Weird Graphics Card Issue.

[garyf404]

Hello people,

To cut a story short due to the reeeeediculous prices of GPUs at the moment because of this bleeding mining craze I opted to get a second card, second hand from a selling with 100% feedback on the Bay.

Card in question is an MSI HD 7870, which when paired with my current one in Crossfire would be decent enough until the prices on cards go back to normal, or close to normal.

Where, to me, this gets weird is upon inserting card into the next PCIe slot, plugging into PSU (Coolermaster Modular) and connecting Crossfire bridge. I boot system into Windows 10, all good so far, both cards cooling fans spinning and so on, I go into Catalyst, or whatever its called nowadays to enable Crossfire, the option isn't there. So, I go to control panel, devices and in display adapters it has the following:

HD 7870 (primary card, my card)
Generic VGA Adapter (second card)

Every time I attempt to find or update drivers for second card, to attempt to get it to detect the system black screens and doesn't recover.

The question I have, is the second 7870 dead, or would it not be detected as 'Generic VGA Adapter' in device manager (it doesn't work alone either, when original card is taken out and the new one put into the same slot) or is this some kind of odd driver related issue, or card BIOS issue?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

 

[RememberThe5th]

First i would download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) and then to the safe mode
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10 the second mode "Use the “Shift + Restart” combination"
Uninstall your drivers and restart.

Now you have to install first GPU for example MSI, shutdown, unplug install for second gpu (the slot doesn't matter) and shutdown and plugin your second gpu and then boot.
If not repeat process from "NOW" but don't install drivers for second just plug it in and boot and it should say under device manager your card name.


Are you using automatic driver installer or manually selecting?

 

[garyf404]

Thanks for the response, I'll give it a go when I get a spare minute. I tend to manually install drivers from AMD website.

 

[garyf404]

So, am I right in assuming if the card was dead, it wouldn't be detected as Generic VGA Adapter right?

 

[RememberThe5th]

I had issue with an old motherboar PCIE 1.0 and GPU Gt 520 with PCIE 2.x and it would show as Generic VGA Adapter i just updated bios and it worked,
Soo try bios update, if it doesn't i would return card if possible, otherwise try on another system.

 

[garyf404]

Right, little bit of an update. Cleaned drivers as recommended in safe mode and shut down computer. Removed HD 7870 (the 100% working one), inserted second card into that slot, plugged in power connected, connected HDMI and started up.

This had never worked, before this time, monitor light went green and Gigabyte is displayed across screen, clear as day EXCEPT for two bizarre vertical white lines.

Computer boots into Windows 10 with no issues at all, feels smooth, but I cannot, with this card get it to install drivers, I download Radeon auto detect driver software, it scans computer and finds a compatible card, downloads and begins installing drivers. It reaches about 50%, the screen goes black and never returns.

It also ONLY shows up in Device Manager, now as Microsoft Display Adapter (was Generic VGA adapter last time), I've never encountered a card doing this before, so this is new to me.

It appears to work, I mean it wouldn't have an output if the GPU was damaged would it? The one concern I have is potential VRAM issue, had lines before on Nvidia card about a decade ago (which was fixed after a short adventure in the oven). Think it's VRAM issue? If so, would that account for other issues or would it not cause those?

 

[RememberThe5th]

I think i would RMA card as it seems "damaged" or not compatible. Always try to find same version or similar, you can download GPU-Z and see your bios version and on https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ you can find which ones are compatible. I would do myself it they have same ram brand i would flash them with same bios but that's what i would do because i know it, just don't.
Two vertical lines either the output is damaged or vram or cable is loose,
If it cannot install latest drivers well it seems like its damaged (i've had one with bad bios),
Well if it shows up in Device manager as Microsoft Display Adapter or Generic VGA adapter it doesn't matter most of time.

I could suggest you one more thing, do again the DDU, and install GPU drivers into safe mode for broken one i had ISSUE with my R7 250 because of unstable bios (as i stated up bad bios).

You could clean up card with alchohol maybe some residue is hang onto PCB and doing something.

Otherwise RMA if you wanna your money back.