Weird problem with my 7970

[ThreePinkApples]

Hello there!

Back in June I bought two 7970's, in september I RMA'ed one of them and got a new one

Just before spring break it seemed that the other card had died, well it was quite obvious as far as I saw, the computer wouldn't POST with the "dead" card, only with the other.

So I RMA'ed it

So, a few days after sending it in I got mail from them telling that they did not have any problem with the card. They tested it on two ASUS motherboards, Sabertooth 2011 with 3820 and Sabertooth 1155 with 2500k. They ran Heaven and Valley Benchmark for stress testing (Results for the tests were printed out and put together with my card when they returned it). So they returned the card to me.

Today I got the card (bit late at picking it up).

The first thing I did was uninstall the drivers, just in case. Then I installed the card in CrossFire with the other. My computer booted but frooze shortly after entering Windows (Mostly the same behaviour which made me get the feeling something was wrong, nice feeling huh? )

I began testing

Both the cards are Sapphire 7970 OC with dual BIOS btw

First I tested with the working card in both PCIexpress slots, both BIOSes and both set of power cables (just to leave some weird powersupply thing out). Worked fine (Remember, still no drivers installed)

Then it was the "dead" cards turn, went through the same procedure as the working card. The computer never POSTed...

This could only be a dead card right? But just so weird it worked on those Sabertooth mobos.

My rig:

ASUS P6X58D-E 1366

Inteil i7 930 @ 4.0GHz (Been runing like this since October 2010)

3x4GB 1333MHz CL9 RAM

[TechFan@ic]

The card seems defective, but it isn't... hmmm

Do you hear a beep when trying to post with the problematic card ? do the fans spin ?

Try it in a different PCIe slot, & try it in a different computer if you can, just in case.

[mgsstar]

Like TechFan@ic said, try on a different computer to see if it runs on that one. Try switching PCI-E slots with the cards in crossfire and individually and see if the card is still defective. Try switching between the two bios in the defective card or both to see if it works.

[ThreePinkApples]

No, I do not get the beep, but the fans spin

I sort of wrote in the first post that I had tried differen PCIe slots and both the BIOS's

I will try testing it in another computer when I go home for the weekend, though that computer is also dead atm...

[TechFan@ic]

If all else fails just sell the card.

[ThreePinkApples]

Noticed something just now in GPU-Z and in Sapphire TriXX

Both programs switch between sayng that the card is in a PCIe 2.0 slot and a PCIe 1.1 slot 0o

They always agree

EDIT: Found ut it's just a power saving feature. Every time I alt+tabbet from I game I would see just 1.1 or it switching from 1.1

[TechFan@ic]

Noticed something just now in GPU-Z and in Sapphire TriXX

Both programs switch between sayng that the card is in a PCIe 2.0 slot and a PCIe 1.1 slot 0o

They always agree

EDIT: Found ut it's just a power saving feature. Every time I alt+tabbet from I game I would see just 1.1 or it switching from 1.1

Did your system post with only the problematic card in it ?