MSI RX 470 4GB Armour OC Problems installing drivers

[Lord Letto]

I Received a MSI RX 470 4GB Armor OC today that I bought used off eBay to upgrade from my ASUS GTX 780 Direct CUII OC (That I sold to fund the upgrade, was using a Gigabyte Radeon HD 6850 temporary), I used DDU to uninstall the driver I had installed & deleted the AMD & Nvidia folders that was on the Drive (Seagate ST2000DM006-2DM164), I installed the card & downloaded the latest driver from the AMD website (18.12.3) & installed it however when I restarted the resolution was at the native 1366x768 instead of the normal 1080p when connected via HDMI & working properly, so I went to open Radeon Settings but it showed up "No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly. Please Install the AMD driver appropriate for your AMD Hardware", I Used DDU & deleted the AMD folder again & tried installing the driver that was on the disc that came with it (16.7.3) but I was having issues with that also, when I checked Device Manager it says "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" & shows the proper driver version (I think, currently after trying 18.12.3 it shows the driver version as 25.20.15003.5010 with driver date as 12/17/2018), I checked & the card is seated good & the 8 pin power connector in in all the way, fans are spinning so it's getting power so assuming the driver is installed OK what I'm wondering is could it possibly be a hardware issue that's causing a issue, like maybe a missing or broken chip or something that's not causing the driver to not work properly?
System Configuration:
Motherboard: ASRock AB350 Pro4
CPU: Ryzen 3 1200 OCed to 3.9GHz
Memory: 1x4GB DDR4 2400MHz
GPU: MSI RX 470 4GB Armor OC
VBIOS: 015.050.000.000.000000
Driver: Tried 16.7.3 from Disk & 18.12.3 from website
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit w/SP1 (Build 7601)

Screenshot of GPU-Z & HWinfo64: https://imgur.com/a/45Lh9B0

[Taf the Ghost]

Well, I believe it currently says your GPU Core & Memory Clocks are at 0. I think that's an issue.

 

My first thought would be reflashing the BIOS.

[Lord Letto]

I'm not sure how to do that.

Anyway, I'm just looking for opinions for my situation, I Contacted MSI support with what I said in the OP & they said to RMA the card, What I'm wondering is that is there anything simple I could do to more testing/troubleshooting before I send it back, and also should I look into getting a refund from the seller through eBay/PayPal? it was listed as used with a seller note of "Excellent, very clean" and the description said "The card is used but in excellent condition. No signs of wear. It comes with the original packing. Tested and work perfectly." however I'm having problems with it & I'm suspecting that there is indeed a problem with the card.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, Lord Letto said:

I'm not sure how to do that.

Anyway, I'm just looking for opinions for my situation, I Contacted MSI support with what I said in the OP & they said to RMA the card, What I'm wondering is that is there anything simple I could do to more testing/troubleshooting before I send it back, and also should I look into getting a refund from the seller through eBay/PayPal? it was listed as used with a seller note of "Excellent, very clean" and the description said "The card is used but in excellent condition. No signs of wear. It comes with the original packing. Tested and work perfectly." however I'm having problems with it & I'm suspecting that there is indeed a problem with the card.

There's definitely an issue. MSI has a BIOS utility on their website. That's the first thing I'd go with. My assumption is that it's a former mining card and they flashed a mining bios onto it. Reflashing can fail at times.

 

Do you have any other system around you can test it with? (MSI Support is probably correct and a RMA or an Ebay-refund is in your future.)

[Lord Letto]

33 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

MSI has a BIOS utility on their website

If your talking about MSI Live Update 6, I just got it, it shows Graphics card BIOS version as TV341MH.2M0 & when I scan under the Live update tab it says "Your drivers/utilities are the latest version. There is no need to update" & when I scan under the BIOS Update tab it says "Your BIOS are the latest version. There is no need to update" though when I googled the BIOS version it shows a thread from the MSI Community forum on July 25th 2018 with someone looking for the last rom for their card (same model as mine), they attached the original BIOS that they drew with Atiflash and to quote a reply from a MSIHQ Red Rockets Team Member & Global Moderator "You are using vbios TV341MH.2M0. Latest is TV341MH.2M2. For flashing use ATIWinflash in Windows. Should explain itself. Note that you need to rename the vbios file to .rom for flashing after unpacking.": https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=305894.0

 

Edit: "Do you have any other system around you can test it with?"

No I don't my brother's computer is a ~11.5 year old HP prebuilt with the original 300W PSU & my sister-in-law & mom both having SFF/Small prebuilts with propitiatory PSUs that would be a even lower wattage, needless to say I got the most powerful computer in the house.

[Taf the Ghost]

15 minutes ago, Lord Letto said:

If your talking about MSI Live Update 6, I just got it, it shows Graphics card BIOS version as TV341MH.2M0 & when I scan under the Live update tab it says "Your drivers/utilities are the latest version. There is no need to update" & when I scan under the BIOS Update tab it says "Your BIOS are the latest version. There is no need to update" though when I googled the BIOS version it shows a thread from the MSI Community forum on July 25th 2018 with someone looking for the last rom for their card (same model as mine), they attached the original BIOS that they drew with Atiflash and to quote a reply from a MSIHQ Red Rockets Team Member & Global Moderator "You are using vbios TV341MH.2M0. Latest is TV341MH.2M2. For flashing use ATIWinflash in Windows. Should explain itself. Note that you need to rename the vbios file to .rom for flashing after unpacking.": https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=305894.0

 

Edit: "Do you have any other system around you can test it with?"

No I don't my brother's computer is a ~11.5 year old HP prebuilt with the original 300W PSU & my sister-in-law & mom both having SFF/Small prebuilts with propitiatory PSUs that would be a even lower wattage, needless to say I got the most powerful computer in the house.

Might be worth asking friends to see if you can test the card in someone else's system. 

 

As for the BIOS, it's hard to suggest dumping the current one to a save and then using a different BIOS to flash with, especially as you can still return the card. There still might be some sort of "Poisoned Driver" issue with Windows, like some Nvidia cards have had lately.

[Lord Letto]

Further testing makes me think it is either a BIOS or Hardware problem, I updated DDU (was using v18.0.0.4, updated to v18.0.0.6) & used it from safe mode (something I never done/had to before) & installed the 18.12.2 driver (I think 18.12.3 is a beta driver) but still a no go.

[Lord Letto]

OK, so I filed for a return/refund Saturday through eBay & today the return was accepted followed by the following message from the seller: "Hi, sorry to hear that you are having problem with the card. I had a lots of cards to sell and only 2-3 of them were modded bios and I did not remember which one. I still have one left in stock without the bios modded that I checked. I can send you this one and if it works you can keep both cards. Otherwise you can send me back this card and I will issue a full refund."

Thoughts? Listing said no returns so I was planning on keeping this card & just get a refund & if the seller complains about me keeping the card I'd go to eBay & say he want's me to return the card for a refund when the listing said no returns. so for now should I accept his offer of the 2nd card or get help from eBay for the refund? I'm thinking go for the 2nd card & if it works then great, if it don't then I guess get in contact with eBay for a refund? Anyone deal with sellers wanting a return for a defective item when listing said no returns?

[Lord Letto]

Update:

Accepted the 2nd Card, he shipped it Thursday & I got it today. Used DDU to uninstall old drivers from safe mode, installed the card & installed the driver for it (Adrenalin 2019 Edition 18.12.2) and...IT WORKS! Only thing I'm wondering now is what's the max/safe temp for it? Ran 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (Scored 2 579 paired with a OCed Ryzen 3 1200 (3.9GHz) & 1x4GB 2400MHz RAM, it was better across the board compared to my old GTX 780) with a max GPU temp of 85*C according to HWInfo & MSI Afterburner.