My AMD 7950 XFX black edition is acting strangly

[destro521]

Hey guys,

My cards are XFX 7950 in crossfire and they have been running strangely for around 6 months please help me
My specs are:

i7 3770k @ stock clocks boosts up to 4.13 GHz
XFX 7950 black edition * 2 in Crossfire
Asrock z77 OC formula
XFX 850w power supply

I have noticed that the cards crash with small squares appearing first before a crash that can sometimes result in a Driver display crash and recovery or a complete screen freeze.

The usage during games starts at 30% -50% usage and then strangely spikes the usage up to 99 - 100% in 5 seconds with the temperatures going from 60 Celsius to 107 Celsius in 5 seconds as well. I have not noticed anything unusual with the Voltages either

I never used to have this problem and haven't run too many games in crossfire for months and when I had taken the 2nd card out to test if it was a repeating issue it had done the same thing as stated above with temperatures sky rocketing and crashing the drivers or forcing me to reset. The whole time this has been happening (past year) there has not been one BSOD, GSOD or error code. which leaves me extremely confused as to what is causing these issues.
I have included the MSI afterburner image below
http://

 

[GunFinX]

107 degrees is crazy hot. Those small squares you see are graphical artifacts caused by the gpu's overheating. Have you overclocked these cards by any chance?

Were these cards used for cryptocurrency mining?

Some possible reasons for the graphics cards(aka gpu) overheating include:
Dust - Make sure the fans are free from dust...
Fans - The gpu fans may be wearing out. I had a 280x which I was using for cryptocurrency mining around a year ago and one of the fans had failed this will cause your gpu to get really hot...
Thermal Paste: Another problem that can cause high gpu temperatures is that sometimes thermal paste needs to be reapplied
I had to do this around every month on my 280x when the temperates were reaching 90+ degrees
Brought the temperatures down to around 75-83 degrees

Did you make some changes to the hardware inside the pc around 6months ago?

 

[destro521]

107 degrees is crazy hot. Those small squares you see are graphical artifacts caused by the gpu's overheating. Have you overclocked these cards by any chance?

Were these cards used for cryptocurrency mining?

Some possible reasons for the graphics cards(aka gpu) overheating include:
Dust - Make sure the fans are free from dust...
Fans - The gpu fans may be wearing out. I had a 280x which I was using for cryptocurrency mining around a year ago and one of the fans had failed this will cause your gpu to get really hot...
Thermal Paste: Another problem that can cause high gpu temperatures is that sometimes thermal paste needs to be reapplied
I had to do this around every month on my 280x when the temperates were reaching 90+ degrees
Brought the temperatures down to around 75-83 degrees

Did you make some changes to the hardware inside the pc around 6months ago?

Hi GunFinX I have made no changes to hardware at all in the past 2 years and have recently blown the dust out of all the fans and dust filters with compressed air as of a couple weeks ago. I have never done any crypto currency mining and only play games or work on developing games (game dev student) but as of late I have not been able to develop on unreal 4 due to the GPU issues I have been having.

Is it possible to have a temperature spike like I have been having lately?
The cards came with a stock clock of 900 Mhz core and 1250Mhz memory and have been spiking temps in 5 seconds even in single card configuration

 

[GunFinX]

Just out of interest what is the current room temperature where you are. The GPU temperature will always be offset by the room temperature.

So if one day the gpus are running are running at 90c@(20c room temperature) and then it is >30 degrees the next day then you'll get 100c
running gpu's at this stage the gpus should be downclocking themselves massively if they are working correctly.

From experience 90c is not that far fetched when xfire'ing amd radeon gpus especially xfx ones can run quite hot even worse if the pc case has poor airflow.

If the cards are still in warranty I recommend rma'ing them(a friend of mine has a 2xAMD Radeon 7990 in sli which is overheating really badly as well and they are watercooled). If they are no longer in warranty then your best bet would be to either apply some new thermal paste to them(GELID GC Extreme is what I used to use just make sure it is non conductive) or 2. Buy a custom cooler for them or watercool them. 3. Take the sides off the case and run a pedestal fan on them(works great).

In terms of a custom cooler:
1. NZXT GPU bracket and a closed loop liquid cooler from corsair or nzxt both should work fine http://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/138-kraken-g10-gpu-bracket.html that should greatly decrease temperatures.
2. GELID ICY Vision http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=17&id=73 (you need version A) I used this to cool my 280x's when cryptocurrency mining.

 

[destro521]

Just out of interest what is the current room temperature where you are. The GPU temperature will always be offset by the room temperature.

So if one day the gpus are running are running at 90c@(20c room temperature) and then it is >30 degrees the next day then you'll get 100c
running gpu's at this stage the gpus should be downclocking themselves massively if they are working correctly.

From experience 90c is not that far fetched when xfire'ing amd radeon gpus especially xfx ones can run quite hot even worse if the pc case has poor airflow.

If the cards are still in warranty I recommend rma'ing them(a friend of mine has a 2xAMD Radeon 7990 in sli which is overheating really badly as well and they are watercooled). If they are no longer in warranty then your best bet would be to either apply some new thermal paste to them(GELID GC Extreme is what I used to use just make sure it is non conductive) or 2. Buy a custom cooler for them or watercool them. 3. Take the sides off the case and run a pedestal fan on them(works great).

In terms of a custom cooler:
1. NZXT GPU bracket and a closed loop liquid cooler from corsair or nzxt both should work fine http://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/138-kraken-g10-gpu-bracket.html that should greatly decrease temperatures.
2. GELID ICY Vision http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=17&id=73 (you need version A) I used this to cool my 280x's when cryptocurrency mining.

im in Perth Australia so the average room temp is around 25-40 so idle temps are around 41 so the cards can get really hot but they used to never go above 75% usage if I can get them store credited I will probably try and go for a single 970 and some of the time they crash when they go above 60% usage