Problem with Sapphire HD6950 2GB card

[surmav]

Hello!

My Sapphire HD6950 2gb card isn't working anymore, after booting PC the monitor screen stays just black but i heared how windows started up and windows welcome sound, this means my pc boots up but just screen stays black. I connected monitor cable to my integrated videocard and everything working fine. This means my HD6950 is broken :O?

 

[yanjustin98]

What power supply do you have? What CPU? Since you have integrated graphics you probably have some sort of fairly modernized CPU. Your CPU shouldn't be bottlenecking your video card, and this probably has almost nothing to do with bottlenecking anyways. I would say that either your card burned out, or a wire came loose or something else on your card got short circuited. I would definitely open up your system and check out what is going on. If you can't see determine anything that you can fix, then I would say that maybe your video card has been a lemon or something.

 

[surmav]

I got Corsair TX750w PSU, AMD phenom II x4 b45 3.1ghz, everything worked fine before, also had smooth battlefield 3 gameplay at ultra so im sure cpu didnt bottleneck it. This black screen thing happend then when i switched switch on card from position 0 to 1, i did that before too to flash 6950 to 6970, wasnt problems at all. I also did some research that you can switch on graphic card bios when system is running. Last time when i changed switch pc restarted and then black screen came up and now there i am... Mybe Bios got messed on graphic card or something? Im not sure.

 

[saratj1]

dont think you can switch it while its running. I would try reflashing it with the bios you should have saved when you flashed it the first time, or a stock bios for your card from techpowerup.com

 

[Wisecracker]

dont think you can switch it while its running. I would try reflashing it with the bios you should have saved when you flashed it the first time, or a stock bios for your card from techpowerup.com

This.

Bold move flipping a powered BIOS switch ...

 

[surmav]

dont think you can switch it while its running. I would try reflashing it with the bios you should have saved when you flashed it the first time, or a stock bios for your card from techpowerup.com

Can't flash it back while having black screen

 

[yoji]

I made the change you did (change ROM from 6950 to 6970) but I recognised it was a gamble.... 2 saying come to mind..

"dont gamble with anything you cant afford to lose"

"if it aint broke... dont fix it"

Having got it to work - why mess with it? each time, you risk breaking it.

Anyway - the article here (which I guess is the article you used?) does give soem recovery advice..... have you tried that?

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

Good luck - let us know how you get on

Cheers

 

[surmav]

On my mobo i got only 1 PCI-e x16 slot, im wondering if im running rightnow with my Integrated graphics which is on my motherborad and i got my 6950 in my PCI-e x16 slot, first pcie slot stands for 0, second for 1 etc.. So if i unlock at dos promt "-unlockrom 0" and flash at rom 0, it will try to flash my integrated or still the graphic card that i have in 0 PCI-e slot?

Edit: Oh its saying "No vaild adapter could be found! Video BIOS not updated!", so it seems that i can't flash this way.

Edit: ow i discovered something weird. I have my old HD4670 and when i installed it into my PCIe slot and started PC while having monitor cable connected to integrated graphics of motherboard then screen stayd black, it only worked when i had cable connected to HD4670. So im guessing this 4670 said somehow to the system that do not use mobo because "im" connected into pcie?
So mybe my 6950 bios got ereased at all? Because if i had it connected into PCIe slot i was able to use my Integrated graphics of motherboard, 6950 fans still were spinning but card stayd cold.

 

[yoji]

ow i discovered something weird. I have my old HD4670 and when i installed it into my PCIe slot and started PC while having monitor cable connected to integrated graphics of motherboard then screen stayd black, it only worked when i had cable connected to HD4670. So im guessing this 4670 said somehow to the system that do not use mobo because "im" connected into pcie?

Yes - thats generally how it works... if a card is detected in the graphics slot - the onboard graphics is auto disabled.

So have you tried the recovery solution as described in the link I posted? or you doing your own thing?

Cheers

 

[surmav]

This is saying to switch bios switch to 2 and restart PC, but i get black screen, system boots but screen stays black as it was before. Both 2 and 1 switch are doing this to me.

 

[yoji]

This is saying to switch bios switch to 2 and restart PC, but i get black screen, system boots but screen stays black as it was before. Both 2 and 1 switch are doing this to me.

Sounds like you running out of options....

From your description - the graphics card is not being detected now? since you said the onboard graphics has become enabled?
Best you can try - is to allow the PC to boot using the onboard graphics (so you can see whats going on)
use the ROM flashing tool... hopefully it can still detect the graphics card in the PCI slot?
and flash the BIOS with your backed up version which you know works.

If the tool gets confused and tries to flash the onboard... or it just cant see the graphics card... you are going to need to pretty specialist help.... with that or the card really is FUBAR

Good luck.

 

[surmav]

Wow really nice helpful people here, thanks for trying to help! I gonna return it to the shop and see what they are saying about this, just gonna say that card didnt boot as i installed it. I had change to use this card 2 days before i , these 2 days were amazing .

"dont gamble with anything you cant afford to lose"

"if it aint broke... dont fix it"

Yes yoji your right. I made bad mistake and learned alot from it!

 

[saratj1]

Can't flash it back while having black screen

You said your onboard video worked right? then you can doit or just use the card as a nice paperweight

 

[surmav]

Im wondering if i gonna RMA it should i tell them that i touched bios switch or should i just say it was already defected? Or i could just say that after switching BIOS switch graphic card wasn't regonized anymore.