Hey everyone,

So I'm trying to diagnose my friend's card here, because it acts like it's dying.
After he updated the drivers on his machine (23. January 2018), it started acting crazy.

First encounter was on a game "Escape from Tarkov", game loaded, card under full load, in game FPS 1-4.
After he recovered from system shutdown it went like this:
- no video signal on boot, tried different PCIe slot, no difference
- after a few tries it booted
- fired up Kombustor, everything OK
- fired up a game -> blue / brown vertical lines, different games very similar like this -> https://imgur.com/KCcJZId
- apparently it did this mostly with newer, more demanding games

Alright, so I took it to test in my system, as I use the same GFX chip (HD7970-DC2T), with basically the same cooler.
To note, I have not updated my drivers in a WHILE (Radeon Software info - Sep16).
+ Overview and Hardware

My testing so far:
- under light load with core speeds 501-1050MHz and voltages 0.950-1.200V respectively (2D video playback with madVR advanced processing and rendering), temps around 60°C -> everything OK
- fired up MGS5: Phantom Pain -> went well for ~2mins -> white screen freeze -> few second after sound freeze -> hard boot-off
- upon boot-up I got this screen -> https://imgur.com/k7A2eAX
- crashed my whole system, had to go through BIOS setup, but here is an Afterburner Log

Soo I want to try a few things:
Edit the BIOS for stock clock and voltages, first on the VRAM as I've heard the factory overvoltage can cause artifacts when VRAM gets too hot. I can't see any VRAM temp readouts on this card in Aida64 though.... I can on mine.
I know my card artifacts occasionally, but it's minor (Pictures 1, 2 & 3) and can be fixed with a simple reboot.

If it's a VRAM issue, I'll look into identifying which VRAM chips might need replacing.


Thanks for any suggestions! 🙂