[Help Needed] Saphire HD 7970 Dual-X OC Possible hardware failure?

[kenowhite]

I Recently bought a Saphire HD 7970 OC of a site called lambdatek and when it Arrived i felt like testing it out on max payne 3 with it on bios 2 (at that time it had Catalyst 12.8 drivers installed). 1 hour later i was just browsing the internet and the card just randomly displayed black and white lines after a few seconds of blackness on the screen.

I thought it was a driver problem so i used ATIman to do a clean install of Catalyst 12.9 Beta after 12.8's removal. It looked like the card was stable again after a heaven benchmark success on the default OC on bios 2, so after just toying around in minecraft i closed the app and a white screen flashed and then turned to blackness after with the screen displaying (No Video signal) again and requires a long hold of the power button to get it up again.

Tomorrow again just using sony vegas lags like hell and causes my system to lock up for a few secs. I used ATIman again and downloaded catalyst 12.4 and installed it. i got a BSOD half way through so i tried again at worked. Every thing seemed fine again then i done a small OC to 1200 on the core, 1450 on the mem and 1.195 v and tried heaven again and it froze on stage 11 and i needed to reboot to get windows up again.

Then i switched to bios 1 and keeping an oc to 1125 on core, 1450 on mem and 1.19 v tried heaven again and this time froze on stage 10 and it took me about 5 on and off's long holds on the power button before i could receive a signal from the card to boot into windows and type this message. What do you guys think the problem is? it's a bit hard to think it's the drivers given i've tried so many. Games like sleeping dogs, MW3, ACR, LOL, Max Payne 3 play great without artifacts or lag with pretty high framerates on max settings.

I would just like to see what do you guys think the problem is, thanks in advance...
if it's the card i will opt for an RMA.

Specs:

i7 2600k @4.5 GHz 1.26 vcore
P8z68-v pro/gen-3
Gskill Ripjaws 2x4gb 8GB 1600mhz
Crucial M4-128gb
GS800 800 watt corsair PSU

 

[kenowhite]

when i turn the computer sideways/horizontally it seems fine and can run through games and benchmarks flawlessly. Vertically upright, the screen starts freezing in Heaven/3dMark and randomly in games... What could be the cause or solution to this?

 

[JJ1217]

Maybe the weight of the card might be pulling cooling components away from where it needs to be, so when its vertical, it might be having heat issues. Try and install speedfan, and then tell us the temps when its sideways, and then tell us the temps when its vertical.

 

[kenowhite]

The temps i got when the desktop is upright was 55c when doing a GPU-z render test, then after 3 min the card went retarded displaying stripes in the color theme of my desktop background and needed a (hold on the power button to reboot). I'm now running it again with it sideways now for about 15-20 min and nothing has happened so far the temps are 56c. Also when i first got the card in vertical/upright position, a little shake on the desktop would distort the windows animation and text. I'm guessing now maybe it's not the cooler as temps don't go above 60c, its something in the card maybe disconnecting from the circuitry because it's loose? Or my card just simply hates gravity. Any suggestions that could help me rule out the problem or fix it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[kenowhite]

Idle temps for both are the same

 

[JJ1217]

12.9 is also a buggy driver update, downgrade to 12.8. 12.9 is probably worse than 12.8 at this current point.

Make sure your PCB is correctly screwed to the fan shroud, don't tighten the screws too tight or the PCB might crack.

Make sure you undo those overclocks, displaying stripes is normally a screen of death and usually symbolizes a too far overclock -- a crash of the GPU. It doesn't really damage it, it usually automatically resets your clocks -- which is why you managed to run it for 15-20 minutes after that.

Past that, the only real thing you can do is RMA it through your store, if you haven't waited too long.

Sorry for not replying, I didn't get a notification when you replied back.