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7950 black screen

Renton

Renton

Renton

Associate
Joined
1 Dec 2006
Posts
666
Hi all, I just want to sense check this with you lot before I RMA my card

Had a 295 GTX in my system and upgraded to the 7950 about 6 weeks ago. All worked fine for a couple of weeks then I started to get the odd black (blue) screen, which I have to hard reboot to get out of.
Updated the drivers and all seemed well for a couple of days then black screen started again and got more and more frequent until last night it was driving me crazy and I swapped it back for my 295, and since no more black screen

The things I tried were mem test, seemed fine but I only did a couple of passes
Changed card to the second PCIe slot
Re-installed drivers
checked cpu & gpu temps, all fine
downloaded a bluescreen viewer (i have the fault code, will post later when home)
Removed over clock on cpu

Spec
i7 920 @ 3.8, asus X58 sabretooth, 6g ram, 750w cooler master psu

Im pretty sure the card is faulty as the problem has gone away after re-installing the 295 but I just wanted to see if there was anything I missed checking before I RMA

Thanks for any help
 
Check event viewer and see if it lists gpu fault. You might be getting the driver stopped responding and recovered error. I fixed mine with a little increase of the voltage with msi Afterburner. Worth a try
 
Sounds like you might not have gotten rid of all the NVidia drivers, did you uninstall the Nvidia drivers and software, then delete the Nvidia folders and then uninstall it from device manager (removing driver as well)? You should have got back to windows VGA drivers before closing down completely and installing the AMD card.

Or you should have got a Nvidia card and saved yourself the hassle seeing as you were using Nvidia before :)
 
Biffa said:
Sounds like you might not have gotten rid of all the NVidia drivers, did you uninstall the Nvidia drivers and software, then delete the Nvidia folders and then uninstall it from device manager (removing driver as well)? You should have got back to windows VGA drivers before closing down completely and installing the AMD card.

Or you should have got a Nvidia card and saved yourself the hassle seeing as you were using Nvidia before :)
Click to expand...

Ironically the last 4 cards I have had have been nvidia, and although pretty good I got very occational driver crashes so I thought I would go with AMD!:o

I tried last night to re-install the 7950 making sure I got rid of anything nvidia but it would black screen even before it started loading windows so im pretty sure the card is faulty

Thanks for the assistance
 
The black screen before windows thing is a nightmare, I had that recently. I'm not saying its because of going with the red team, but it sounds like parts of your system might be hosed, you could try an in place reinstall of windows, that way you dont lose anything but get a fresh windows install.
 
Sweet! nice one Biffa, I never new you could do that

I was contemplating doing a total wipe/install but really didnt want to go through all the setting up and stuff, I'll give it ago before I RMA :)

Thanks again
 
I am in a similar situation.
I purchased a Sapphire 7950 OC from OcUK to replace my Sapphire 6950. I installed it on April 28th and the "black screens" and BSODs started on April 29th.
I am running Windows 7 64bit. The card is running at its default speeds.
I am running an i5-750 with 8Gb of ddr3. The system is powered by an Antec True Power 650w PSU.
I have reinstalled the drivers more times than I can remember. I use Driver Sweeper to remove them and also remove the card from Device Manager so that it defaults to a Standard VGA Display before re-installing the drivers.
I have tried version 12.3 and 12.6 of the Catalyst Drivers.
I have upgraded the motherboard bios to the latest version.
I have tried underclocking the card by dropping it down to 875Mhz from 900Mhz
I have disabled Flash hardware acceleration (suggested in some other forums).

What seems odd is that I have never experienced a "black screen" or BSOD whilst playing games. I've spent hours in Diablo 3 and Skyrim but they never crash.
The problems mostly (but not always) appear whilst I am browsing the web. I thought it might be related to IE9 so I swapped to Chrome but that made no difference.
Last night I attempted to run the Sapphire Trixx utility to check the temps on the card but that caused a "black screen" which lasted about 3 minutes. (Trixx had never caused the problem before). The display came back on ok but there was an entry in the Event Log relating to the driver not responding. (The same message that gets logged everytime it "black screens" or BSODs). I rebooted and Trixx loaded without incident.

Some people have suggested increasing the voltage but if it needed more juice then I would have expected to experience problems under load (when playing games), not when I am browsing the web.

I find it hard to believe that this is a hardware fault. Especially as the card behaves itself when it is being pushed.
Some people claim to have solved it by reinstalling Windows 7. I will give it a try seeing as I have tried everything else I can think of.
 
Last edited:
wapcatlet said:
I am in a similar situation.
I purchased a Sapphire 7950 OC from OcUK to replace my Sapphire 6950. I installed it on April 28th and the "black screens" and BSODs started on April 29th.
I am running Windows 7 64bit. The card is running at its default speeds.
I am running an i5-750 with 8Gb of ddr3. The system is powered by an Antec True Power 650w PSU.
I have reinstalled the drivers more times than I can remember. I use Driver Sweeper to remove them and also remove the card from Device Manager so that it defaults to a Standard VGA Display before re-installing the drivers.
I have tried version 12.3 and 12.6 of the Catalyst Drivers.
I have upgraded the motherboard bios to the latest version.
I have tried underclocking the card by dropping it down to 875Mhz from 900Mhz
I have disabled Flash hardware acceleration (suggested in some other forums).

What seems odd is that I have never experienced a "black screen" or BSOD whilst playing games. I've spent hours in Diablo 3 and Skyrim but they never crash.
The problems mostly (but not always) appear whilst I am browsing the web. I thought it might be related to IE9 so I swapped to Chrome but that made no difference.
Last night I attempted to run the Sapphire Trixx utility to check the temps on the card but that caused a "black screen" which lasted about 3 minutes. (Trixx had never caused the problem before). The display came back on ok but there was an entry in the Event Log relating to the driver not responding. (The same message that gets logged everytime it "black screens" or BSODs). I rebooted and Trixx loaded without incident.

Some people have suggested increasing the voltage but if it needed more juice then I would have expected to experience problems under load (when playing games), not when I am browsing the web.

I find it hard to believe that this is a hardware fault. Especially as the card behaves itself when it is being pushed.
Some people claim to have solved it by reinstalling Windows 7. I will give it a try seeing as I have tried everything else I can think of.
Click to expand...


Have you tried raising the idle clocks slightly in MSI afterburner or CCC profile? Seems to have stopped my black screens at idle......so far (which means I haven't had one yet today and it's been on all day without me really touching it apart from to look online every now and then).
 
fishboyuk said:
Have you tried raising the idle clocks slightly in MSI afterburner or CCC profile? Seems to have stopped my black screens at idle......so far (which means I haven't had one yet today and it's been on all day without me really touching it apart from to look online every now and then).
Click to expand...
I've reached the point where I am willing to try anything so I will happily give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
So after much fault finding it seems to be my PSU that was at fault, I ended up having to take all the components out of the case and build it on a box, it was then I found that the main 24pin supply, if I moved it slightly then it would black screen.
Im hoping its the PSU plug/ wiring not the socket on the MB but the old psu I had knocking about seems ok even if I move it about.

Fingers crossed :)

On another note I think that Biffa,s post about the in place Windows re-install should be put in one of the help posts as I have been playing with PC,s for years and never knew you could do that so im sure there are a few other peeps out there this could be helpfull too.

Ren
 
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