Screen goes gray or blue with stripes

illya

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Oct 14, 2010
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Hi !

Last week I upgrade my Pc and got the following:

Core i5 2500k
Asus P8P67 Pro
2x4GB Patriot Viper Xtreme 1600mhz
Xfx Radeon 6950 1GB
WD 1TB Black
Corsair GS 600w PSU


At first I was having some heating problems with the i5, I have like 55º degress just surfing the net.
I disabled the "Turbo" mode on the bios and change the cpu cooler.
Now I have a Coler Master Hyper Plus 212.
Temps now are ok, just arround 30 degrees in idle, and 55 degress at full load running Prime95.

The problem is... on idle or just regular windows 7 using (like net surfing) video card is arround 55 degrees,
and the fan is pretty silent.
If I set it to manual and full speed, temp goes down to about 40 degrees.

The problem is, that randomly I got some gray or blue screen with vertical stripes, but system seem to
working ok. For example, if I was listening some music, I could still be able to listen to it, but screen is all
gray with stripes.
And that just on windows 7 desktop, just using FireFox.

I also trying some game (Civilization V, dx11 mode).
During the game, video card temp was arround 80 degrees and cpu arround 55 degrees.
I play for like half an hour an no problems.

But then, I went back to Windows, and after 5 minutes, temp went down to 50 degrees for the video card and 42 for the CPU and... that´s when I got the gray screen again.


I think it´s not a heating issue... cause if that was the case, I would have that gray screen when playing
Civilization and temps were arround 80 for video card and 55 for cpu.
So... what could be happen here ?

I first installed XFX drives from their home page.
Then I tryed with the ones that are on AMD site. That would be the latest.

So... any help ? don´t know what to try or what could it be.


Oh ! one thing... when that gray screen apperas, I also tryed removing the DVI cable an plug in it again, but screen kept gray.

Thanks!



 
Since you just bought that video card I would call XFX and get warranty service. Actually sounds like a hardware issue to me... I don't think drivers or temps are the issue...

When RAM is the issue a computer tends to get blue screens, random reboots or memory referance errors.
When the CPU is the issue you could get issues like being unable to post or random reboots.
When the motherboard is the issue you can experience symptoms similar to RAM and/or CPU symptoms and many more.
With the screen going grey like that I really think its a video card hardware issue.
XFX warrants most of thier video cards with double lifetime warranties. Call them.
 

illya

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That´s what I was afraid to... I bought this card in USA and now return to my place (Argentina).
Pretty far for doing RMA.
Wanted first to try everything possible to fix it... if it is possible.
 

illya

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In my case, the whole screen goes gray, sometimes whit vertical bars.
Computer in general seem to still work (for example, music goes on) dispite having the screen all gray or blue.

I was reading and seems like 5xxx series had similar problem and was fixed with new drivers.
But... I have latest and have this problem... maybe it´s a different problem for the 6xxx series?
 

illya

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Ok... I´ve been testing a lot... I think (or like to think) that this a software/driver issue.
Cause I was running 3D Mark, and I got a gray/blue screen during the test, but... what I think was weird is that it only showed
those line in the frame the test was being display.
I mean... 3D mark set the resolution to 1280x720 so when the test run (Im using 1080 resolution) it displayed two black bars, one on top and one at the bottom. And the images on the center.
The thing is... when it crashed, it only crashed the center part of the image, the one that was between those two black bars.

So... if it were a heating problem (or another one) with the GPU, I think it would display the whole screen with gray/blue stripes... am I right ?

So... do you think it might be a software/drivers problem ?


Thanks !
 

illya

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UPDATE

Ok... I´m just posting thise in case somebody is having same issue.

Apparently the problem ir latest AMD drivers (11.5).
I read in other pages/forums that people with Radeon 58xx were having similar issues with latest drivers.

So... I just uninstall and install an older version (11.3).
So far, it´s been two days without any issue.
Before changing driver version, the issue came up pretty often (few times a day).

I hope that´s the whole problem.
I´ll update in few days to confirm.

Thanks
 

illya

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UPDATE:

Ok... it´s not a driver/software issue.

After some responses from XFX Support Service they told me that the card is defective and I have to RMA.
So... not a drivers problem.

Thanks for the help.
 

scald

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Aug 4, 2011
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Hi there;

i have exactly same problem here. Here is my specs:

Asus P8P67 Pro
İ7 2600K
4x2Gig Kingston DDR3-1333Mhz Ram
XFX 6950 1GB
Samsung Spinpoint HSJ 1TB HDD
Seasonic 750AT PSU

I'm using my comp 7/24 for dl and sometimes my uptime is over 300 hours. so, i dont have a problem in desktop mode. But if i want to play some HD movies, or playing some games (even open browser base facebook games, or ancient games like Rise of the nation) i got some gray or blue (or orange or green or black whatever) screen with vertical stripes and sound starting to buzz. num or caps lock didnt response and a hard reset is mandotory.

I'm pretty sure its not a driver nor PSU nor BIOS issue because i've tryed almost everything in 6 weeks! Tonight im gonna try older ati Graphic card and i think -and hope- this stupid freeze problem has been solved.

Otherwise, all my suspiciosn are redirected to P8P67 which already have some "criminal records" about freezing :)

BR,