Is my 2nd graphics card dead?

[Frollard]

Greetings

 

I converted my mining rig into a gaming rig when electricity prices surpassed the profits.  They were cheap refurb Powercolor 7970s with really crappy stock coolers (blowers).  All the cards were tested and working individually (gfx) as well as non-crossfire for computation.  They spent their entire lives undervolted for efficiency, at sub 85C, so I'm pretty sure the gpu isn't fried. The mobo/cpu/ram were the cheapest I could buy a year ago, so they're off less importance and going to be sold soon.

 

Single Crossfire bridge is installed. 

I'm swapping the mobo/cpu soon, currently an FX4300 in an asus board - can get details when I'm home

4GB ram

 

Testing is difficult because they are now watercooled with an EK bridge connecting them and I'm getting strange behaviour (I really don't want to drain the loop):

 

1. Windows desktop/aero is intermittently flickering and digitized, picture is there but very very garbled.  Tested on HDMI and DVI connections on separate monitors/projector.  At first I thought it was just my hdmi cable.  After reboot sometimes problem persists, sometimes not.  Sometimes it starts a few minutes into running.
2. Temperatures reported around ambient+5, as expected for my watercooling loop.
3. If I plug video cable into the 2nd (lower, newer) card there is no flicker.
4. If I enable CrossfireX, 2nd card stops reporting its temperature (speedfan, afterburner, furmark), and I get no performance gain (furmark only shows one card and fps stays the same with crossfire on or off)
5. If I disable CrossfireX, both cards report a stable sane temperature, and both show up in furmark with only one doing work

Steps yet to be taken: Test in different motherboard, reinstall drivers, reinstall windows, set computer on fire and say 'effit'.

Am I missing something obvious?

[AlwaysFSX]

Try putting their voltage back to normal levels?

[Frollard]

Try putting their voltage back to normal levels?

Already factory reset.

[AlwaysFSX]

Already factory reset.

Quite honestly, I know it sucks, but I would drain the loop and put the air coolers back on before trying to diagnose the problem.

[Frollard]

Quite honestly, I know it sucks, but I would drain the loop and put the air coolers back on before trying to diagnose the problem.

That's what I feared...One of the coolers is still good, the other we tested 'how loud can it go' with a bench power supply at 30 volts.  Fun fact: loud, then melted...

[ExcitezR]

when you enable crossfireX the second card goes in to ULPS or (ultra low power state) basically it turns off there for 0c when you play a game it will turn back on as for flickering i dont no but to test it restart MSI afterburner and then play a game you will see the other GPU turn on the pic is what mine looks like 

 

[alphadragon]

you're graphics card is dead put it in a cofffin then bury it. i'm sorry for your loss :'(

[Mangetsu]

RIP Graphics card its last words were "I always hated Frollard"

[alphadragon]

RIP Graphics card its last words were "I always hated Frollard"

Dude what if you're right!?!?!?!

[Frollard]

I'm not really that upset if it died (it paid itself off with the mining on free electricity) just the hours spent installing the watercooler diagnosing this problem is now a pain in my ass. 

 

Update: Now I get zero video signal over dvi on either card.  I can remote in with teamviewer...that's about it....until the computer crashes.  Sometimes I get bios...gonna try to boot into that next and set defaults.

 

Edit: update 2: Got video back, but I'm blue-screening (or monitor-off-screening) with numlock hard freeze every little while when I run anything graphical.

 

Enabling crossfire slows the machine down (does that zero power thing) and 2nd card acts like an anchor dragging the system down.  AMD, particularly the software is garbage.