Is my graphics card dead?

The situation: When computer boots, you see the windows logo but never get to the login screen. If left alone, the computer just sits there hanging with a black screen, with the fans getting louder and louder. I've confirmed that the GPU fans are still going.

What I've got: I have 2x 1080p monitors plugged into my computer running Windows 10 with an XFX Radeon 7800 (1x via HDMI cable, 1x via DVI cable). I do not have a video output on my motherboard to use for testing purposes, and don't have spare graphics cards available to throw in instead. See sig below if you want more details.

What happened: I started playing Battlefield 1, and both monitors went nuts less than 30 seconds into the match. The colors were suddenly whitewashed (including the screen still just displaying the desktop) with lines patterned across the screen. As I tried to get the game to quit to find out what the hell was wrong, I realized I was just gonna have to reboot the machine. After that, I had the situation above.

What I've done about it: The computer can boot into safe mode, and can display at 1080p while in safe mode. I moved it into my living room so I could get wired internet (safe mode doesn't like my wireless card) and used my TV in there. I tried running the system restore tool / recovery feature, which said it restored my computer to how it was earlier that day, but it didn't make a difference in terms of booting the machine. I tried to install new drivers via the AMD driver update tool, but windows is telling me that they aren't digitally signed. Rollback driver is greyed out for me, so no go there either. And when I try to boot my computer into the mode where that security feature is disabled, you get the boot hang described above since it isn't safe mode. I went into device manager, uninstalled/reinstalled drivers that way (as opposed to using the AMD driver app that won't work), still no luck. Still hangs on boot.

What else haven't I tried? Or, is my graphics card just dead/in need of a quick bake in the oven?

Tuff one.. mighr wana look for a super cheap graphics card on craigslist to try.. or grab sonething at a local bestbuy that you either keep or return after testing.

Also could be flaky power supply. Gonna need spares to test proper.

Do as eclypse says and buy a local cheapie to test with then return.

yeah, do the best buy thing, then take it back. it most likely is your card. you can possibly salvage it, just take off the heatsinks and cook it in an oven for 10 minutes @ 300 degrees or so. just look up baking video cards.

Currently living overseas where best buy isn't an option...might have access to a voltmeter at work I could borrow for a day to figure out if the power supply is bad or not. I've had at least 2 bad PSUs in my lifetime, and in both cases they made me think it was the mobo going bad, not the video card, but I'll give it a shot.

Borrowed multimeter, 12V readings across the board on the 6-pin connectors going into the card. Looks like I'll be buying a new card.

I do not agree with buying new and returning it. that sticks the store with used stock and they are stuck with it or now have to discount it because of the return. buy a cheap known working card off someone local or borrow one.

I've gone through the same thing, window's loading screen hangs and it's a bitch just trying to get windows to launch. Seems like a weird thing but yes, bad cards can exhibit that behavior. Easiest way to check it is doing a clean driver uninstall (DDU) and install a different card, I have a few old cheap cards for troubleshooting purposes.

what does it do with just one monitor? hows your power supply doing, how old, wattage.. condition of cables stuff like that.

LordVampyre said:

what does it do with just one monitor? hows your power supply doing, how old, wattage.. condition of cables stuff like that.

Click to expand...

Same thing with one monitor, both DVI and HDMI. Power supply is about 3.5 years old, in good material condition. The only change I've made to the computer in recent months is getting another monitor and adding an SSD. It's 600w...so I doubt that I'm overloading it. Everything went downhill while I was playing BF1 starting with artifacts and ending with the displays being completely striped and unreadable. I've had bad mobos and PSUs before, and typically you see the entire system crash regardless of what you're doing.

Everyone else: I am not in a location where I have access to spare graphics cards, a place to go buy a cheapo to test out, etc. I can order a new one from amazon once I know that it's what I need, but it doesn't make sense for me to order stuff just for troubleshooting.

From what you're saying I would rate this as a high probability of GPU failure. But without testing there is no way to be 100% sure. And given your options in the post above, I would say it's Amazon time.

Yes

Cook it.

Big thread on that here somewhere.

okay, any way possible to test the card in a friends computer? would settle if the card is a gonner..

shoot, Im in a little town in southern missouri and our one and only computer shop will put a card in a test bed to see if its alright or not. Just a thought.

worth a shot