My friend has a 7950gx2 in Charlotte and I'm in Raleigh. She needs to finish up a photo job and is freaking out. Basically what happens from what i can tell over the phone is when it tries to boot it gets to the XP boot up screen then goes hay-wire. The screen gets all jumbled and splits. Finally it goes blue/black then resets. We tried turning off the power completely and rebooting but this problem keeps happening. My hope is that it's a video driver issue, but we can't update the driver without getting into XP. The video card might have died, but i don't see why it would have. She's currently calling geeksquad to come over with a cheap 7300gs or something and swap them to see if they could update the drivers that way, then put the 7950gx2 back in, and see if that works. Another idea i had was to take the 7950gx2 out of one pci-e slot, and put it in the pci-e slot next to it. Will that cause the computer to "uninstall" the old driver and ask for a driver because it recognizes it as "new hardware"? What other options do i have? Thanks!

-It might be another issue like the psu, or mobo but i just assumed the video card because the screen gets scrambled and from experience whenever i have video card driver issues, that's what happens.

[Edited on November 13, 2007 at 7:01 PM. Reason : ..]

11/13/2007 6:54:40 PM

tell her to try and start up in safe mode.

11/13/2007 7:03:58 PM

Geeksquad said it might be a memory bandwidth issue, so the card might be bad. Hopefully this isn't the case.

11/13/2007 7:10:33 PM

def. sounds like a driver issue... sounds like the options you listed would be a good starting point.

i would try swaping slots if the motherboard has 2x PCIe x16 slots

then try swapping out a different card

def. try to reset the driver before getting sucked into buying a new card

11/13/2007 8:33:43 PM

Quote :

"Geeksquad said it might be a memory bandwidth issue, so the card might be bad. Hopefully this isn't the case."

dumbest fucking thing I've heard.

11/13/2007 9:25:06 PM

^Yeah i usually don't trust them. Maybe he didn't say memory bandwidth. I think he said something about the onboard memory on the video card. Like the memory is corrupt or something. I don't know. He said it's one of the common problems when video cards go bad.

11/13/2007 9:32:35 PM

the memory could be corrupt on the video card, in fact a lot of 7900's suffered from this, but generally the failure wasn't so severe. if there's onboard memory, tell her how to set onboard as the primary video adapater in the bios.

11/13/2007 10:37:09 PM

^You mean integrated video?

I just talked to her, and she said the geek squad guy was there and ran a bunch of tests, and the gpu was just getting way too hot and overheating. So something is wrong with the thermal paste or whatever connecting the chips and the headsinks. How easy is it to reset the heatsinks on a video card? It's a MSI card i believe. Can i just buy heatsinks and do this myself?

11/13/2007 11:12:48 PM

reseating the heatsink on a gpu is no different than a HSF on a cpu, chances are the HS just needs to be lapped, or you need to add some BGA heatsinks to the gfx card memory

if it's a 7900, they do make 3rd party HSF's

[Edited on November 13, 2007 at 11:40 PM. Reason : m]

11/13/2007 11:39:25 PM

Quote :

"So something is wrong with the thermal paste or whatever connecting the chips and the headsinks"

I doubt that's the real problem. It's probably poor circulation in the case. Geek Squad always has to make crap more difficult than it needs to be.

Just open up your case and position a floor fan blowing into it. If that fixes it, buy more/better case fans.


If it really is the video card's cooling solution at fault, I use one of these, and can recommend it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118117

I also use these, but more for the novelty of it than any belief that they actually do anything:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118220

11/13/2007 11:50:45 PM

honestly a new video card probably would have cost less than a geek squad visit

11/14/2007 12:29:30 AM

Quote :

"Diagnostic Agents will determine why your computer is acting up and root out the problem through a series of system checks and diagnostics. Once the riddle is solved, we'll advise you on the best course of action to get your computer back in shape. In Home: $159 In Store: $59"

>.<;;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125070

11/14/2007 12:41:37 AM

She had a photo deadline and had to get it done that night. No one else knew how to swap the video cards that she could get over so the 100$ for the geek squad guy to swap it out with a new video card was worth it.

11/14/2007 2:52:24 AM