• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

4850s DOA/dying *fast*

D

Dr. kitteny berk

n00b
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
39
Right, this isn't my issue, it's a friend's, but I'm completely stumped.

He's recently built a new machine (specs below) but now on his 3rd 4850 that appears to be DOA, or dies very soon after he installs it - Massive artifacting in 3D stuff (3dmark and crysis), Obviously it looked like bad luck for a start, but three DOA cards seems a bit iffy to me.

2 of the cards have been RMA'd successfully, so if his system is to blame, it's doing something very wrong. (the 3rd is brand new today, and dying)

Voltages and temperatures seem to be fine, fan hack didn't help.

Anyone have any ideas? I'm wondering if the motherboard isn't evil or something.

Cheers

Intel Core 2 Duo,E8400, Socket 775, Boxed
MSI P7N SLI Platinum
Antec TruePower Trio, 650 Watt, Retail
ATI 4850
Corsair CM2X2048-6400C5
Scythe Mugen “Infinity”.
Sony-NEC AD-7191S Black
Antec Three Hundred
 
How does he go about installing them? ESD protection etc? Did you confirm it's actually the videocard that is dying? Artifacts *can* be caused by other things like faulty RAM or too weak PSU.
 
JimmiG said:
How does he go about installing them? ESD protection etc? Did you confirm it's actually the videocard that is dying? Artifacts *can* be caused by other things like faulty RAM or too weak PSU.
Click to expand...

No idea and AFAIK he's careful about ESD, but he's a few hundred miles away so I can't be certain.

The 2 cards that he's RMA'd have been confirmed dead and replaced.

I think the PSU is up to the job, and I just sent him to play with memtest, but it seems odd that'd actually kill the cards.
 
Have him try swapping out power supplies and see if that helps at all, I would look into that first and check the motherboard installation, make sure its not shorted on the case somewhere.
 
Hahaha, maybe I'm not the only one. My HD4850 was working fine until I simply took off the stock heatsink, changed the thermal paste (which did slightly improve temperatures), and placed the stock heatsink back on. The card has some messed up functionality; I will get a BSOD or blank (black) screen upon entering the Windows environment, or I will get commodore styled graphics (memory artifacts). If the card manages to get into Windows normally without any problems though, after a while (perhaps a few hours?) I will get either the BSOD, blank screen (unlikely), or the commodore styled graphics (memory artifacts).

And all this just because I took off the stock heatsink and changed the thermal paste (correctly must I mention!)? I didn't ever really hit or scratch or jab the video card. :\
 
I'd say either the VREG system on the motherboard is failing or the PSU is failing.

Does he live in an older house or an area with poor quality power? Does he use a UPS with AVR? Has he had any issues with component failure in the past?
 
Yeah I doubt it's three bad cards. I bought 3 cards and all 3 of them worked perfectly fine, I only returned them because I decided to try out a 4870x2.

Did he plug the PCIX power connectors to the video card, because that will do it real fast too.
 
crawlgsx said:
Did he plug the PCIX power connectors to the video card, because that will do it real fast too.
Click to expand...

No it will not. If you don't plug the PCIe (PCI-X is a different, older standard, by the way) power connector in one of two things will happen, depending on the card in question: either an alarm will sound when you power up the PC and you will get no video, forcing you to turn it off and plug in the power, or you will get in to Windows or whatever OS you are running and be informed by the driver via a popup or similar that the card is running in low power reduced functionality mode. Not plugging in the power will never kill a card; if it does, the card was already faulty.
 
I suspect
a) faulty PSU
b) faulty motherboard killing gfx cards
c) heat

Bearing in mind that there is a definite problem killing the cards as 2 have died already...
a) is pretty likely and more common
b) I have seen components killing other components to which they are connected
c) pretty unlikely to be a heat issue unless you have pushed the cards really hard for some time while they artifact

There is a vague possibility that you have indeed received 3 DOA cards but that is HIGHLY unlikely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top