Did my video card die?

[Metspitzer]

I was playing Skyrim for about 3 straight hours. All of the sudden
the screen just went blank. I could hear the sound but no video.

I plugged the HDMI port into the on board port and still no video. I
took out the video card HD 6970 and plugged the HDMI cable into the
onboard and it works.

Anything I can do to make sure before I do an RMA?

 

[Metspitzer]

I was playing Skyrim for about 3 straight hours. All of the sudden
the screen just went blank. I could hear the sound but no video.

I plugged the HDMI port into the on board port and still no video. I
took out the video card HD 6970 and plugged the HDMI cable into the
onboard and it works.

Anything I can do to make sure before I do an RMA?

BTW I opened my case as soon as I lost the video and the card did not
seem hot. I wouldn't even say very warm.

 

[SC Tom]

BTW I opened my case as soon as I lost the video and the card did not
seem hot. I wouldn't even say very warm.

The card itself probably would be much warmer than the ambient temp in the case; the GPU on the other hand may be too
hot to touch. Try touching the heatsink if it happens and see how hot it feels.

After it went dark, were you able to ALT TAB to your desktop, or another program that may have been running? If the card
overheats to the point of going dark, ALT TAB'bing out of the program may let it cool off enough to at least get video
back. Did you turn the PC off, then start it back up after a few minutes to see if the card still worked after it cooled
down some? If it doesn't work at all, then time for an RMA.

Use a program like HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php to monitor it. Start HWMonitor first, then play the
game for a while, then exit and see what your highest temp was. If it's close to max, then you need better cooling (or a
different card).

 

[SC Tom]

The card itself probably would be much warmer than the ambient temp in the case; the GPU on the other hand may be too
hot to touch. Try touching the heatsink if it happens and see how hot it feels.

After it went dark, were you able to ALT TAB to your desktop, or another program that may have been running? If the
card overheats to the point of going dark, ALT TAB'bing out of the program may let it cool off enough to at least get
video back. Did you turn the PC off, then start it back up after a few minutes to see if the card still worked after
it cooled down some? If it doesn't work at all, then time for an RMA.

Use a program like HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php to monitor it. Start HWMonitor first, then play the
game for a while, then exit and see what your highest temp was. If it's close to max, then you need better cooling (or
a different card).

As a P.S., I see the Gigabyte version of the card has three fans on it. That's a tremendous amount of heat output, I
would imagine. If you have any other cards below this one, I'd move them to a slot as far away as possible. You may even
require an additional exhaust case fan to get rid of all of it.

 

[Metspitzer]

The card itself probably would be much warmer than the ambient temp in the case; the GPU on the other hand may be too
hot to touch. Try touching the heatsink if it happens and see how hot it feels.

After it went dark, were you able to ALT TAB to your desktop, or another program that may have been running? If the card
overheats to the point of going dark, ALT TAB'bing out of the program may let it cool off enough to at least get video
back. Did you turn the PC off, then start it back up after a few minutes to see if the card still worked after it cooled
down some? If it doesn't work at all, then time for an RMA.

Use a program like HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php to monitor it. Start HWMonitor first, then play the
game for a while, then exit and see what your highest temp was. If it's close to max, then you need better cooling (or a
different card).

I plugged it back in and it is working again. Hope it last long
enough to finish Skyrim.

BTW when the screen went black, the windows key didn't do anthing and
cnt alt del din't either. I will try alt tab if it happens again.

Thanks

 

[Paul]

I plugged it back in and it is working again. Hope it last long
enough to finish Skyrim.

BTW when the screen went black, the windows key didn't do anthing and
cnt alt del din't either. I will try alt tab if it happens again.

Thanks

If your keyboard has LEDs on it, try hitting the caps-lock or
one of the other modifier keys. Like Scroll-Lock. And see if
the LED lights respond.

When the computer-to-user interface dies on my computer, the
keyboard stops working, and I can no longer change the state
of the LEDs.

It's hard to say when that happens, whether the computer is
really dead, or it's just the user interface portion. Using
a second computer, you can send "ping packets" at the
non-responsive computer. If it answers the ping, then you
know the OS is still running. It's just the interface that
is dead.

If the keyboard input is no longer being accepted, then
banging on the alt-tab combo isn't going to do anything.
And that's the only reason for mentioning it. I haven't
had too many failures like that in Windows (maybe happened
once or twice), but I've had it happen a lot in Linux,
for various reasons. I have one Linux LiveCD, that kills
the keyboard, before the session is finished. Dumb.

*******

In addition to hwmonitor, there is also GPUZ program.
It graphs temperature in the background, while you're
gaming. If your alt-tab works, you can drop back to
the desktop and check the temp.

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

In this screenshot, the GPU is running at 45C, with the
odd slight dip in the graph. So whatever this person
was doing, the temp is relatively constant.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6048/sinttuloxk.png

Note that, in the past, there have been some instances
where an Nvidia driver, "forgot" to turn the video
card fan on. I consider purely software controlled
fans to be lunacy. The fan interface should really be
under hardware control, so the GPU gets good
treatment. All it takes is a driver bug, and stuff
like that can kill graphics cards. I don't know the
details of the ATI scheme, whether it's exactly
the same or not. My ATI cards are so old, they're
all "fixed speed fans" that don't change. Modern
cards run much hotter, so they need a different
control scheme. I can't afford any 6970's

Paul

 

[John Doe]

If your keyboard has LEDs on it, try hitting the caps-lock or
one of the other modifier keys. Like Scroll-Lock. And see if the
LED lights respond.

When the computer-to-user interface dies on my computer, the
keyboard stops working, and I can no longer change the state of
the LEDs.

It's hard to say when that happens, whether the computer is
really dead, or it's just the user interface portion. Using a
second computer, you can send "ping packets" at the
non-responsive computer. If it answers the ping, then you know
the OS is still running. It's just the interface that is dead.

If the keyboard input is no longer being accepted, then banging
on the alt-tab combo isn't going to do anything. And that's the
only reason for mentioning it. I haven't had too many failures
like that in Windows (maybe happened once or twice), but I've
had it happen a lot in Linux, for various reasons. I have one
Linux LiveCD, that kills the keyboard, before the session is
finished. Dumb.

You probably already know this little trick, but... One test is to
click and drag on something like one of the three buttons in the
upper right corner of a window. To see if the button depresses,
without actually doing anything since the pointer is dragged off
of the button.

Trying to revive or figure out what is going on with an improperly
responding operating system is complex stuff.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

I plugged the HDMI port into the on board port and still no video. I

took out the video card HD 6970 and plugged the HDMI cable into the
onboard and it works.

Update to the latest Catalyst.
Open the case while playing games to see if it's heat issue

 

[Metspitzer]

Update to the latest Catalyst.
Open the case while playing games to see if it's heat issue

I played Skyrim about 10 hours yesterday and it never happened again.
First time I have played a game other than Internet Spades in a couple
of years.

Look at that Dragon..........wait that's a butterfly.

 

[GMAN]

BTW I opened my case as soon as I lost the video and the card did not
seem hot. I wouldn't even say very warm.

The card , while playing may have heated up and came slightly unseated in the
PCI-Express slot.

 

[GMAN]

I played Skyrim about 10 hours yesterday and it never happened again.
First time I have played a game other than Internet Spades in a couple
of years.

Look at that Dragon..........wait that's a butterfly.

Me thinks reseatting your card did the trick Those large heavy cards sometimes
work their way loose.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

Me thinks reseatting your card did the trick Those large heavy cards sometimes

work their way loose.

Most PCIe x16 slot has a "lock" at one end of the slot... Well...

 

[Man-wai Chang]

I played Skyrim about 10 hours yesterday and it never happened again.

First time I have played a game other than Internet Spades in a couple
of years.

Out of curiosity: What motherboard are you using?

 

[Metspitzer]

Out of curiosity: What motherboard are you using?

Mine has a lock too. It is a Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3.

It turns out that nothing was broken. Skyrim has a command mode key
that turns the screen black except for the cursor. Since I
accidentally hit that key I didn't know how to exit.

After trying alt tab the next time it happened I figured out what was
happening. In case anyone else is playing it is the tilde key.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

It turns out that nothing was broken. Skyrim has a command mode key

that turns the screen black except for the cursor. Since I
accidentally hit that key I didn't know how to exit.

The BOSS key (for you to play the game during office hour)??? It's hard
to find this function in most modern games.

After trying alt tab the next time it happened I figured out what was
happening. In case anyone else is playing it is the tilde key.

You might wanna disable the Window$ keys on your keyboard.