Dead GPU?

Hardware Hub GPU
1

Afternoon Ladies and Gentleman!

I have a question about a GPU I bought a while back from Kijiji.

The card was/is a MSI R9 270x 4gb edition and he was selling it for $15 because it was not working on his acer tower. I figured I'd grab it as a gamble and if it didn't work I'd have a $15 wall ornament.

So far the card seems to work if running off the Standard Display Adapter drivers Windows provides but when I install the proper drivers from the site it will only work up until the Windows splash screen and then it just sits there on a black screen.

I have tried all different versions of the drivers from the site and even the ones that came on the included disk and all give the same issues. When I try booting into any Linux os it does about the same thing only without showing any slash screen or boot loader.

Aside from the drivers I have tried both of the bios with no changes and I have even tried flashing both the bios which changed nothing!

I think all together I have tried it on 6 different systems and they all have the same problem.

I have inspected the card carefully and I am not seeing any physical damage or blown capacitors.

I'm running out of ideas so does anyone have any idea on what is going on here or if there is a way it can be fixed?

Thanks for reading!

Cheers

2

My HD6870 is having exactly the same issue and I gave it for dead and I think that you can't do anything to fix it unfortunately.

3

That's to bad!

Can't say I'm that surprised though.

Thanks for the reply!

4

I am not familiar with that technique at all, but i know it is possible...
You may want to try and flash the GPU BIOS... It will either work, or will not...

5

Yeah this card has 2 different bios(s) so I tried flashing them both one at a time.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

6

Then there is nothing you can do...
It works with the generic drivers, so physically its ok. You have tried resetting the software, it doesn't work...
Well, there is some issue between hardware-software communication... Nothing you can do...

7

Yeah I kind of figured as much.

Thanks for the reply!

8

$15 for a coaster isn't bad :P

2 Likes
9

My desk has limited space so I usually just use floppy disks! I will be hanging the card on my wall for decoration though =)

1 Like
10

Hey as a last resort you can try baking the card in the oven. Look for examples of this being done on YouTube.

11

I suppose that's attempt-able due to the state of the card but it seems not to be a problem with the physical hardware connections but a problem with the hardware to software communication, if he has time to waste it could be worth the small chance.

12

Yeah it's not a hardware issue but even if it was that is not really good advice to be giving people unless the card is not worth getting properly repaired. There are a couple things you can do if you control your temperatures and direct them at certain areas but heating the entire card a lot of the time can break things that otherwise might have been easily fixed. I appreciate your reply though!

Check out some of this guys videos, he explains why re-flowing is not a proper fix a hell of a lot better then I can =)

Cheers!

13

Maybe try this because it couldn't hurt at this point.

1 Like
14

Thanks I'll check out that video tonight after work!

1 Like
15

Sounds like that when ever it shifts from 2d. aka DOS/boot up. to 3d rendering you crash. try starting up in safe mode and post some logs, theres often alot of information to gain from those.