BSOD, POST give different errors

[Zansa]

I mostly need another opinion on my problem. In April I purchased a Radeon HD 6950 2GB graphics card. Except for one minor problem with flickering pixels when I run a full screen program in a non-native resolution, I haven't had any problems with it until a few days ago.

What would happen is I would leave my computer idle, it would enter sleep, and when I came back it would Blue Screen. The first time it happened I figured it was an unfortunate incident. The second time it happened a day or two later I figured it was a coincidence. After that it started happening when I was playing games, so I disabled automatic restart so I could read the error I was receiving. It was fine for another day, and as of yesterday I'm lucky to get Windows loaded and to the desktop before my computer crashes.

So far no one thing has been able to replicate it one hundred percent of the time. Sometimes it'll work for hours, but most of the time now it only works for a few minutes. Sometimes going idle doesn't do anything at all, when it works long enough to enter sleep.

Now, here's the odd thing. The error code I get from the data dumps is something like 00000x16. The display driver stopped responding and was unable to recover. I've had this problem before, I had to replace the video card. But a lot of the time now the computer won't get past POST. It short beeps six times, which seems to mean a keyboard controller error.

I'm almost certain my card is at fault, but POST is causing me to hesitate, and the several people I've asked have given conflicting answers. Can anyone assure me of one or the other? Or are both possibly going bad at the same time?

Nothing has overheated, and I have a large enough PSU.

CPU: i5 2500-k
GPU: Radeon HD 6950
Motherboard: AsRock p67 Extreme4
PSU: Corsair TX750
My cooling is a Scythe Mugen Rev. B, so everything is running very cool.

 

[Twoboxer]

First thoughts are this sounds like a progressive failure of the vid card or the psu. Just as you suspected.

The only way I know to choose between the two is to substitute a known working part. (or put one of your parts in someone else's PC.) If you have even a low-power psu you can swap in, or your old vid card (or someone else's) to swap in, you can probably answer your question.

Anything else would be guesswork, which is why you're getting conflicting answers. From this distance, I would suspect psu as the more likely culprit, but you seem to have a "feel" for things. And if you're thinking vid card - as I might if I were using that PC - that would reverse the odds.

I hope you can scavenge or borrow a part. If not, a spare psu is never a bad thing to have in reserve, so I'd probably go there first.

 

[ilysaml]

Well, for me i never suspect the PSU specially if it's a Corsair.
Anyway, you can download HW monitor and monitor your voltage regulations see if it delivers the required voltage in the 12V rail or not.
Another thing i would be seeing, the RAM... try to run MEMTEST 86 and see if it reports any erros.
Also if you're overclocking..revert everything back to default.
The display driver issue is related to a windows bug with drivers, and it could possibly be the drivers of the HD 6950 is conflicting with windows, try to update to the latest CCC from AMD.