Bad Board, GPU or something else?

robw76

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Feb 17, 2014
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18,510
Apologies for the length of topic, but thought more info is better than to little!

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2144947/system-boot-needed.html

My part list is also on that post. Only exception is that my card is a XFX 7850 DD Core

I had just built myself a new system and at first I had a unidentified problem as per this post.

I managed to acquire a motherboard speaker and found the problem to be a faulty memory stick. However, that has not been the end of it.

Once everything was up and running and all drivers up to date I was experiencing problems in games (WOT & Warthunder) where my FPS would drop suddenly from around 70-80 to 3-10. Sometimes this would last until I rebooted the PC, but sometimes it would last only for 10-20 seconds and continue to go up and down. I would also get the occasional random crash. When I monitored the GPU, using Catalyst, I could see the GPU activity would be 97-99% when the FPS dropped. Temps were fine. At first I thought it may be not getting enough power. Originally I had my PSU supplying the XFX HD 7850 DD card from the non modular cable (it is split to have two PCIE connectors). So, I tried different combinations of powering the GPU (both 6 pin from modular cable & 1 from modular & 1 from wired), but I was still getting problems. I had this card in my old pc, though it was in a PCIE 2.0 slot, and it worked ok, but if I put the card in the PCIE 2.0 slot on my new board it sends the Realtek HD sound manager crazy with it constantly saying plugs are being taken in and out of the jacks! After some searching I have recently thought that it may be switching to 2D mode, but I am not sure how to force it to 3D settings to check this or indeed why I would need to given nVidia works


So, I tried one of my old cards (MSI GTX 460SE) in the PCIE 2.0 slot and this works absolutely great, stable in games and no crashes.. However, I have no sound with this card! I had sound originally, but lost it after I had tried the HD 7850 in the PCIE 2.0. I am thinking I do have driver issue here because of the constant swapping of card. I can see the green sound bar move in playback devices, but I get nothing coming through either speakers or headphones (oh and yes I have RealTek enabled in BIOS and set as default device).

My biggest worry is that I have a problem with my MB or GPU and I need to establish whether which is the problem. I don’t really want to send it back to Novatech if it turns out there is no problem and I get charged. At this point I would just be guessing as to whether it is hardware/software with the issue. I would be getting a new board/GPU from the same place so they may well be a bit friendlier to an exchange rather than a refund.

As you can see I about at the end of tether it is driving me (and to be fair the wife) crazy.

I just need someone who can calmly walk through the steps in establishing whether the board, GPU, drivers or something else are to blame. And then how to get my PC back in a situation of stabilty before exchanging parts....obviously if it is the board I cannot and if it is drivers then at least i am not going down to post office!


 

robw76

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Feb 17, 2014
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18,510
Thanks, but I already had done those 23 when I had the posting problem....which it solved.

This does not really answer the issue I have now....unless I am missing something.

Update: Cannot get sound now regardless to what GPU i am using :(