Brand New Radeon 7950 IceQ 3gb Turbo = PC wont boot

[Honestly3k]

Hi All,

I purchased a Radeon HD 7950 3gb Turbo Edition and received on Saturday 29th December. Tried to install the card into the motherboard to find it would not fit as the space available was too little (its a long card).

So purchased a new case from Overclockers which i picked up from the Depot yesterday (4th Jan) and installed the components including the new GPU into the board.

Upon switching the system on i was greeted with a black screen (no post or bios loading) and a distinct 1 long beep and 3 short beeps from the motherboard onboard speaker.

Upon researching it appears this speaker beep sequence stands for 'Faulty video card RAM' or such like.

I have tried installing into the second PCIe slot and initially it worked fine and i went into windows, installed the latest 7950 ATI Catalyst Control Center/Drivers. After that the system hung in windows and the black screen returned, with the 4 beeps.

I reset the computer and it just starts loading windows and freezes before it gets to the desktop and black screen and beeps again. Now wont go into windows at all. Just keeps doing this!

I have since tried my old card (HD Radeon 4870) in the same setup and the pc boots and operates fine. I am writing this from the PC in question.

Some of my specs:

Phenom II x4 3.2 955 BE @ O.C 3.6ghz
16gb Corsair Vengence ddr3 1600mhz
Asus M4A79XTD Evo Mainboard
Vertex2 120gb SSD
1TB Sata HDD
Corsair ZT Series 750W PSU


Thanks in advance for any input!

Chris

 

[Honestly3k]

Tried the card in my brothers PC and it works no problems so it looks like i have a compatibility issue with the motherboard.

Board is running the latest edition of BIOS which was supposed to solve issues with some graphics cards apparantly but hey doesnt like this one.

So looking like new motherboard and maybe CPU time.

Anyone else have odd issues with this EVO motherboard?

 

[eco47]

Hi,

I have exactly the same issue with the same card bought from the overclockers

when I bought the card, I was using a phenom II system am2+. when I booted, the screen was black and the PC was constantly restarting it self. now I upgraded to a new system and I thought the problem was gone but apparently not .. it has nothing to do with ur PC since I tried it on two different setups. it worked when u switched the PCI slot coz u basically removed it and inserted back. thats how I got my card to work right now. I was gaming last nite and I just turned the PC on and when the same thing happened as my amd system I realised that its the 7950. I tried everything but the PC did not boot on both system until I removed the card, booted the PC, shut it down, put the card back on, and hallelujah! it again works now ... I will contact them for RMA I guess ... Im so sure its the card.

 

[eco47]

I have the HIS Iceq btw.

 

[Honestly3k]

Thanks for the heads up Eco47, at least we can take some solace in the misery that we both have the same problem!

What motherboards have you been using to try it?

My brother has an AS Rock (basically an Asus). Mine is an ASUS.

Strange he played around 5-10mins on battlefield 3 with the card in his PC and no issues.

Im really stuck on what to do now!

How long have you had the card?

Do you get same beeps on startup too indicating faulty video RAM?

 

[eco47]

well .. as I said, I was using another system when I bought the card two months ago to replace my gtx 260 SLIs, which was an am2+ ddr2 (gigabyte mobo) system phenom II. when I put the card in, everything was fine then when I restarted the PC, the system did not boot. the PC did not. it literally powered off and on non stop until I removed the power cable. then I kept trying and the same thing happened. without the card, the system booted then I tried again to put it back on and it worked fine. so when it happened I just knew I had the remove the card, boot the PC shut down from the windows, put the card back in, but I thought it was because my system was gettin old. but anyways now I have an i5 system and 1155 asus mobo. today the same thing happened... PC did not beep at all on my asus, but the same issue was there, PC was constantly restarting until I was mad and I removed the power cable, which seemed the only solution. on both systems, the card force reseted my bios, on my new one, it even said new CPU detected after I removed the card and powered on using the onboard dvi. so, once the card was out, both systems worked absolutely perfect. Im sure urs one will too. so I actually dont know the reason, but it seems like a matter of chance.. it will sometimes boot and sometimes wont... and if it decides to not to, no matter what I do, until I remove the card, PC will not start. I will fist get some bios beeps, which resets the bios to factory settings, then the infinite circle of unlimited restarts starts ... both systems powers on and off and on and off. screen is totally black btw.

 

[eco47]

installed the latest 7950 ATI Catalyst Control Center/Drivers. After that the system hung in windows and the black screen returned, with the 4 beeps.

that when the bios reset the factroy settings...

I had the same issue too.. took me hours.. the 12.11 beta 11 it was .. took me hours to solve ... and it seems the trouble is not away though ...

 

[eco47]

installed the latest 7950 ATI Catalyst Control Center/Drivers. After that the system hung in windows and the black screen returned, with the 4 beeps.

that when the bios reset the factroy settings...

I had the same issue too.. took me hours.. the 12.11 beta 11 it was .. took me hours to solve ... and it seems the trouble is not away though ...

try to do the same thing as me, remove the card, run the PC then put it back.. also if you have the driver issue yet, windows wont boot. I used the system restore.. again and again ... finally from the safe mode, I uninstalled them, used the driver sweeper the clean the drivers, then used several registry cleaners and ccleaner to clean the registry.. there were a lottt of ati related junk registry files. I feel like, or I think, the 7950 card has its own bios relate

 

[Honestly3k]

Just thought i would give an update on the outcome of this for anyone else who may have this problem.

Wanted to make sure if i had a faulty card or faulty motherboard so went the cheaper option of sending the card back for testing rather than spending out on a new board only to maybe find i had the same issue.

I RMA'd the item back to overclockers.co.uk and they tested it fully with no faults detected. So got an email sent to me detailing this-

(Graphics card passes all Tests with no issues, Tests Run: Crysis WarHead, 3D Mark 11, Furmark, 3Dmark Vantage, AVP, Lost Planet 2, Stone Benchmark MSI Kombuster, Resident Evil Benchmark, ATI Mecha, ATI Ladybug, Streetfighter Benchmark, Stone Giant and heaven benchmark tool, these were all tested at 1920 x 1200 resolution running maximum settings, tested on DX9, DX10 and DX11 where applicable)

They even returned the item in the post free of charge,

Thanks Overclockers

I am going to contact ASUS to see if this fault has been reported before and what can be done about it