Embarrassing problem with ATI HD 5850 (Noise + Drivers)

Question

Hi all. First of all let me warn you that I'm French so sometimes my english will probably be inaccurate.
I experience some problems with my graphic card, a MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850, my screen is a Samsung Syncmaster 2233rz.
The drivers I got with my box was the 9.12 version (something like that).
Here are the games I installed :
Quake 2
Quake 4
Quake Live
Killing Floor
Painkiller
Bioshock
Fear
Fear 2
Starcraft
I did some tests with some of them.
With the basic drivers for the CD of the box :
Quake 2 : Doesn't appear in fullscreen mode, or with awful colors, but if I put the opengl option in the video settings then it's ok.
Quake 4 : Seems alright, but I had to choose a particular resolution or the game would just appear in a small windows in the center of the screen.
Starcraft : The game is horrible, appears in a small window in the upright corner of the screen and with terrible colors.
Quake Live : Seems ok but difficult to find a good resolution so that the image takes the whole screen.
Fear 2 : Seems alright...
Now here comes what disturbs me :
Fear : Horrible sound when I enter the menu that comes from the graphic card. Like a whistling sound, like a teapot getting hot.
Painkiller : Same horrible sound, even louder.
This sound was terrible and I wanted to get the window streched out so that Starcraft and other games would appear in fullscreen mode automatically (I couldn't enable it in ATI Catalyst).
So I installed drivers 10.6 :
Quake Live : Problem with some colors, I heard 10.5 and 10.6 wasn't compatible with Quake Live...
Okay...
So I installed 10.4 :
Possibility to make the screen strech in the Catalyst menu so Starcraft was ok.
Fear : Terrible sound in the menu and game + the game crashes (frozen screen) after 30 seconds of gaming.
Painkiller : Terrible sound in the menu, didn't even play.
Quake 4 : Was pretty much okay, only little annoying sound, but crashes after 30 seconds of gaming (same as Fear).
Quake Live : Ok.
Quake 2 : Was pretty much okay, I could play in fullscreen with the opengl thing.
Fear 2 : All seems ok ( !!!!????).
So...I was pissed off because of Fear and Quake 4 crashes.
Then I went back to the 9.12 version :
Quake 4 : Unlaunchable (LOL, it was ok before I installed 10.6 and 10.4...?????????????????????)
Quake 2 : Impossible to go in OpenGl mode (Was possible previously...?????????????????????)
Fear : Horrible sound but the game doesn't crash it seems.
Fear 2 : Seems ok (good game ^^)
Starcraft : The game is horrible, appears in a small window in the upright corner of the screen and with terrible colors. -> Impossibility to activate the automatic stretching again it seems.
Painkiller : Horrible sound, didn't try to play.
Quake Live : Ok.
What can I do ? I'm currently downloading the 10.1 patch. I want to play all the games, not 3 out of 10 with each patch,
and what is this horrible noise my graphic card seems to do when I play some games (not even all...) ? I try to put the fans at maximum with ATI Overdrive (smthing like that) and that sound wasn't here, so where does it comes from...that's a mistery.
If somebody can be of any help I'll be really happy. I have no problem with the sound if that doesn't mean that the card has a problem and will probably explode one day, but the crashing sound and OpenGl problems and all...
What would you advise to that I get a perfect intallation of the 10.1 version ?
P.S : Thanks, of course !

Answer 1

Quote from: Infuscomus on 07-July-10, 22:44:37
I just stopped the test because it was 52 minutes already...
I did the test with render open GL 3, now I'm going to do it with open Gl 2
I chose full screen 1680 x 1050 and MSAA 8x
Maximum temp : 64°, mini 44°, it stayed between 60 and 63 in general.
Average fps 3xx, maximum 41x, mini 12x.
Well your VGA is fine then
Quote
Now here is what I experience when I play those games :
Quake 4 : Crash after 30 seconds - 1 minute of playing, grey screen with green bars or just frozen screen. I have to alt + tab and use ctrl + alt + del to close it.
FEAR : Huge noise from the graphic card in the menus, like a teapot whistling, and screen freezes after 30 seconds of playing : alt + tab -> The display driver AMD driver has stopped responding but have been recovered blablabla".
Bioshock : After the intro movie, I hear the sound but the screen is black permanently, I have no other solution than reseting my PC.
Painkiller :  Huge noise from the graphic card in the menus, like a teapot whistling, and screen freezes after 30 seconds of playing : alt + tab -> The display driver AMD driver has stopped responding but have been recovered blablabla".
Fear 2 : All seems alright.
Starcraft : Dito.
Quake Live : Dito.
Quake 2 : Dito.
Killing Floor : Dito.
Look for latest game patches, try different VGA drivers if needs too.
It's not hardware issue.