Guessing this card is dead...

[mojothehut]

Hey all
So I think my Sapphire 7950oc is dying, after months of flawless use.
Today, as I was closing WoW of all games, I started to see horrible artifacts on my desktop D:
Then my computer froze, it went into a blue screen. During reboot, my bios post screen was full of horrible green and yellow vertical lines. Now it will not load windows until I use driver sweeper/CCleaner and remove the drivers from safemode.
Once that's done, windows loads normally. However, I cannot simply install my drivers. I've tried 12.8 and even rolled back to 12.6. Nothing. Once they install upon next reboot, same blue screen and color artifacts.
So now I'm sitting in normal windows with no graphics driver installed and my monitoring software like GPU-Z looks something like this..

Maybe its due to my drivers not reading my card? I dont know but the clocks are all screwed up, idles at 500mhz core? normally its 300. No temp reading either. CPUID also no longer reads the video card temp/fans.

So, not sure what to do, time to cash in on Sapphire's 2 year warranty?

 

[Dankk]

If you see artifacts when your computer posts, before even booting into Windows, then it's definitely not a driver problem. Something is certainly borked with your card, or something else hardware-wise.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Denithor]

Nope, that is indeed the classic symptom of a messed up GPU.

Time for an RMA.

 

[mojothehut]

Yea =(
Going through the motions of RMA with Sapphire right now. Thing is, this card isn't made anymore. Tis a discontinued card.
I was looking at their current 7950s and they seem to be crap, well clocked lower anyway. Like 800-850mhz. I mean I paid $480 for mine back in February. I doubt they'll try to replace it with something in that price range.
Just would suck to get a new card from them that is actually slower than what I paid for

 

[SolMiester]

Yea =(
Going through the motions of RMA with Sapphire right now. Thing is, this card isn't made anymore. Tis a discontinued card.
I was looking at their current 7950s and they seem to be crap, well clocked lower anyway. Like 800-850mhz. I mean I paid $480 for mine back in February. I doubt they'll try to replace it with something in that price range.
Just would suck to get a new card from them that is actually slower than what I paid for

Wow, $480!...the good news is the fab process has matured and I would imagine the new card would match the speed of the old one easy enough!

 

[FalseChristian]

What's the problem? RMA your card and they'll send you back another 7950 and just overclock the beast.

 

[sze5003]

Can you keep us updated on the RMA process? I'm interested in this as I am considering getting one of their cards.

 

[wand3r3r]

Can you keep us updated on the RMA process? I'm interested in this as I am considering getting one of their cards.

I second this. It's always interesting to hear experiences with RMAs.

I just wish more companies would tie them to the serial numbers vs. requiring receipts./OT

 

[mojothehut]

Sure thing!
So far, it took them less than 24 hours from the time I opened an online ticket to the e-mail with an RMA number.
All they wanted was a copy of my receipt and the SN&SKU from the card. Since I bought mine off Newegg, I simply cut&pasted the order invoice from my order history and that was enough of a receipt for them

Mailed it off today, they didn't pay for shipping but whatever.

 

[sze5003]

Not bad considering horror stories I've been reading online.

 

[zaydq]

The newer 7950s from Sapphire come on 7970 pcbs. You'll be able to OC the crap outta it most likely. Keep us posted

 

[sze5003]

I wonder how they ship it back to you? Did you send it priority or regular? I've heard they just send it by ground not the same method you payed to send.

 

[RussianSensation]

Hope your RMA goes smoothly. Maybe you'll get one of the 950mhz OC versions on the 7970 PCB. That's actually the better version than the early 900mhz OC 7950 that retailed for $490 back in the days.

 

[mojothehut]

Well my RMA just came back after almost two weeks. Not too bad
They did indeed give me a new card, exact same model as the one I sent back though. But it went smooth enough
Sapphire 7950 OC edition, 900mhz core default.
However it has a slightly newer bios it seems.

But I'm afraid to overclock this one, as Im kinda thinking my 950mhz oc on the last one killed it.

What do you guys think? Should I just shrug and leave it alone or raise the gpu speed a bit? Thing is, my old one ran great for like three weeks at 950mhz core. Then the artifacts came suddenly and bam, dead video card. It never overheated at all though, just broke the gpu

I was thinking maybe a slight 25mhz oc, so its in the range of the newfangled "boost" editions.

 

[sze5003]

Unless your chip was just bad overclocking in the gpu core should not kill it. Only way you can kill it is excessive voltage and temperature strain really. You can try a slight overclock just don't run the max oc you can get for a while.

 

[mojothehut]

Cool, I've been using ATi's overdrive to do minor core clocks with. Any reason why I shouldn't use it? I know the popular tool is Afterburner...
I dont think I need to increase voltage at all for 25-50mhz tweaks

 

[zaydq]

I doubt your previous OC killed your card, especially if you left it at stock voltage. CCC kinda sucks but for a 25mhz increase it'll do.

 

[sze5003]

Sometimes afterburner is not correct for amd cards. My 7970ge core was visible but not editable, the voltage was different than what trixx showed. All setting were unlocked so I ended up using trixx instead.

 

[UNhooked]

Sometimes re-flashing the bios may help

 

[sze5003]

Where do you usually get bios versions? Maybe I haven't looked for my card's bios too hard.