Screen freezes when playing games using Radeon HD 4870 graphics card

[AmdUser]

I have Radeon HD 4870 graphics card for about 4 months and the problem is that all my games on my screen freezes and covers square! It's very boring to play and I want to know if anyone has had the problem and whether had got the solution.

[MindSpace]

Could be problem of bad power supply? What is your psu? It can also be the problem of drivers. Update your drivers (including BIOS).

[AmdUser]

I am having Antec Neo Power 500W and I don't think that could be the problem of psu. I am having ample amount of power supply.

For drivers and BIOS, I will do that!

[southparx]

To do the BIOS update we need few things:

1. The BIOS update from Sapphire
2. ATI WinFlash for easier BIOS updating in Windows

With both of these we can perform the BIOS update. (Note that it is also possible to flash the card via the regular ATI flash but I decided to go for the WinFlash solution. As it doesn't require the creation of a Boot Disk.)

The steps to undertake to flash the BIOS.

1. First, make sure to end all applications which do something with the GFX card (e.g. any game)
2. Install ATI WinFlash to a "simple location" (C:\WinFlash)
3. Unzip the contents of the BIOS update into a folder
4. Copy/Paste the file named 1e8501sa.002 from the folder where you extracted the BIOS update, to the ATI WinFlash install folder
5. Click on the Start menu and select Run
6. Type in "cmd" (without the quotes) and press OK
7. Browse to the install path of ATI WinFlash (C:\WinFlash)
8. Run the BIOS update by executing: atiwinflash.exe -f -p 0 1e8501sa.002
9. Wait until the flashing finishes; if it fails do not reset, just try to flash again
10. If it worked, reboot your system.

[ev0]

I had the same issue for a few months, I took it in to a computer store and they still couldn't find the answer to it. I kept looking over the net for another few weeks before I found this site and tried the RivaTuner step.

goodluck mate, hope this solves the problem

[Ikroop]

Are you sure you have the latest drivers for your motherboard, sound and graphics adapters? They could be the cause of the freezes. This problem is hard to pinpoint because a system freeze could be a number of things. HardDrive space, memory failure, software conflicts, processor faults.