Woke up to see the screen saver with red dashes all over the screen, moved mouse, locked up the system.

pressed reboot, POST and Windows Loading was fine, once it got to the welcome to windows, partially scrambled, desktop scrambled as well. after 2 or 3 seconds on the desktop, the all screens go black and lockup.


before i went to sleep it was iding at 40^C, so it wasnt overheated, and i dont think a screensaver would kill it.
Gonna try running 1 screen and turning off eyefinity, but this looks like a hardware failure. (edit: didnt work, Had to put my 8800GTS back in the system to email Sapphire).

I paid $479 for this card, and it fails randomly on a screensaver?

I did notice when i first installed it, that the fans vibrated or scraped the heatsink when they were above 70% RPM. So the card may have been flexing A LOT.

this card is de-activated on new egg, I think sapphire should send me a nice 7970 OC to make up for it.

Bummer. Better the card(assuming its still under warranty) than the monitor.

Absolutely a downer

Happened to me twice in the last 15 years. One time due to aftermarket heatsink coming loose -- killed a $570 GPU (card plus heatsink). Never went for aftermarket GPU cooling again.

During my time at university, I jobbed at times in a small computer company. In my experience, Sapphire support was the best in business, they were incredibly quick and helpful. If its similar in the US, you will be fine.

yeah, i opened a ticket last night when i took pictures,

sent them some of the pix with the ticket,

I think it was on its way out for a while,

like i said, the vibration when the fans spun up sounded like they were scraping, in same games there was the red/blue/green texture corruption.

in the First week, i saw signs, that that GPU was going, In MS Flight (which was the first game I Installed on the New rig), the mouse pointer was constantly being scrambled (going from a pointer to a line of dots.), this started happening on the desktop as well, especially in the last few days.

Eyefinity had tearing issues, but that stopped after i played BF3 and went back to the desktop.

But the model i have has been discontinued rather quickly from Newegg and Sapphire's site.

The closest one they have is the 7950 OC at 950 Mhz (Mine was 900Mhz), and mine was sans DualX Cooling (had dual fans, but not the DualX branding/Heatsink).

Edit: i found my Card on Sapphire's Site:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation...lid=1&leg=0




It was bought in February.



I'll wait for sapphire to respond to their ticket, i guess i'll start looking for a box to ship it in, as i keep all the boxes i get and break them down and put them away for shipping other things, i have plenty of paddding/bubblewrap and static bags.

a lot of people are having issues with 12.4

Don't go blaming the screensaver either, lol.

well, if 12.4 didnt break LCD sleep modes in Eyefinity, i would run the screen saver.

and Overclockers.net proved that the screen saver triggers the jump from desktop clocks to 3d clocks.

going back and forth with sapphire support is weird, as they outsource/redirect you to althonmicro and you have to re-explain everything all over again, not to mention i finally got a response once i got in my office, while my GFX Board is in the home, so i have no way of filling out the RMA form for the next 8 hours.

Not too happy with the description of the box FedEx just left at my house, even though I paid for "ADULT SIGNATURE REQUIRED", it was just left at the front door, and from what I was told, its all crushed and looks like it's been through hell...

Thank you FedEx, you're about to get a $500 Claim filed for damaged electronics....

EDIT... nevermindit was a box from UPSGround, containing replacement parts for the flight control system, too bad my invoice # says it hasnt even been shipped yet, roflmao...

The Sapphire Card Returned later today,

According to the SKU, its a 7950 OC Dual X 950Mhz Edition (So Its an Upgrade)

One I sent in wasnt a Dual X Branded one and the OC was 900Mhz

now i just have to replace the saitek, and repair the old one (wiring in the stick died)