- May 17, 2013
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I have a Radeon HD7970 that's about 6 years old and never had any issues until a couple of days ago. Running dual monitors, I exited out of a game which should have taken me to my desktop, but instead the main screen where the game was being displayed just stayed black and then a few seconds later the monitor went to sleep. I waited a few minutes and no change so I decided to reboot. The second monitor was working fine the whole time this was going on. I actually used the second monitor to reboot through Windows Start menu.
When the PC rebooted I had no video at all. Both monitors went to sleep and will not wake up, even for a second when I first power it on.
At this point I opened my PC and verified the GPU fan was spinning, which it was. I took the GPU out and tested it in another PC and it worked fine. Tried putting it back in the original PC and same problem, no monitors. I took the GPU out again and tried with on-board, and that worked fine. While running with on-board I ran three separate memory tests with my RAM in various configurations, no errors.
I took my whole PC to a friend's house so I could try his GPU (GTX 980TI) in my PC. It works fine. I try another GPU (GTX 460) he has laying around, it too works fine. He tried my GPU in his main PC, it doesn't work. He has the same issue as I have, the monitors don't wake up. Then he tried my GPU in his second PC and it works fine.
So we ended up just trading the HD7970 for a GTX 460,
This is the strangest PC problem I think I've ever encountered.
TLDR;
My GPU only works on certain PCs. It worked fine for 6 years, and then suddenly stopped. No updates or hardware changes were performed recently.
When the PC rebooted I had no video at all. Both monitors went to sleep and will not wake up, even for a second when I first power it on.
At this point I opened my PC and verified the GPU fan was spinning, which it was. I took the GPU out and tested it in another PC and it worked fine. Tried putting it back in the original PC and same problem, no monitors. I took the GPU out again and tried with on-board, and that worked fine. While running with on-board I ran three separate memory tests with my RAM in various configurations, no errors.
I took my whole PC to a friend's house so I could try his GPU (GTX 980TI) in my PC. It works fine. I try another GPU (GTX 460) he has laying around, it too works fine. He tried my GPU in his main PC, it doesn't work. He has the same issue as I have, the monitors don't wake up. Then he tried my GPU in his second PC and it works fine.
So we ended up just trading the HD7970 for a GTX 460,
This is the strangest PC problem I think I've ever encountered.
TLDR;
My GPU only works on certain PCs. It worked fine for 6 years, and then suddenly stopped. No updates or hardware changes were performed recently.
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