Another dying 7900 GT

[The Codfather]

I thought I'd escape the spate of dying 7900's going round at the moment but I unfortunately was wrong, I purchased an XFX 7900 GT the other week it's been running fine I've run, Half Life 2/Lost Coast with no problem and hours of Battlefield 2 over the weekend and the desktop have all been compeltely problem free (even with clocks a little higher than stock..)

When I went to play FEAR though it was a different story.. I loaded up the game to try some Multi-player, noticed artefacting, immeditately quit and when I returned to the desktop I got corrupt menus and a blinking desktop (blank, image, blank, image) I restarted, reduced the clocks to the stock XFX clocks and tried FEAR again. Problem gone.
I then returned the card back to my clocks and the problem was also gone. Lovely and smooth and artefact free. I must've played for 3 hours or so, some multiplayer then single player, great throughout no problems, until I went to quit and returned to the desktop to be met with the blinking screen once again. Everything I've seen is common of the batch of 7900's that are circulating at the moment, I noticed forum member Clunk is also having the same problems with his 7900GTX albeit slightly more severely than me.

I'm just wondering what to do now. As I've changed the stock cooler to a Zalman is my warranty done for? I'm completely able to refit the stock cooler if needed but I'm just lost as to what to do, am I going to be stuck with a card that'll make my desktop go crazy and me have to restart after everytime I play FEAR?

Help

[scrandman]

This worked for me & another guy too. I'm on the pre-overclocked Extreme edition:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=76854

[jimborae]

Yep it did work for me and I've not had another problem since, I'm still convinced that its to do with the latency timings used on the memory chips. At the end of the day my cards work perfectly 24/7 with a slight memory overclock so I'm happy bunny with no need to rma them.

[uk_sam]

Yes these cards seem to throw up problems even when overclocked by the manufacturer. The cards are very cheap but I'm wary about buying one.

[The Codfather]

This worked for me & another guy too. I'm on the pre-overclocked Extreme edition:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=76854

Cheers, I'll give it a go.

My card is 470/1370 by default, when I use "Detect Optimal" it runs at 531/1612, no game has problems running at those clocks, not even FEAR, it's only when I quit out of FEAR (no other game) the desktop goes wacko.

So should I use otpimal + 5mhz on the mem?

[Edit] Well.. that sure was fun I upped the mem 5mhz and was unable to open start menu, then the screen starts filling with artefacts. Restart, clock down, same thing, restart, clock down, same thing.

I've reset it to default clocks now. I really need to get this card RMA'd but I don't know what I'll do if I'm refused because of the stock cooler change.. I don't have another £200 for a new GPU that may be faulty yet again

[jimborae]

Tried upping the memory clock to 1510?

[The Codfather]

Well it was already running 1612 on the memory and had no problem with endless hours of BF2, I don't think it's right that I should have to underclock a brand new GPU in order to make it work.

[Metroid]

I got a 7900 GT 520 /750 replacement from XFX last week.

As far as I'm testing it looks very well in all the tests.

Some of the cards are working with artifacts and Vram burnt, it is quite a big problem if you play games at higher resolutions.

[The Codfather]

Hm, well FEAR is proabably the most taxing game I have and it's running at Max settings and 4xAA 8xAF, which is probably why it's the only game causing it to error as the game quits?

[jimborae]

Well it was already running 1612 on the memory and had no problem with endless hours of BF2, I don't think it's right that I should have to underclock a brand new GPU in order to make it work.

Err you're missing the point that when you overclock these cards it relaxes the memory timings unless you use a tool such as RivaTuner. The more you overclock the more it relaxes the timings, at least that's what I've read.

And you're not "underclocking" you're just overclocking less than you were.

[The Codfather]

I know what I meant

I did try what you mean though, I moved the mem up a tiny bit from where I had it clocked and when testing the settings I got crazy artefacting and crashes.

Just got to wait for a reply from Scan on here to see what I should or rather, what I can do with the card.

[kalniel]

Cheers, I'll give it a go.

My card is 470/1370 by default, when I use "Detect Optimal" it runs at 531/1612, no game has problems running at those clocks, not even FEAR, it's only when I quit out of FEAR (no other game) the desktop goes wacko.

So should I use otpimal + 5mhz on the mem?

[Edit] Well.. that sure was fun I upped the mem 5mhz and was unable to open start menu, then the screen starts filling with artefacts. Restart, clock down, same thing, restart, clock down, same thing.

I've reset it to default clocks now. I really need to get this card RMA'd but I don't know what I'll do if I'm refused because of the stock cooler change.. I don't have another £200 for a new GPU that may be faulty yet again

You could also be refused for overclocking the card, which is usually a warrenty buster.

As far as the product is concerned, it is doing the job as advertised (ie stock settings). That it can't run outside of what it's advertised to do isn't the products fault, and they can't be responsible for any damage you've done replacing the cooler or running it outside of it's specifications (overclocking).

[The Codfather]

Understandably, but I know the problems I'm seeing are a common fault with this card at present and they happen even when the card is at stock clocks.

Everything in this thread is making me out to be some idiot who doesn't know what I'm dealing with, I'm not new to PC components I know what I'm doing. I fitted the cooler so I could quiet and reduce temps of the card, no damage could have been done when I fitted it as in normal siuations the card behaves fine, it's only when running high powered shader mark 3.0 games that the problem arises as is common of the failing 7900's at the moment.

I've submitted an online query to Scan, so I'll see where it goes with that.

[kalniel]

Scan may well still help out, as they're nice like that, but if you know what you are doing then you should really know that doing all these things does void your warrenty and that when you take things into your own hands you should be prepared to deal with the problems yourself. I'm not saying that you caused the damage by replacing the cooler or anything, but you should know that that's the sort of thing you should only do either when the card is out of warrenty anyway, or when you are so confident you won't need to be claiming on the warrenty.

[The Codfather]

I did know, which is why I fitted the cooler and clocked.. I just wasn't expecdting the card to die in the first week of ownership is all.
If I'd know the 79's were having a bad time at the moment I wouldn't have done anything until I was 100% sure it worked and infact, if I hadn't bought FEAR just the other week along with the parts I wouldn't have noticed the card was faulty until much later on I presume.

[kalniel]

*nods* FEAR/Oblivion do seem to be really stressing out the 79 parts.