Video Card Issues

[d_stilgar]

So, I have an AMD Radeon 6950 in my gaming rig. It's a pretty nice card and it's been serving me really well. Lately, however, it intermittently just doesn't work. I'll boot up my PC and have no video out, so I'll plug one of my monitors into the DVI on my mobo and, voila, I have picture on one screen and an error saying Catalyst does not support my current card (the mobo video driver). If I shut down my computer and start it up again, I'll sometimes get my video card.

If my video card shows up, it will work without flaw as long as my computer is still on, but if I shut it down, then who knows whether or not it will work when I boot again. It's a crap shoot.

Any ideas as to what the issue would be?

[TheMainMan]

I'd suspect a bad solder joint somewhere which sounds to me like a reflow might be in order. I've had similar intermittent video issues from a wide variety of cards and I've had good luck with fixing them by running an extended stress test (usually at least a couple of hours) with Furmark, then letting the card cool off gradually. I've yet to have a card that needed a complete reflow as usually by the time my cards completely die, they're quite old and not worth fixing.

[Konrad]

If you're gonna pull out your soldering tools to do component-level repair then check all your caps and inductors (comparatively high-failure-rate components). Look for cracked traces, burnt resistors and whatnot while you're at it. If a proprietary IC is glitchy then it's time to replace (and upgrade!) the card.

Thermal failure? Are the old fans crapped out?

Overclocking timing issues, perhaps? You might have BIOS options which can turn reliability up a notch, hopefully with minimum performance impact.

Swap out your drive, boot up another OS. Maybe your Windows or Catalyst junk or DirectX bits just got sick, it happens. Alternately, maybe a good excuse to do a clean OS install.

Try moving the card to another slot. And another computer. A good opportunity to clean all the contact pins. (Stabilant-22 or 1,1,3-Trichloro all the way for me! Although popular DeOXIT or new-fangled citrenes or lowly isopropyl are okay, I suppose.)

Those my ideas. Good luck.

[Markwinstanley]

I recently have this problem but fixed with latest video card drivers. So give it try.

[d_stilgar]

So, an update . . .

I bought a PSU tester since it seemed to be the cheapest thing to do (vs buying a new video card) and the PSU is fine, no problems.

Then I thought, "I wonder if this is a driver issue." The drivers have been really odd ever since I did a clean install. Catalyst Control Center doesn't behave like it did before, and things have just been weird in general.

So, I uninstalled CCC and everything from AMD.

Here's the really weird bit . . . I don't have CCC on my computer, but the resolution is still 6048x1200. That's 1920x3 + the bezel compensation (which has been preserved somehow). I'm not really sure what's going on. My computer sees my three monitors as one and treats them as such, but I definitely do not have CCC installed anymore.

[Konrad]

Haha, welcome to Win7/Win8 and the (mostly) integrated DX10+ driver libraries.

It seems like your graphic problems reside in software. Clean OS reinstall (if you can) ... otherwise, try uninstalling Catalyst and DirectX (restart), then install DX9.0c/DX9.0d (restart), DX10 (restart), DX11 (restart), and Catalyst (restart) to ensure you've got the latest/greatest software resources for your graphics?

Best option might be to kill Catalyst entirely and just install a no-frills Radeon 6950 driver, if you have the option. It seems like AMD forces their Catalyst suite onto people, but you might be able to work around that by downloading a beta driver component or downloading from another Radeon 6950 maker (Sapphire, PowerColor, etc).

Whatever you do - backup your existing stuff first! It would suck to lose the functionality you already have.

[d_stilgar]

Yeah. I don't love CCC, but it does allow for things like eyefinity and bezel correction that aren't integrated into windows yet. I'll keep fiddling with stuff. I just did a clean install after having other issues, so I really don't want to do it again.