7950 Diagnosis Help

calmnothing

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
Messages
78
I have a MSI 7950 Twin Frozr O/C and it has been running quite well for the past month. But earlier this week it started acting really weird. When I start up a game it will work like normaly then after a few seconds the screen will flash black and then immediately the FPS drops. So I checked MSI Afterburner and it's reporting that the card has dropped down to 300mhz core and 150mhz memory. If I continue to try playing a game the screen will artifact and the computer will turn off. The core temp of the graphics card on a COLD boot is 45c. It used to be 30c.

So something has happened to where it won't run faster than 2d clockspeeds and is hotter at idle. If I run sketchup with hardware acceleration on then it will spike up to its max speed then go down to 2d speeds and the fan will spin like crazy.

In the past few days I haven't done anything to change the hardware or installed any software. I have tried 5-6 different drivers, updating to the latest BIOS for the card, and over/underclocking the card. I even popped the card into a seperate computer and it is doing the same thing there. I put a good working graphics card in my computer and it works fine. So I believe at this point it is isolated to this 7950.

Any help would be appreciated, just trying to figure this out before I have to do an RMA.
 
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Unfortunately, it does look like you've covered everything other than the card - so looks like an issue with the card.
If the card performs the same in another system, well it has to be the card, since you've tried different driver versions and bios versions.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried the last non-beta AMD drivers.
 
The description of the problem when attempting to game sounds very much like a driver reset, as in there's a catastrophic failure in the driver due to some conflict and it resets itself.

Did you properly clear out the existing driver platform using the AMD uninstall utility, ATiMAN, or some other driver cleaner app before installing the next driver pack?
 
For me its about a overheating issue.. That are pretty common on some MSI twin frozr cards, some comes with a TON of TIM and a poor contact between the card and the cooler base. That could explain the increase temp in idle, have you checked the load temperature?.. Anyway.. If its possible RMA then do it.. Better prevent now than lament later..
 
I used the AMD utility to completely remove all components then did a fresh install of the new drivers each time. At the moment I am using the latest WHQL drivers. I'm beginning to think it is the card itself. When I install my old 6870 it has no issues at all. The heatsink has been reinstalled with fresh thermal paste but the temps remain the same.
 
Prolly the card then if the 6870 works in the exact environment.
 
I personally use Display Driver Uninstaller as it seems to be more thorough than AMD's solution. Unfortunately it sounds like the problem is the hardware. Just out of curiosity, have you taken a peek at the card's fans while under load? Perhaps one (or both) fans have crapped out.
 
Sounds to me like the card is throttling itself to prevent overheating. Could be that the fans have some dust built-up that's preventing airflow, or that you need to replace the TIM. There have been a number of horror stories where the folks at MSI who applied TIM to these cards smeared it on as if it was cream cheese on a bagel.

What do the GPU temps and fan speed look like when you start a game up and before the clocks drop?
 
What is the temp when when the card throttles? Also make sure you didn't fix the GPU fan speed to 25% or something. Sounds like an RMA to be honest. If it's overheating it could be the heat sink has shifted, but taking it off and reseating it might void your warranty.
 
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