4870x2: Watching my dreams shatter.

Thought I'm the only one with this problem. Apparently not.

Symptoms:

1.

Checked all cables, nothing wrong with them. Monitor is also working fine, using it right now.

2. The fan of the 4870x2 spins really fast at startup, then slows, then does this "vrroomm!" fan spin (as if its a race car about to start a race).

3. The card shoots out very hot air, and also gets extremely hot. So hot that I can't even hold my hand in front of the exhaust, let alone touch the damn thing.

Conditions:

PSU: ePower Tiger Series XLR-TYPE 1200watt modular Power supply.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R (PCI Express 1.0)
CPU: C2D E8400 (not over clocked)
RAM: 2GB Corsair

Currently running on the same machine, works flawlessly with my older Geforce 7 Series. Not with the 4870x2 though.

RMA is not an option. Please help.

Possibly. But what are the other possible reasons for this?

It works with my other graphics though, so I really doubt it.

Defective memory, you can try to remove cooling modul, replace thermal paste, lower memory freq....

It could be overheating, I mean if its blowing super hot air, then that should be a giveaway.

Out of curiosity, did you buy it used? I ask because you say RMA is out of the question. If so then you also need not worry about voiding the warranty, and should replace the thermal paste, and Thermal pads on the memory.

If you haven't yet, I'd replace it with the Nvidia 7 series card until you replace the Thermal Paste/Pads.

Are any of the card's diagnostic led's on?

@Cliffro: I got it used. I was wondering maybe I can somehow call up Sapphire and see what they have to say about it, which is what I'll do right now, and let you guys know how it goes.

@pauldh: It was at first, the 3 red lights. I took the RAMs out and put them back in and that problem was gone. Then I bumped into this problem. :\

@trkorecky: I also heard some stuff about that, but how do I flash the motherboard? Not exactly a tech savvy here...basically downloaded their stuff from their site and ran the executable file. Didn't make a difference.

RMA

Q-Flash is what you are referring to.

Step1: To use the Q-Flash™utility, you must press Del in the boot screen to enter
BIOS menu.

Step 2. Press F8 on your keyboard and then Y button to enter the Q-Flash™ utility.

It should look just like this



If using a flash drive, please note I could only get mine to work with it formatted to FAT. My 8gb XporterXT will only format to NTFS/FAT32/xFAT and will not work. But my 2gb PQI drive supports FAT/FAT32/xFAT/NTFS so I have to use it instead.

Also I can use my 2gb MicroSD card(with usb adapter) as well. So a flash drive isn't your only option.

Just an update.

I finally figured out how to flash the BIOS. I used @BIOS and flashed my version F2 to F4. I can tell it was done successfully from the boot up page, where it says the name of the motherboard then the BIOS version.

Then I finally tried out the 4870x2, hoping for some results.

Nope. No results. Still does the same thing. As for the RMA, I'll have to find out where this was bought from, get the invoice, and get back to Sapphire with the invoice. They say that only then they'd be able to give me an RMA number and replace it.

Thanks for all the help though.