Graphic card broken?

Hello

I was playing a video game when suddenly my screen got full of vertical lines and I was forced to manually restart my laptop.

When rebooting after the windows logo screen my screen would look weird with artifacts, horizontal lines, etc. Logging in I could see a windows error message that something was wrong with my graphics driver. I couldn't really change anything here, because the screen was so messed up and my computer reacted very slowly.

I then booted into safe mode and removed my driver. After this I could restart Windows normally (with the low resolution due to not having a driver). So I then went to AMDs website installed the latest driver, after successfully installing and rebooting the same problem with the haywire screen started again.

Is there anything I can do to fix this or is my 7970m simply broken?

Thanks

 

Could try baking it. Some good YouTube videos on doing it out there. Fixed mine but often it only buys a bit of time. Good chance it's on its way out

 

Could be a loose LVDS cable, but most likely the graphics card is dying.

 

If I were to replace it what would be a decent budget minded card?

I really don't feel like buying a top of the line card again (like the 7970m was at the time) when my notebook is 3 years old and showing other quirks.

I have the m17x r4 btw.

 

What price is "budget minded" to you? I looked at eBay briefly and 7970Ms are ~$300.

 

Propper mxm-b cards don't tend to get cheap.

 

You can probably get a GTX 770M for $200 or so.

 

It's not necessarily the price. I just find paying 300$ for a card that is 3 years old and already struggles on recent titles poor value.

For that price it's possible to buy for example a ps4 and use that for gaming.

Thanks for the help though. It's a decision I'll have to make myself wether or not I should fix it I guess.

 

Also I have an 9800m GTS from an older laptop I could use for now. Would that fit in the 7970m socket?

From notebookcheck apparently the 9800m gts uses an MXM3 socket and the 7970m socket isn't specified, but is an MXM3 aswell I think? So it should fit?

 

There are other threads on here with similar 7970m issues, I would definitely not get another one of those.

 

I just tried it and unfortunately the 9800m gts has a different connection

 

If your card is no good, and you're out of warranty, I would like to experiment with my friend's BGA repair station.

But leave this as a last resort option. I would try fresh driver install and stress test with Furmark or OCCT to check for damage. If it still artifacts or black screens (but sound works), the card is done. It sounds like your 7970M is indeed fried. The 9800M GTS is a MXM 2.1 Type III card, not a MXM 3.0B card.

My advice would be to move to a 680M or 780M if budget allows, and if not, try your very best to find a revision 1.2 7970M (or 8970M). If you REALLY need a budget card, get a 760M/770M or even a Mobility Radeon 5870 (but I really don't recommend this one)

There is a 680M selling on ebay now for not a whole lotta money: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeFo...120?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f4ad01388

 

Reading this thread reminds me how important it is to run MSI afterburner with OSD showing GPU temps and CPU temps whilst gaming.
Without this you are literally blind to overheating and any dust/fluff blocking the thermal cooling functionality of your system.

As a result, you then have GPU failure and this is costly.
A friendly reminder to all NBR gamers make sure you run the software.

Good luck to OP and all.

 

I never bothered repasting the GPU while I did it often for the CPU this might have cost me.

I'm planning on buying a 7970m from ebay soon as the Nvidia's are simply too expensive (especially because I need a new bracket and heatsink aswell).

The thermal pads Dell used are kind of worn out I feel and I'm looking at buying a new sheet. Does anyone know which thickness I should buy for this? I was thinking of a 100x100x1mm 5W/mk sheet, but I don't know much about thermal pads so not sure if this is good.

Also the cpu doesn't need thermal pads right? Considering it didn't have any by Dell.

 

Correct only gpu memory modules and voltage regulators.
Have a read of this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/thermal-pad-paste-for-gpu-upgrades.696356/
Placement is most important. Place them like in this photo.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...7x-r2-installation-with-photos.677680/page-57

Good luck.

 

I have 3 more questions. Sorry for all the questions

If I were to buy an Nvidia card I thought I needed a different heatsink. However on Ebay all heatsinks for the m17x r4 seem to be the same. Does that mean that the 7970m heatsink also works on Nvidia cards?

A friend of mine has a Clevo 680m card and he says it needs to be flashed in a Clevo EM series laptop before I can use it in my Alienware. Is there a way around this (he no longer has the laptop)? I'm asking these 2 questions because I can get his 680m, but I don't want to brick it either as he can still get money for it otherwise.

Also between the motherboard and the gpu there is a big thermal pad. What's the point of this pad and is it necessary?

 

You do not need a new heatsink, but you will need to peel the black tape off your existing AMD heatsink. You will also need a new x-bracket for the nvidia card if it does not already come with the 680M. You MIGHT be able to flash it if you have an unlocked bios, and set the video setting to SG (switchable graphics), which allows for driving the display through the intel GPU, but also leaves the dGPU accessable for writes. I thnk the thermal pad on the mobo is just to give proper spacing/balance for the card to be properly screwed into the motherboard.

Let me know what you plan to do with your dead 7970M

 

So I can for sure buy the 680m Clevo card that still has the Clevo vbios and get it to work? Just making sure.

Are there any tutorials on how I'd need to modify the heatsink?

Thanks

 

I cannot guarantee anything. What I have done in the past with bad flashes on my 7970M is put my system into SG mode, use a bootable USB stick with DOS on it, and flash a different vBIOS to the card, which worked out just fine for me. I don't see why it should be any different with the 680M.

Heatsink modification is fairly straightforward, you just have to peel the black tape around where the 7970M GPU die would normally contact the heatsink. I belive the 680M GPU die orientation is a little different, which is why we must remove the black tape (for proper thermal dissipation). Just be patient while doing it.

 

I just bought a Dell 7970m replacement. It was about the same price as the Clevo 680m and a safer option. The 680m isn't that big of an upgrade anyway I think, except for more vRAM.

Thanks for the help everyone. I'll keep you posted when it arrives.

 

I hope you got one of the later revision cards.

 

It's a Dell card he should not have any issue as per clevo cards. The only issue is that it should not have vbios 22 on it as they are incompatible.

Not sure though what notebook OP has.

 

The later revision meaning cards that TYPICALLY (this isn't a rule of thumb) have a ASIC quality above 70%, are less likely to fail in my experience. My original 7970M had a miserable ASIC quality of 55% and it died after 2 years of light usage, whereas my m18x R2 has 7970Ms with ASIC quality of 70% and 78%, and they are still alive and going fine 3 years after it was shipped.

 

Hey, so my card just arrived (asic 85% if that matters) and I installed it. I installed the latest driver, restart and device manager aswell as GPU-Z detect my card and it seems to work correctly.

However when I press fn+f7 to turn of the Intel 4000 and restart. My driver is no longer found, I can't see the card in GPU-Z and Windows tries to install it's standard driver again.

Also GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner say my card is 0 degrees?

Any idea how to fix this? I like using only the dedicated card as some games will otherwise run on the Intel.

 

So that was because I was running on the integrated card. From the moment I start 3DMark my temps are displayed. My temps are around 62 decgrees celcius in idle (with fans not running/barely running) during 3DMark skydiver my temps were around 70 degrees celcius with a max of 73 (fans spinning loudly). My score is 14160, physics score is 8311, graphics score is 16122, combined score is 16526 which according to 3DMark is a valid score. So all this seems fine.

However there still is something wrong as I said earlier I can't switch off the integrated card or my driver isn't found. Also my laptop froze 3 times over the last 2 hours for no valid reason (had to manually restart), so something is up there aswell. Any idea's?