Dead graphics card symptoms?

So I went ahead and bought a XFX HD 5830 off a guy on eBay (he is going to refund me), but I am just wondering the real way to see if a card is dead?

He said it was working but flickered at startup and that was it, it worked, so I assumed this was just the basic VGA and monitor sync.

Upon receiving it I found that the card did not boot up or recognise at all. There was no boot up spin, no basic VGA output, nothing. Only the fan whirring around.

Taking out the power plugs caused it to fully spin up, so I assume some drivers are working.

Does this mean the chip really is completed gone? What other problems can kill a card? The guy said he does not game or use video editing, and the card is very young. So bit confused, could it just be a fluke?

I took out all other connectors on my motherboard, including my sound card to reduce the chance of short circuiting the card. Still nothing, I tried the HDMI connector on my down stairs TV, nothing.

I can't see why the card would give nothing if its young, and hardly used. The guy selling it seems genuine, his selling history doesn't involve much computing, his is the only component he's sold.

When I had faulty cards in the past I would see they would run insanely hot, be very loud full spin constant, or produce some type of error on screen after Windows turns to the ATI drivers instead of basic VGA.

I cleared CMOS, I have good supply. Corsair TX650.

Could it really be just a dead card so suddenly? Or is it something on my side. PCI-E 2.1 is backwards compatible with PCI-E 2.0 right (unless HD 5830 IS PCI-E 2.0?)

Thanks.

I have cleared the CMOS using jumper, but still no response from the graphics card. I had this previously with my HD 4870 and also my HD 4830, and for some reason after removing all my components, rebooting, then installing them back again it worked.

Could it be that the BIOS is some how not detecting it? How would I get it to detect it at least? Because when its inserted, my onboard must be automatically disabled, so I can't see whats going on. I don't have the option to enable it as well as the GPU, because it does all that automatically.

ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3

This does not look good at all for the graphics card unfortunately. Try it in a different PC and also boot the system up with a known working card, with this problematic card in the second PCI-E slot. That way you can see if it is detected at all by the system.

Cheers for the advice, yeah the card is well and truly gone. It is detected (I used onboard) drivers installed, Windows states "it is working" but no output, dead chip it looks.

XFX are notorious for failing. If you're having the issues you describe, it's probably dead.

That's the problem with eBay purchases. I think when it comes to GPU's u can't beat a good warranty. It does not have to be long as they need upgrading every couple of years anyway. I have always found XFX customer service good and there products reliable.

Yeah Ebay purchases can be a pain with warranty problems. I echo the comment on XFX, good support, never had an issue with them.