Radeon HD 7870 issues.

Oouter,

We do not have a video card swap program. All of the WOW users are saying you cannot use any AMD driver past the 12.1 version.

Try a clean WoW install without any custom Add-ons.

Only use WHQL (release version) drivers. Clean install them.

Try running in full or native res. of the panel or full desktop res.. Try turning vSync ON.

12.8 has just been released. Give that a whirl. I'll wanna know more about this as I was looking at getting these cards.

12.8 actually made it worse. The most stable driver I've tried so far was 12.7 Beta.  And thanks for the info on 12.1, i'll give it a try.

As for the swap program, I work for a company that owns around 8000 Dell Computers/Servers, and purchases a few thousand every year. Typically when we've run into warranty issues similar to this, they've been willing to go out of their way to make sure things were working. I wasn't sure if this was a "keep the big guys happy" thing, or if it was an actual program :-).

As for the video settings, here's what i'm currently running:

Display Mode - Windowed (Fullscreen)

Resolution - 1280x1024

Multisampling - 8x

Vertical Sync - Enabled

Texture Resolution - High

Texture Filtering - 16x Anisotropic

Projected Textures - Enabled

Shadow Quality - Ultra

Liquid Detail - Ultra

Sunshafts - High

Particle Density - Ultra

View Distance - Ultra

Environment Detail - Ultra

Ground Clutter - Ultra

Advanced:

Triple Buffering - Disabled

Reduce Input Lag - Disabled

Hardware Curse - Enabled

Graphics API - DirectX 9 (I've noticed it crash quite a bit more with 11, so i've been keeping it at 9)

Max Foreground FPS - (Enabled) 100

Max Background FPS - Disabled

Well, my video card (Radeon HD 7870) isn't supported with the 12.1 drivers, so the earliest version I could use is 12.3. I tried 12.3 for a few hours, and guess what, still crashes. 

Oouter,

Do you have any newer games you could test on the 7870?

I'm thinking that you're right Chris... I'm not going to bother with a replacement card yet, no reason to waste resources. I'll continue badgering Blizzard :-).

I recall this happening with another game once (I don't play many other games on the PC), so it was either Battlefield 3, or Diablo 3 .

Resolution doesn't look right. should be something like: 1920x1200 (if 16:10).

Be sure it's FullScreen (not Windowed).

And a general Win7 Direct-X tip ...

On the game's icon, Compatibility tab (if available) , make sure both are selected:

- Disable Visual Themes

- Disable Desktop Composition

Basically, this dedicates all the video card's resources to the Full Screen game (not reserving part to run the Windows fancy Aero Desktop).

1280x1024 is the native resolution for my monitors (Dell 1908FP-BLK). I've been playing in Windowed (Fullscreen) for 7 years now without an issue. I try the visual themes/desktop composition when i get home to see if it makes a difference.

um. This sound simular to the problem I had with BF3 and HD5970.

I could not use any driver new than 12.1 without BSOD.

Took a new image of the computer to resolve the issue.

I do not know if this helps.

Props on the UltraSharp.

However, you would have a much better experience with a 22-24" wide screen monitor (especially in WoW with all the gadgets on-screen). The 4:3 monitor can be a secondary monitor.

Try running real Full Screen and Alt-Tab to Curse.com or whatever. Don't try to do serious multi-talking while playing WoW.

I'm actually running two on my alienware, and three at work.

I typically play windowed/fullscreen so i can watch something while i play. (it will crash regardless). I've been considering just going with one big one, and using a second computer for media stuff (i can't stand doing only one thing at a time).