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Problem with AMD Radeon HD 6850 card, need help desperately

B

bartrand96

Junior Member
Just recently I figured it would be a good idea to update my drivers for my graphics card's drivers. During the installation, the resolution went smaller than the normal size. I figured it would fix itself with a reboot so I restarted the computer. When I restarted the computer, it said the resolution was 1920 x 1080 when it was actually 1700 x 1000 or something. I went to look up something on the Internet and I got these blue vertical lines all across the screen and the computer froze, so I restarted it. When i restarted it, the resolution then went to 640 x 480. I did a few other things and I thought my only option was a system restore. I restored my computer to a date before I touched the drivers and everything was fine for a night. Then I started the computer the next day and went on the Internet for maybe 15 minutes. Then, out of nowhere, I got those vertical lines across the whole screen, but they were green this time. When I restarted the computer, the graphics were messed up. Most of the screen was normal in startup, but certain sections were discolored and very pixelated. For example, half of the HP logo was messed up and half of the Microsoft logo was messed up. It looked like the graphics were messed up right up and down the screen. When I say that, I mean right down the middle of the screen, the left side was fine, but pieces on the right side was messed up. I can't get into windows normally, because it crashes and restarts itself. When I go in safe mode, all the color is messed up, and the resolution is like 640 x 480. Sorry for blabbering so much, but I really could use some help. Thank you in advance.
 
Need more info. What version of Windows? What are you system specs, such as motherboard, power supply, CPU. Did you have any problems at all before you attempted a driver update?

Can you test the card in another computer?
 
First, paragraphs are your friend. 🙂

Second, sounds a lot like your gpu is failing and possibly RMA time. It would be great if you had a spare card to substitute with the 6850 you're having a problem with to eliminate the card as a suspect.

I'd also ensure your memory is fine by testing with Memtest. But honestly, sounds a lot like your gpu is failing and the driver update was coincidental to it beginning to fail.
 
AnandThenMan said:
Need more info. What version of Windows? What are you system specs, such as motherboard, power supply, CPU. Did you have any problems at all before you attempted a driver update?

Can you test the card in another computer?
Click to expand...

I'm running windows 7 home premium 64 bit. My power supply is 60w I believe. CPU is i7 - 2600 @ 3.4 Gz. Before I attempted the driver update, a few times I had some graphical glitches that I shrugged off. An example would be when I would be on youtube or something. A certain part of the page would just go black for no reason and I wouldn't be able to fix it unless I refreshed. My other computers are quite old and i'm not sure the video card is compatible with them.
 
Meghan54 said:
First, paragraphs are your friend. 🙂

Second, sounds a lot like your gpu is failing and possibly RMA time. It would be great if you had a spare card to substitute with the 6850 you're having a problem with to eliminate the card as a suspect.

I'd also ensure your memory is fine by testing with Memtest. But honestly, sounds a lot like your gpu is failing and the driver update was coincidental to it beginning to fail.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your input, man. I appreciate it very much 🙂

I just contacted hp and told them everything. Like you, they think the video card is failing and they are sending me a new one to see if that fixed the problem. They said if that doesn't fix it, it's some software issue that's causing the problem and they'll have to send me the recovery disk to reset it to factory defaults.
 
@Bartrand96

Yeah I thought like Meghan54, it sounds like its the card dieing.
The other most likely fault is what HP told you, something seriously wonky with your OS.
 
Arkadrel said:
@Bartrand96

Yeah I thought like Meghan54, it sounds like its the card dieing.
The other most likely fault is what HP told you, something seriously wonky with your OS.
Click to expand...

I don't want to sound like an idiot at the moment, but, how could the card die if I haven't even had the computer for a full year? I don't want to argue with you, but how could the card die already? I'm not the best with this sort of tech and an explanation would be cool. 🙂
 
bartrand96 said:
I don't want to sound like an idiot at the moment, but, how could the card die if I haven't even had the computer for a full year? I don't want to argue with you, but how could the card die already? I'm not the best with this sort of tech and an explanation would be cool. 🙂
Click to expand...

Is it hot in your house? Heat ruins your computer components. If your card gets too hot things can happen to the solder on the underside of the chips (Ball Grid Array) it sounds like if you are within warranty you will want to RMA the card. If you were not within warranty period and wanted to attempt a fix I would take the heatsink off the card and try new thermal paste and reseat the heatsink, or just overall buy a new aftermarket heatsink.

I had a friend that had me purchase a used ATI 9800 pro with an aftermarket cooler from anandtech's for sale/trade section. We stuck it in his machine and it worked fine for a few days, then it started artifacting really bad (basically what is happening to you). So I tried everything I could think of and then thought about reseating the heatsink. After the reseat the card worked just fine.
 
I just wanted to say this as I forgot to before. The graphics are messed up in everything (safe mode, regular mode, loading screens) but when I go to BIOS, the graphics are perfectly fine. Anyone know what that means?
 
bartrand96 said:
I just wanted to say this as I forgot to before. The graphics are messed up in everything (safe mode, regular mode, loading screens) but when I go to BIOS, the graphics are perfectly fine. Anyone know what that means?
Click to expand...
All it really means is that safe mode is more graphically intensive than the BIOS options screen.
 
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