6950 dead after updating to 11.9 drivers?

[CDRjayb]

Seems I have no luck with GFX cards...second one to fail in 6 months.

OS: Win 7 64 bit
GFX:6950 2gig

Here's the story. It's been working perfectly since install until yesterday. I bought BF3, came home and began the install....2 hours later after updates and farting about with Origin I finally get it installed. Fire up the game and get a message "you have 11.2 drivers..you need 11.9" I hit continue and the game starts. I figure no worries I'll update the drivers after having a play. I get to the options screen in game and set gfx to Ultra to see what i can get away with. Hit start campaign (or something to that effect) and it begins to load. I see the loading message and figure all is good but after a minute of this I realise the game has frozen. I wait another minute to be sure I'm not being impatient but clearly frozen. I hit alt+tab, nothing. Ctrl+alt+delete, nothing. Ok...reset button is the only option i have. The PC restarts fine.

Soooooo.....I decide the gfx drivers are the issue and grab the latest fron ATI's web site. Install them and restart the PC......no image. I can hear the pc booting up normally...wheel calibrates, windows startup melody etc but no image. I do the usual limited attempts to get it going....Unplug leads try again, take out card and reset. Nothing worked. This morning I put in an old Nvidea (9800) card and it's working fine, so clearly the ATI card is either stuffed or their is some software conflict (I'm guessing and hoping on the latter). I removed the ATI drivers and rebooted with 6950 back in the pc but still no display.

Any thoughts? Could the card be ok and it's just a matter of removing software? Doubt it but it sure beats waiting for a warranty return.

[XstollieX]

Are you getting the boot sequence images? All the crap before Windows begins to load? If so, have you tried running the card in safe mode?

[CDRjayb]

No I get nothing at all. I've logged a support ticket with Sapphire and their response was "Please update motherboard BIOS to last version and clear motherboard CMOS then try again."

I've tried to update the bios using Qflash (MB is Gigabyte Gigabyte EX58-UD3r) but I got an error message "wrong ID on disk" and backed out. I'm now trying to figure out why that's not working.

[CDRjayb]

I've now figured out how to update the bios but sadly it's not fixed my issue. At least i now know how to update the BIOS.

[Apoptosis]

Doesn't sound good... Not sure why the driver would cause it to fail though...

If you get it working again you need to use 11.10 Preview 3 drivers for BF3 - http://forums.legitreviews.com/about37469.html

[XstollieX]

Seems I have no luck with GFX cards...second one to fail in 6 months.

Is it the second card dead in the same system? If so may want to look into a deeper issue.. What power supply are you running? How are voltages on it? Could be a complete coincidence in timing of things.

[CDRjayb]

No the second card is working fine. It's an 9800 GTX which makes a software problem with the ATI drivers at least seem possible. The PSU is a Thermaltake Toughpower 750. I'm not sure about voltages.

Edit: Just re read your post...yes this is the same system the last card died in...similar symptoms too. It was out of warranty so I bought a new one at the time, so I assumed wear and tear were to blame.

[XstollieX]

No the second card is working fine. It's an 9800 GTX which makes a software problem with the ATI drivers at least seem possible. The PSU is a Thermaltake Toughpower 750. I'm not sure about voltages.

Edit: Just re read your post...yes this is the same system the last card died in...similar symptoms too. It was out of warranty so I bought a new one at the time, so I assumed wear and tear were to blame.

I would start looking at other components.. Two cards dead in one system seems like to much of a coincidence to me

[lordvic]

I agree wtih XstollieX, no way two cards die within six months like that.
I'm suspecting the power supply CAN most likely be the issue - might want to do some testing to make sure the voltages (for the +12v, etc) are stable and does not spike or dip too much.
Thermaltake Power supplies are usually pretty decent in quality, but you never know...in my opinion, they aren't as good as Corsair, Antec, or Seasonic units.
How long have you had your power supply for? 5 years? more? less?
The 9800GTX has a maximum power draw of 140W, while the HD 6950 has a typical gaming load of 140W and maximum of 200W, so the power isn't too much of a difference when gaming...

I also noticed that there are several different versions of the ToughPower 750W. If you have one of the modular cable versions, make sure the cables are un-damaged and connected securely.