Is my new graphics card faulty?

[BlackDragon]

Hi,

In June, I bought an Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X OC 4096MB GDDR5 and it has worked flawlessly until recently.

For a few weeks now I've noticed while using 2D applications (browsing web, using Blender, etc), a momentary flash of a horizontal line appears at the same level as where my mouse interacts with something on the screen. It goes from one side of the screen to the other. I never see this issue in games.

I started getting random black blank screens, but monitor is still on (not saying no signal), windows is still running, and only thing I can do is power off the computer with the physical switch. Mostly experienced while in windows doing 2D stuff, but did happen once when I started up Planetside 2.

I got a BSOD while I had my browser open on you tube, but the video had already stopped playing. I analysed the dump file and could see the fault was with the AMD driver for the graphics card.

These last two issues began happening in the past week.

I also noticed when I pulled out the card that some of the gold contacts have changed colour:

The pins in the slot that the card went in to showed no marks like the above, and my old card does not have it either. Maybe this is the cause.

Does this sound like a graphics card issue? To me this all sounds like a graphics card issue, but it's not consistent. I've swapped it out with my previous AMD card to see if it helps (seems to for now).

I'm concerned that when the card gets sent back to be RMA'd, they won't find any issues as it is so sporadic, then the card will be sent right back to me. Is this likely to happen in a situation like this?

Thanks

 

[Little*Freak]

Hi, no idea what it is but have you tried cleaning the contacts with Thinners or Isopropyl Alcohol?

 

[CEUOTC]

Turning off hardware acceleration in chrome will cure BSOD, however l would suggest RMA'ing card due to black screen. This was common in "some" R9 290's on initial release.

Also are you using the latest drivers?

 

[BlackDragon]

Hi, no idea what it is but have you tried cleaning the contacts with Thinners or Isopropyl Alcohol?

Not tried it as I don't have any to hand. Am tempted to just leave it as it is so it can be discovered when it is RMA'd.

Turning off hardware acceleration in chrome will cure BSOD, however l would suggest RMA'ing card due to black screen. This was common in "some" R9 290's on initial release.

Also are you using the latest drivers?

I'm using Firefox, spose I could turn off HA there too. However this hasn't been happening until recently.

I am using the latest drivers, 14.9, but was using 14.4.

I probably will RMA it, am just concerned they won't detect any issues and not replace it.

 

[CEUOTC]

Give them as much info you can, also state fault is not apparent with a different card fitted. I take it your PSU is up-to the job?

 

[BlackDragon]

Thanks, I've reiterated in my RMA ticket those points.

Yeah PSU is up to it, was a new one that I purchased at the same time as the card.

 

[CEUOTC]

Coolio, time to wait then.