Dreaded 5850 no POST with some twist to it

[a_perfect_tool]

Hello everybody!

A month ago I got myself a Gigabyte Radeon 5850 1Gb. Was working excellent for a month. One evening I was enjoying some Company of Heroes, when first a noticable FPS drop occured, and right after that the screen went blank. After restarting the computer, there was only a blank screen, no beeps, no POST screen, some minor activity from the hard drives. I tried the card in my byddys rig and it worked right away. Thinking that my computer might have a too old PSU, I bought a new one the professional series Corsair 850W (guess that's enough for one 5850 and 3 harddrives), but... still... the same thing happening, no beeps, no POST screen. I went digging through all the forums, and there are numerous reports of people not being able to boot their machines with a 5850 having the same issue: computer starts, fan revs at 100% but no post. no beeps. My case seems to be weird cuz the card actually worked like a charm for a month and then suddenly stopped... Any ideas? BTW I didn't even get to overclock it...

PLEASE PLEASE (and one more desperate) PLEASE! Somebody help me out...

My specs: Core 2 Quad Q6600 OC'ed, 8 Gb Ram, Asus P5KC motherboard.

Thanks a lot in advance for any hints!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

You are absolutely right. There seem to be a glut of these type of problems recently.

Could it be down to the drivers?
 
Did your friend's machine use the same driver pack as yours?

A while ago I remember someone from India I think it was who had this problem and they found a novel way around it in the end. From what I remember the problem was actually down to the graphics card earthing to the chassis. They proved this by running it outside the case with no problem. When they put it back into the case they isolated it from the chassis and it worked fine. I just figured it was some quirky card and thought no more of it but perhaps there is more to it than that.

[a_perfect_tool]

Many thanks for a quick reply!

I don't think it's driver related as the card won't make it to the POST not to mention the OS.
I just did a quick test. I chugged in my old 4850 and the 5850 in the other PCIE 16x slot. The system started the way it would do it normally, the card was detected and the system started to install drivers for it, but the moment it finished BOOM! same thing again, screen went blank (tho hooked up to the 'good' card) and the computer became unresponsive... I'm clueless... Not really sure how to do the grounding trick either, and definatelly not an option to run my card outside of the chassis...

help...

[Dark Mantis]

No I was just saying he built it up outside of the case for trouble shooting purposes. Then re-installed it all but from what I remeber used fibre or rubber washers to stop it coming into direct contact with the case. He even used a nylon screw to fix it. Very ingenious but it did work. Maybe it was just a one off but it makes you think.

[a_perfect_tool]

but why would it work for a month and then suddenly stop with no particular reason?

[Dark Mantis]

I can't explain it I am just telling you what happened to this fellow in India.

[a_perfect_tool]

Thanks for your advice!

Anyone else had a similar problem and knows any other viable workarounds?

[bytheway_r]

Have you updated GPU drivers recently? Maybe some new drivers are causing this? If you can boot it through the 4850 then maybe try some older drivers?

That's the first thing that comes to mind if it worked for a month .

[Dark Mantis]

Just re-read your original post and noticed that you have overclocked the system. Try going back to default settings and see if you can then boot normally. You may have to reset your CMOS to do this.

[a_perfect_tool]

Can't be the drivers, as the card can't even make it to the post screen. There is literally a blank screen when i power on the rig...
Also, tried setting all the CMOS settings to default... to no avail...

[bytheway_r]

Well, I'd try anyway considering that when running it as second card with a 4850 the whole thing crashed only after installing the drivers for the 5850. Not like you got anything to lose. Frankly, I'm out of ideas about what else could have caused this. Maybe something went wrong with your MB's bios? Or something happened to the OS and it's somehow causing this.

I mean, we know that:
- the card itself works fine;
- your PSU is more than enough;
- it worked earlier in your PC so it really isn't likely to be some strange compatibility issue;
- no other hardware is causing this as your PC works with the 4850.

Reasonably thinking, this is almost certainly a software issue somewhere. I'd start with GPU drivers, then play around with BIOS and, eventually, try to run it on a clean system ( just a single drive with nothing but the OS on it ).

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I agree. It is the only way to get to the bottom of it.

[absic]

If you are running 10.9 that could be the problem. I had real grief after updating to them from 10.8. Maybe that's what has happened here. Uninstall the ATI drivers, then try with the 10.8 version rather than the latest ones.

[a_perfect_tool]

I'm running 10.8, never got myself the 10.9. Will try removing the drivers alltogether, and going with the  drivers provided by the manufacturer (the ones that come on a disk that everybody ditches right after unboxing ). My only concern is, since the card is stopping the computer from booting at all (again - not even bios POST), how can it be driver related? The drivers don't even get to speak here... Will try it anyways as I'm just desperate at this point... Thanks again for your advice. I'll post back later.

Peace!

[Dark Mantis]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS and then loading Optimised BIOS defaults?