Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 lights up and fans spin, but isn't being detected by device manager/drivers crash PC

[joshfisher721]

• 
  Windows 10 64bit
  AMD FX 8350
  Sabertooth 990FX r2.0
  16GB HyperX 1600 RAM
  Western Digital 1TB Blue Hard Drive
  EVGA 850W 80 plus gold rated PSU

Hey guys. I recently purchased a Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 card from newegg. It arrived 2 days ago and I installed it into my system to what appears to be a dead on arrival situation. I'm not sure though because on the outside the card appears to be working. The sapphire LED emblem on the face of the card lights up bright blue and the fans run correctly. Despite this when I turn windows on the card fails to be read by device manager and a basic windows display adapter takes over the video for my system.

I thought I should download the AMD drivers to fix this situation, however when I did this windows crashed and gave me this error message:

Stop Code: System_Thread_Exception_Not_Handled
What Failed: atikmdag.sys

At this point windows restarts and then falls into a loop of crashing - repairing - rebooting and then crashing again until I reach the emergency start up scenario where I can choose troubleshooting options. At this point I chose to start up in safe mode and remove the drivers with DDU. Before I did that however I checked Device Manager again and found that in safe mode with these drivers installed Device Manager was able to read my card. If I booth back into windows without safe mode though the problem persists.

So I cleaned out all the drivers and reinstalled my old R9 270x so I could hop on here, make an account and ask you gurus what is going on exactly! Any and all help would be appreciated, thank you!

edit: It is also worth mentioning that I previously had Windows 8.1 until I realized that the card isn't compatible with that operating system. So I upgraded to Windows 10.

edit2: Also the PCIE slot registers that there is a card in it through SPECCY. My BIOS doesn't allow for checking of PCIE related specs.

 

[toshibitsu]

I was going to say, either the slot is bad(or not installed correctly), or it's a bad card. Considering it's working with the R9 270x... I'd say it's a bad card.

 

[joshfisher721]

I was going to say, either the slot is bad(or not installed correctly), or it's a bad card. Considering it's working with the R9 270x... I'd say it's a bad card.

I'm thinking so too. I'm holding out for someone to come along and know better than me though. I've never seen a bad card that runs fans and lights but doesn't do anything else. I haven't dealt with a lot of hardware though.

Why would it register in safe mode but not normal mode? I was able to find it in device manager in normal mode as well, and there was a warning triangle with an exclamation point over the Display adapter name saying I needed to reinstall drivers. The system crashed immediately after I found that though.

 

[toshibitsu]

I have. The card is getting power, but there could be some faulty/damaged chips on the board.

 

[joshfisher721]

I have. The card is getting power, but there could be some faulty/damaged chips on the board.

Right. Well I was hoping to avoid an RMA but it looks like I will have to. Thanks for your quick response. I've already wasted too much time on this so it is appreciated.