Did my card just die?

[Vandriel]

So I was playing some Wolfenstein the old blood and my screen went blank, thinking the display driver crashed I restarted my pc. When I did I got red lines on the boot screen for my ASUS P9x79 Pro motherboard, it persists while windows 8.1 attempted to restart. the lines continue when I boot into safe mode when windows tries to boot normally it will just sit at a black screen after the Windows 8 loading screen, so that makes me think it is my card finally petering out. The card is a MSI Radeon 7970 Lightning. Has anyone experienced this or have any advice? I don't have another PC case that can support the size of the card so I have no way to test another card or the card in a new PC. 

[nanowatt]

You have on board graphics test with that and come back with a reply

[Stefan1024]

So I was playing some Wolfenstein the old blood and my screen went blank, thinking the display driver crashed I restarted my pc. When I did I got red lines on the boot screen for my ASUS P9x79 Pro motherboard, it persists while windows 8.1 attempted to restart. the lines continue when I boot into safe mode when windows tries to boot normally it will just sit at a black screen after the Windows 8 loading screen, so that makes me think it is my card finally petering out. The card is a MSI Radeon 7970 Lightning. Has anyone experienced this or have any advice? I don't have another PC case that can support the size of the card so I have no way to test another card or the card in a new PC. 

Try to underclock it and look if the lines gone. But it looks like your card is giving up.

[Brandonberg]

Try changing to a different output port on the back of your graphics card. Could be isolated to a single port.

 

You could also try reseating the card or try a different PCIe x16 slot and see if that helps. 

 

If you are getting a POST and Windows loading screen before the screen goes black, it could be something other than your graphics card. Do you have a spare HDD you could try putting a fresh OS install on to see if its the OS that is the issue?

[Vandriel]

The mobo doesn't have an onboard graphics card. underclocking isn't possible because I can't even seem to get into safe mode. I can boot into safe mode but for some reasons windows 8 will not let me log into the account I have setup even though I know it's the right password. I've reseated the card, I will try a different slot in the morning and report back with those results I have tried different inputs, monitor only supports DVI so I can only use that, but I tested it on a different monitor and with different cables with the same results. Oh and the red lines/checkerboxes persist through booting into safe mode, if that changes anything. 

[Vandriel]

Alright so I cleaned the board and I am using a seperate PCIe slot, still no joy, it boots up, goes into log into windows and then just a black screen and the PC sits there, I see activity on the HDD via the activity lights yet it never gets out of the black screen. Still have the red lines on bootup, post, and on the bios menu. The card powers up the led and load lights work, and the fans are running but nothing happens. 

[ExcitezR]

Alright so I cleaned the board and I am using a seperate PCIe slot, still no joy, it boots up, goes into log into windows and then just a black screen and the PC sits there, I see activity on the HDD via the activity lights yet it never gets out of the black screen. Still have the red lines on bootup, post, and on the bios menu. The card powers up the led and load lights work, and the fans are running but nothing happens. 

do you have a spare GPU to try it with 

[Vandriel]

do you have a spare GPU to try it with 

Unfortunately no, All my GPU's are way too old for the mobo, but I am thinking of dropping it off at a place this weekend that I know and just asking them to test it in one of their builds. That would narrow things down a bit. 

[Vandriel]

Just a quick question, is it true that the GPU doesn't really fully turn on until windows loads. and if that is the case could that be why I have the windows black screen issue but can see bios?

[ExcitezR]

Unfortunately no, All my GPU's are way too old for the mobo, but I am thinking of dropping it off at a place this weekend that I know and just asking them to test it in one of their builds. That would narrow things down a bit. 

An old GPU should still work in your computer its just to see if there is any display output 

[TheMcSame]

An old GPU should still work in your computer its just to see if there is any display output 

His old GPUs might be PCI cards while his board only has PCIe slots.

[ExcitezR]

His old GPUs might be PCI cards while his board only has PCIe slots.

didnt think about that.  PCI cards #throwback

[Vandriel]

Haha yeah, they are rocking it 90's style in PCI land. I'm getting more and more certain it is the video card. I attempted a reformat and reinstall and the red lines persisted throughout that process. But once it got to the point to where it had to reset and load into actual windows and the card probably had to end up using VRAM or something of that nature, black screen.

[Vandriel]

An old GPU should still work in your computer its just to see if there is any display output 

 

So is it true that a GPU doesn't use VRAM while it is on the BIOS post and menu screen, and that it switches over to VRAM when it gets to windows? If so is that a possible reason to the black screen on Windows boot. I mean it even does it when I try to reinstall windows after the first restart when windows is installing. I can SEE HDD activity going off so I don't think that is an issue at all.