Sapphire HD 5970 problems

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zbillings09

n00b
Joined
Nov 22, 2009
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So, I was one of the "lucky" ones to get my hands on this card from Newegg. However, I feel my card might be defective. I have never received a defective card before so I am unsure of the signs. Here is what I am experiencing:

I can't seem to get my monitor to display at it's native (1920x1200) resolution. Every time it displays nothing but a pixelated mess, or a strange smaller screen that has two inches of black on the left side and one inch of black on the top (basically it's shifted down and to the right). I can endlessly turn the monitor on and off or switch the resolution and 1920x1200 might work once in maybe 10 cycles, but as soon as I fire up a game or a benchmark it goes back to the mess. It seems to display just fine at 1680x1050.

According to the review at Pure Overclock http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=855&page=8 they had what might be a similar issue as they were only able to benchmark at 1680x1050 and 1280x1024. They identified it as a "BIOS flashing and driver issue".

I guess I am looking for people's thoughts on this. Is the card defective, is this a driver issue of some sort, is my monitor defective?
 
My Sapphire 5970 is running at 1920x1200 while playing Modern Warfare 2 and has no such issues and this is with the drivers that came with the card running on Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate.

Were you able to get your monitor to run 1920x1200 with a different card? It does sound more like a monitor issue than a card issue to me.
 
Yeah. I just changed over from 3-Way SLI GTX 260s. I was able to run 1920x1200 without really any issues. Rarely, I did experience the image shifted down about an inch even while using the 260s. Problem is I don't have access to another 24" monitor to test.

Maybe it is my monitor...

What drivers are on the CD? I just downloaded the beta 5 drivers from the AMD site.
 
First............make sure you have the current .net framework on your computer before installing the drivers.

Second......re-download the beta driver

Third......uninstall any video drivers and the run drivercleaner.net in safe mode three or four times. Then reinstall the drivers.

Fourth......make sure the card is seated well, has both the 8 and 6 pin power attached.
try plugging the monitor into a different DVI slot.
 
Thanks for the tips.

I have the latest version of the .NET Framework 3.5.1 for Windows 7.

I have redownloaded the beta drivers from the AMD site.

I was using Driver Sweeper instead of Driver Cleaner, but I just got Driver Cleaner and will try that.

I will reinstall the drivers, check for proper card seating and switch DVI ports then report back.

I also noticed that when I uninstalled the driver my monitor only wanted to display "No Signal", no number of monitor power cycles changed this.
 
Can you use the drivers that came with the card and confirm if they're OK?

I've got a delivery of this card soon, I'm pretty sure from what I've read it's just the beta drivers that have all these issues.
 
Well, it turns out that I am just an idiot.

I had not really checked the physical DVI connection to the monitor figuring everything would be OK. Apparently I had not screwed the cable securely to the monitor and it must have worked itself loose. Once I fixed the loose connection on the monitor everything was fine.... fhew. Thanks for the tips anyway!
 
Glad to hear it was something simple.:D

I've done that before as well. We all tend to overlook the stuff we take for granted.
 
ALWAYS start troubleshooting at the physical layer!! One of (and most important) the many lessons I've learned as an IT Tech ;).
 
Not sure if this helps, but on some occasions changing the resolution of my monitors using the CCC will cause it to go into a refresh rate it doesn't support, which makes the image look somewhat garbled/pixelated. If I go into Desktop > Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Monitor and set the refresh rate down one notch, the problem goes away. Hopefully this helps. Strange, I know, but worth a shot. Sounds like a driver issue.

ps: after you set it using Windows (using the method above) and not CCC, you shouldn't experience it again as long as you dont use CCC to adjust resolutions.
 
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