New Graphics Card BSOD

[thamightyboro]

Hey guys hoping someone might have a bit of advice for me as an issue I'm having has me stumped.

I bought a used PC a couple of weeks ago as my Toshiba Qosmio had to go in for yet another repair. This pc came with a gigabyte 7970 windforce and ran like a dream but was total overkill for my 1 monitor @ 1080 setup (all I have space for) I decided to downgrade a little to get some cash back and get a fresh warranty. I decided on the 7870 tahiti and the only one on oc.co.uk was the saphire at £210 wheras I found the xfx at **** for £179 so I opted to buy it there.

It came yesterday and I plugged it all in and ran the driver disk on reboot it failed with a BSOD Page fault found in non paged area further info points to the atikmdag.sys being the point of failiure. This happens just at the point the graphics drivers would instigate.

I booted to safe mode uninstalled the card and all drivers running driver cleaner and cccleaner in the process. lo and behold she boots up fine. I then downloaded the latest amd drivers reboot and poof the BSOD is there again.

I repeat safe mode and cleaning and reboot again this time to try a different set of AMD drivers and sure enough every AMD driver causes this BSOD to happen. I rinsed and repeated this with at least 10 sets of drivers and the default amd windows would choose all with the same results.

I tried manual unpack of the atikmdag.sys and overwrite all with the same BSOD result at my wits end I even totally formatted and tried again and sure enough BSOD again.

I've been messing round with PC's for 10 years now and can only come to the conclusion that the card is DOA of sorts. If anyone can think of anything I haven't tried then please enlighten me, ****'s whole returns policy sucks balls a fact I wasnt aware of prior and despite their customer services supposedly being open on a weekend its persistent answer machine nor does their system recognise my order number to raise a RMA.

 

[PieEater]

Can't help with the driver problem but under the Distance Selling regulations you have 7 days to return an item from the day of receipt if you are not happy with it. So if you suspect a faulty card and want to return it you could do so under these regulations rather than stating that you think the card is faulty and having to wait for it to be tested and then told they cant find an issue before its sent back to you - http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/distance-selling-regulations/

/Edit - I would check your installed programs for any 3rd party apps that may have been referencing your old 7970, overclocking / monitoring / Gigabyte utilities. It may be that something running in the background is still expecting a 7970 and isn't happy with your 7870.

 

[thamightyboro]

Can't help with the driver problem but under the Distance Selling regulations you have 7 days to return an item from the day of receipt if you are not happy with it. So if you suspect a faulty card and want to return it you could do so under these regulations rather than stating that you think the card is faulty and having to wait for it to be tested and then told they cant find an issue before its sent back to you - http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/distance-selling-regulations/

/Edit - I would check your installed programs for any 3rd party apps that may have been referencing your old 7970, overclocking / monitoring / Gigabyte utilities. It may be that something running in the background is still expecting a 7970 and isn't happy with your 7870.

Yeah nuked everything after i took the 7970 out and as mentioned have actually done a full format as a last chance saloon solution

**** are supposedly atrocious for refunds which is why I'm having major remorse buying from them. I might see what stores have locally and go whack something on the credit card which I'd rather not do but guess I have to then seek a refund from ****.

 

[ConnectionFX]

I have the exact same issue with my 7970 that is also a sapphire card....