if I were to try and expand on the cheap, it seems logical that I would plan for xFire. Plus, there is always the possibility that Visiontek will replace the 4870 card with a 4890 (crosses fingers.)

In this case it is most certainly an issue with the card itself. It doesn't take much for an electronics part to get a defect. It was not OCed out of the box. I played around with underclocking it, to try and alleviate some pain there. I dropped all the settings in WoW; that did not fix anything. I put about 500CFMs over the card by opening up the side and getting a floor fan to blow air over it. No fix.

Card's busted. It happens. First electronics part to fail on me in 12 years of building. [Knocks furiously on wood.] It's bound to happen. My only disappointment is the support window that Visiontek has. Weekdays 8-5 CST. Really?!?!

E-D@N

"If the 4890 throws a fit, I'll have learned an expensive lesson: My Mobo hates ATI."

Or maybe your mobo and also your friend's mobo hates ATI...

i say... instead of trying your card in other systems...
take your system and try other cards... think about it...

rychas

Still happening with the latest drivers?

simland

@E-D@N
Do you perchance have some deep hatred for ATI? I'm not willing to give up on xFire potential just yet. I've had success with ATI in the past and I don't just want to write them off completely due to some bad luck. That and I'm stubborn. This will work. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."

@rychas
ATIKMDAG is more often than not, hardware related. (Usually Power Supply or RAM) New vid card drivers really don't have much promise of fixing anything.

TheJakeOtt

He did that, and it's all good. Solution? Problematic video card. ATi doesn't suck, Visiontek has a much higher tendency to suck (imho).

E-D@N

@simland
I don't hate ATI, after all I have managed to fix my problems and now it's all okay...
but believe me... I saw many strange things with these cards...

i'm just saying - that you should check things on your system... that's all...
there are many ppl here that are having many problems with ATI cards...
and yea.. i know there are also many ppl that are having problems with nVidia cards...

I tell you what... i have 4 nVidia cards.. none of them caused me trouble..
I gave the HD 2600 the chance... and yap... like you - crashes after 10 min of gaming..

sure it's annoying... and i thought i had a bad card also... but before i went RMA and stuff... I checked my System - and found that I don't have the right requirements for that kind of card - so i did some upgrades - and now it's all working fine...

it could be a problematic card - but it could be your system that causing the trouble...
saying things like: "My Mobo hates ATI." - you know what... it could be true...
so now you go and buy HD 4890? ...... I think you should go for the nVidia card instead...

anyway - good luck there... hope u'll get it right

TheJakeOtt

I'm not really rock solid on this, but I doubt there's a single third party manufactured card equipped with an R5xx or RV6xx that doesn't come overclocked straight out of the factory. The result being mass ATIKMDAG errors everywhere for everyone and a single thread on this forum with over 300,000 views.

These are strong cards, but I think overclocking conditions for them are far more delicate than ATi or their pcb manufacturers let on. It's far more seldom for me to hear successful overclocking stories about these cards than failures or resultant errors.

People are pissed when they have to 'underclock their cards' their cards to somewhere around the stock settings for their card's gpu when, in fact, the cards should have been shipped at those speeds...

Instead of buying new cards, or going to nvidia, or complaining, TRY UNDERCLOCKING from your factory clock speeds. You'd have a 95% chance of success, I'd say.

SV110MHH

So what do you suggest for those of us that get them and our cards are just normal ol cards? NOT OVERCLOCKED.

D Ringeisen

I SOLVED MY ATIKMDAG PROBLEM!


I have had this problem since I switched to Vista 64, ultimate.


I had the same setup, video card, processor, etc, but after switching to Vista 64 a few years ago, opengl would always crash. w the ATIKIMDAG error. SOmetimes after a few seconds,a minute, a few minutes, hour, etc. It woudl get better or worse, depending on Windows Updates and new ATI drivers, but never go away. Sometimes it woudl crash, "Just because".

Anyway, I haev anotehr 32 bit machine, nearly identical specs except for HD, processor (Which was a hand-me-down in 2008 from the 64bit machine), but Vista 32 bit the machine was stable, no opengl crashes. I THOUGH the issue had to be with Vista64...

General specs;

- Asus P5B-E (rev 1.01 and 1.02)
- Intel E8400 and E6750
- Seasonic 650 and 550 PS
- Corsair XMS RAM, 4gb (4 x 1gb sticks)
- ATI 2600 XT 512 and 256mb (Silent colling.


Earlier this week, I decided to buy a 4670. I wanted to upgrade to the built in HDMI. I figured, I AM GOING TO WIN! I went to battle with the PC, reasearching as much as I could in my spare time, that's how I foudn this thread...

I also had 2x2gb Corsair ram on the way for the Vista64 machine.

New specs for the 32 bit machine were I moved the 512md 2600xt to the 32 bith machine, ti accepted it fine, no opengl crashes... The problem is not with the card.

I install the 4670, it crashes....

Later that day, the 2x2gb ram arrived.

Earlier, i had even SWAPPED MOTHER BOARDS, thinnking mayeb the 1.02 revision in the 32 bit machien was why it worked... NO! The 32 bit worked fine on the 1.01 board, and the 64 bit still crashed.

OK, back tot he ram. I install that int he 64 bit machine, all 6gb ram appear, it still crashes.

Now, unsure exactly why I did this, but I take out the 1gb sticks.

OpenGL began to work after that!

Also worth mentioning, is I had also made some tweaks to bios, such as locking the PCI Clock to 33.33,, disabling Spread Spectrum and Static Read. Also made sure all ym ram was correct in the manual settings, and sent to 677mhz to maintain the 1:1 ration as my mobo is only 1066, though ASUS OK's it for 1333.

Wow, I never thought this issue woudl go away. No crashes. If this didn't work last night i was prepared to buy a new motherboard made for 1333.

I have NEVER had so much trouble with a hardware incompatibility. NEVER. Though I'm not an old fart, I've been workign with PC's since my 386 33mhz, and moreso hardware such since my p2-266mhz, though i did learn on my 486DX4 100mhz.

It makes me wonder why it worked in XP,a dn not when i switched to vista. Thinking back, it may have been when I swapped processors, as I used my 1066 E6600 in another vista build. A 64 bit Vista machine (Home prem), one a middle technology board, it supported DDR and AGP, I built with this to save costs for the person. That machine, the openGL would never crash, however it had/has issues with S3 sleep mode (So does my 32 bit vista home Prem machine, my 64bit handles s# fine.)

I like Vista, but osmethign witht he way it deal with the hardware is a bit funny. I'm not sure if it was the RAM or not, SOmetime alter today I'm goign to toss it in my 32 bit machine, and see if those 4 sticks work. If so, I don't know.

After 2 years I thougth this problem would never go away for me. I'm glad it is finsihed, though, ::knock on wood::, I hope it doesn't resurface. I ran Winamp with Milkdrop for a few hours last night, no crashes through the HDMI out. I played DOOm 3 for at least an hour and a half, no issues. I played Return to Wolfenstein for about the same amount fo time, no crashes, all at 1600-1200 resolution, specs on full, along with some catalyst tweaks.

Perhaps my post above can help some others having this problem. I think part of my problem had to do with RAM, though I'm unsure why as the 32 bit does just fine witht he same amount of sticks, with the same mobo 667 ram speed for the 1333 FSB processor.

My eyes hurt from staring at computer screens so much the past week. I am glad I can rest my eyes now.

.

TheJakeOtt

Your crashing is likely to be unrelated to the openGL situation.

I assume you have the 1GB sticks behind 2x2GB in the order of slots, and I also assume you were using XP/Vista 32bit to begin with? It would've only been reading from the 4GB you have in front - which isn't going to cause a problem. Vista 64 not only will read all 6GB, but will begin caching the 6GB in it's entirety until it can't cache anymore. If there are differing clock latencies between the 2x2GB and the 2x1GB sticks, there's going to be problems if they're not ordered correctly.

Place the higher latency sticks in the first slots. The faster latency sticks will automatically match the slower speed of the first sticks, allowing you to use it all (given that there's not a broken dimm in there...)

I had a problem like that a long time ago - had 1gb of ram, 4 sticks of two different brands and speeds. I put the faster CL2.5 in the first 2 slots and it would crash as soon as the system cached over 512mb of system memory. I nearly fried 512MB of ram without knowing it (which would've been costly at the time)..Because the two sticks rated at CL3 were trying to run at CL2.5, effectively crashing the machine whenever they were utilized.

Take a look and give it a shot, though there's not much difference right now between 4GB and 6GB - More elbow room is always desirable.

BUT if the 2x2GB is faster, you might as well ditch the other 2GB for the time being. 4GB with faster latency would win over 6GB of slower latency in performance any day, I believe.

TheJakeOtt

Double check RAM timings and voltages in your BIOS. Voltage is a key player, and SPD settings (defaults that are stored on the dimms that are retrieved by BIOS) can be wrong from time to time (This was 1 of 2 big problems I had).

IF ALL THAT IS KOSHER, then it's possible you need a higher wattage power supply. If either of these are definitely NOT THE CASE, then try your card in another machine of equal or greater capacities that doesn't have this problem on a regular basis. If you do that and the other machine begins behaving the way yours did, it's likely you have a problematic card.

And before you decide your card is not factory overclocked, determine what core your card is equipped with and compare readings in CCC to your core's specs as listed by ATi. Neither my card's manual or name suggest it's overclocked, but it is by 30MHz (the second major problem I had). In my case, that small amount made a large difference in my system's stability.

The only way to effectively and permanently remedy problematic factory overclocking is to mod and flash your card's bios.

Matching trial and error with persistence is the name of the game. Don't get discouraged, there's always a solution!

mas911

This is how I solved my atikmdag problem - I unplugged my second monitor, nothing else helped. One more thing, in Win7 there's the same problem, but things are even worse. Waiting for nvidia card to try and switch to it if everything will be fine.

simland

An update to my situation:

4890 arrived. Had some issues getting the computer to recognize it properly. Realized that I had not cleaned the previous driver installs. (Rookie mistake, but nothing major.) Did a proper clean, installed the Cat 9.4 drivers and everything was fine except Overdrive was no where to be seen. Went through the process of down stepping driver versions (not recommended for the 4890 since I don't feel it is fully supported until Cat 9.5), went back to 9.4 and settled with no Overdrive. Luckily Cat 9.5 came out the day after my card arrived. Overdrive missing was a known bug. Upgraded to 9.5 and everything runs "like a boss" now.

So happy to be getting full performance out of my machine. The temps in my box have gone up a bit (1-2 degrees) but that is acceptable when running ultra level graphics. Just goes to show that sometimes it is the card. Still, for first timers, check your PSU and RAM.

D Ringeisen

My original setup for my ram, on my 64bit machine, was 4gb, matched pairs. This is the machien that woudl always crash. My 32bit machine also had the exact same matched paris fo ram as the 64-bit machine. I had 8 sticks of ram, all the same. 32bit would run gl, 64 bit wouldnt. Both are slightly overclocked to run 1333FSB processors, Asus says that is OK for these boards and supports certain 133fsb processors.

Somethign very peculiar with the ram. When the 2gb sticks arrived earlier (2x2gb), I noticed my problem was somehow due to Ram and Vista 64.

All my 1gb sticks work.

Currently, I am running my machien with 5gb of Ram. 2gbx2gb setup for dual channel, and the other 1gb in the A2 slot. I attempted to play opengl with 2gb sticks in A1-B1, and 1gb sticks in A2-B2, but the opengl game crashed......

I take out 1 stick, and it works......

I think I may try the other 2 1gb sticks in the empty slot. If each one causes it to crash, i will have to chalk it up to somethign with my motherboard and Vista64 not getting along with all 4 slots populated with RAM.

Also, my 2gb sticks are matched to my 1gb sticks. Same RAM, same timings, same volatage, same line.

It's a very odd problem, though 5GB isn't 6gb, it's still decent. I have a feeling if I go through each fo the sticks, leaving the computer unplugged, for a few minutes during the swaps, thigns may work OK. If not, I'm goign to leave it alone, and possibly buy another 2gb stick so I can have the 6gb of Ram I wanted.

Yes, I do soemtimes consume a lot of RAM. I regularly use 1.6-2gb of RAM, and lately I've pushed it to 3.2gb of ram consumption.

I like having the space, espcially since I intend to keep this motherboard for at least another year.

.

OldBuzzard

One of the ATI employees that posted here, CATALYST CATCHER I think it was, had the same problem you do. He 'cured' his by using two IDENTICAL monitors.

I've been using 2 dis-similar monitors and while I had TDR issues, mine were 'cured' by using the MSCONFIG/BOOT fix. I was originally using two CRTs, but my small (secondary one) finally died, so I replaced it with a WS LCD, while still using my Sony FW900 CRT as the main one.

__________________
When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

a.chez

Well I've tried everything also. I have a Saphire Radeon 512MB 4850HD. I chose Saphire because I thought they were the best manufacturers of ATI cards from past experience and I paid the extra. I also made sure it didn't have overclocked/superclocked in the title as I have had bad experiences here with nvidia cards (XFX 512mb 8600 GTS). EVGA are great by the way. Stay well away from XFX!! (Overclocked to an unusable state)

I am currently running VISTA64 which I think may be the problem.

I have tried several different drivers ATI & Saphire (same I think), a driver patch for certain games, disabled services, disabled tasks in task scheduler etc, ATI Tool which now finally works for Vista64, underclocking graphics card to very low. (Lower than would be acceptable anyways), disabling HPET in BIOS, regedit TDR which doesn't seem to be there in Vista64. Instead you get Timeout in Graphics Drivers which is set to 7. I brought it down to 1 anyway as suggested, disabled scheduled defrag, disabled Aero, low graphics settings etc.

I have tried to uninstall that update mentioned on here but my copy came with SP1 included so I had to try it the way Microsoft suggest with cmd which didn't work. If anyone knows how I would be very grateful.

It seems like something is interupting the game (yeah Vista), but what. I have turned off everything else (Defrag, Scheduled Tasks, Defender)

One thing I just remembered the other day is when I install several games on my system after a reformat I start to get less and less crashes until finally I don't have any crashes in games. I have noticed this from early on when I was using XP and I think it is because directX gets updated with new files for each game install. Try installing a load of games, it works a treat.

I don't get this problem with COD4, Flight Sim 2004, Medieval 2, and a couple of other big games which is weird. It takes about an hour to happen in Far Cry 2 and I rarely get it with C&C 3. Hitman Bloody Money is terrible though and I use this game to test the changes I have made.

My best advice is to go into task scheduler>Microsoft and disable all the scheduled tasks appart from the TCP/IP stuff. (I didn't want to mess up my internet) and also disable the scheduled defrag. This got me slightly further when testing the problem in Hitman Bloody Money which seems to be the worst. Next, try installing several different games. You might find that it doesn't happen at all in some of them in which case wait until SP2 for Vista.

If Vista SP2 and the latest ATI drivers at that time don't do it for me then I'm going back to VISTA32. It was the same with XP64. Useless
If you want Vista DON'T GET VISTA64 YET!!!

D Ringeisen

Look at your RAM. That seems to be my major issue with my errors on my Vista 64 machine.

It took about a week for me to track it down to the RAM, I tried other solutions also.

Read my post above, at the time of that posting I had been thinking having allt he RAM slots FULL on my P5B-E motherboard, running Vista 64, was casuing it to take a shit.

Well, I uninstalled a language pack tonight so I could install SP2.

I have SP2 and decided to try different 4 stick configs, 2gb sticks in 1 channel, in the other. 1gb sticks vice-versa.

Well, 4 sticks crashes, still.

I remove one of the 1gb sticks, all is OK.

No, it is not a bad stick, as I had 4 1gb sticks in this machine before, and swapping them around, neither combination of the 4 seems OK.

My conclusion is that Vista 64 is VERY sensitive to hardware. My Vista 32 machine (Very similar, same mobo and ram) has NEVER had any of these issues.

.

.

a.chez

Okay. So that was like the only thing I didn't do because I have 2x2GB sticks and that was not going to be an option. I will try them in the different slots and also do as you suggested and take 1 stick out if that doesn't work. If it is that then I'm going back to 32. Thanks

BTW: How is SP2? I didn't know it was out

mas911

Yes, I remember his answer, unfortunately(?) it's easier to change videocard (like I did, for example), than just dance around ati card changing PSU, RAM, MB or anything else in consecutive order in attempt to make it work. I was able to make it work under Vista by disabling aero, but when I decided to try Win7, even disabling aero wasn't helping, all I got was just restarts, not even BSODs (proper checkbox was of course checked to not restart, I know about that) regardless of catalist version, everything was perfer with one monitor on the same time, that was the last drop. In short I was forced to defect to nvidia camp and, what do you know, 48 hours of smooth run with both monitors on even with aero

a.chez

Tried it earlier. First tried changing the slots which didn't work. Then I tried taking 1 stick of RAM out and it's fine. You're absolutely right, it's the RAM and Vista64 that just don't mix at all. Gonna go back to Vista32 then. Funny how that doesn't have the RAM issue. Oh wait, they couldn't get away with it then. Gotcha. Thanks. It is all clear to me now. I should've known better than to get an up-to-date version of Vista.

TheJakeOtt

If anyone cares, I got Cat 9.5 installed and just tried to up my clocks back to my card's 725/890 and got a TDR after about 30 seconds of Assassains Creed. >:| Why the hell would they sell a card that is nearly 50MHz outside it's stable range?!

a.chez

Bad news guys. I got a crash after about half an hour into Blood Money with only 1 stick of RAM in Back to square 1. One thing I noticed though when I was changing the RAM was the heat from the back of my graphics card. It was off the chart and I've watercooled the chip! I've done a search for some extra long RAMsinks and I'm gonna Ramsink everything I can find. I had the same thing happen with my XFX 8600GTS. They shouldn't be that hot.
I'm gonna RMA if Vsta32 and the extra cooling doesn't work.

D Ringeisen

Sorry about that A Chez. What type of card are you using?

Everything has been fine for me with my setup, since I stopped having 4 sticks of RAM installed.

Sapphire 4670, silent cooled (Big heatsink), with 9.5 Catalyst.

So far, not a single crash. I once played Left 4 Dead for what must have been 4 hours, everything maxed out except the AF and AA, at 1600x1200 res. It had no problems. Video card kept to a safe temperature in my case that has fFans running between 650-900RPM, depending upon the size of the fan. I like quiet.

Doom 3, still no problems.

Same can be said about Painkiller. No Problems.

When I reinstall the 4th stick of RAM, ATIKMDAG resurfaces. I get random crashes just by being in windows, etc

5GB Ram is nice, however it's still not the 6GB I wanted. I'm glad I had those 2 sticks of 2gb ram ordered and on their way to me, as it helped me solve my problem. Sometime later I may order a sinlge 2gb stick so I can have the 6GB of Ram I wanted, however I'm more happy that ATIKMDAG is apparently gone.

Also, I have a silent cooled 4850. Sometime today or tomorrow I'm going to move this 4670 to a different machine and install the 4850 in the problematic Vista64 machine. I'm hoping the 4850 won't reintroduce the ATIKMDAG error, hahahaha.

.

a.chez

Problem solved. I stuck those Ramsinks on every DIMM on my card along with the watercooled chip and I was just playing Blood Money for about an hour with no ATIKMDAG error. HA. It is the cards. It's a problem with overheated hardware. That may be why you can't have your sixth RAM module installed.

Anybody with this error should consider BETTER COOLING OF THEIR CARD. It looks like the stock fan isn't good enough.

Watercooling is coming to everyone very soon by the looks of things. I can't wait to see the refrigerated comps on the market.

Waaaahoooo!!!! Finally. I can take a breather now.

D Ringeisen

A Chez, glad your problem seems to be solved!

Mine has nothing to do with overheating on the video card. This has happened since I installed Vista64 on this machine. I have tried many ATI cards thinkning the card was the reason for the error. When I have 4 sticks of RAM installed, ATIKMDAG has happened with a 1950 Pro 512mb, 2600XT 256mb, 2600XT 512mb, and 4670 512mb. Yesterday I swapped my card in the 64bit machine again with a silent cooled Gigabyte 4850, and I put nearly 3 hours on it with Left 4 Dead, settings max, 1600x1200 resolution. No ATIKMDAG. All cards were silent, except the X1950, which I attached an aftermarket Arctic Cooling, low noise cooler to.

All of the above cards will work in the 32bit Vista machine. The will only work on my 64 bit machine if it has no more than 3 of the 4 RAM slots filled.


WIth my hardware setup (See one of my prior posts above), whenever I max out my RAM slots and insert a 4th stick, whether it is a 2gb, or 1gb stick, it craps out and gives me ATIKMDAG erroes in game, randomly in windows, etc.

Though i haven't tired it yet, I'm sure if I added the 4th stick again, with this 4850 on my mobo, it would crash just as it did with the above 4 cards.

Funny how different things seem to bring this error on. It's also funny that over the past 2 years or so, I've cycled 5 different video cards through my mobo, haha.
.

PenrynHD

I haven't BSODS since 2 weeks

I think that it is caused by hidden applications...:/

__________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

a.chez

I'm still getting crashes with the ramsinks installed but it's less often. I brought the Memory clock on my card down by 50mhz and it's better again now. I'm gonna get a GPU Ram waterblock. Check these out:
http://cool-and-quiet.co.uk/product_...roducts_id=150