Graphic Cards Is my Sapphire HD 6850 dead?

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subhasis005

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Hello friends, I was a proud user of AMD HD 6850 for a long 5 years. But one week ago suddenly my screen froze while gaming and after I did a restart of my machine there was no signal to the monitor. I tried several times but with no luck. But when I plug my monitor to motherboard graphics port everything is working fine. I also brought one simple graphics card from one of my friends to test if my PCI express slot is working or not. The PCI express slot is also working. What could be the case? Is HD 6850 completely dead or there is any solution to make it work again?

Please note my graphics card fan is spinning naturally. But sometimes the fan is spinning at full speed and making some more noise.

Also find my system configuration below:

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3 Ghz
RAM: Corsair 12 GB DDR3 RAM (4+8)
PSU: Corsair GS 600
Motherboard: Intel DH67BL
HD: WD 1 TB (7200 RPM)
Graphics: Sapphire AMD HD 6850 (1 GB)

Please help me out as soon as possible.
 
Yes looks like it, it's most likely on the verge of dying or dead. You can try cleaning it first carefully, remove dust from the fan and heat-sink. Unscrew the heat-sink of the card then check the thermal paste under it. Sometimes graphics cards overheat due to the lack of thermal paste or just being worn out due to time and heat, that breaks the contact between the card and the heatsink to efficiently cool the card. So after carefully unscrewing and cleaning the card with isopropyl alcohol, you need to reapply the thermal paste, buy a good quality one like Arctic Silver and then put the heatsink back on try booting it. If it does boot up and the display works, get some temp monitoring software like MSI Afterburner to check the temps of the card - At idle it should sit between 35C - 50C and ingame between 70C - 90C. When your card was dying it's temp must have have been close to 100C - I know this cause i had a 6850 and 6950 ...both of which died the same way. MSI's 6XXX series cards were notorious for overheating.

You can prolong your dying card's life by doing the above but sooner or later it will completely die. Try it out.

Here's a tutorial for applying thermal paste -

 
In the absolute worst case, you might want to revive it though heating it in a over (not microwave). Check out some videos on how to do that, many have claimed it to be effective.
 
heating in a oven? will that be effective? I will try applying a thermal paste like in the video.[DOUBLEPOST=1472815151][/DOUBLEPOST]Also let me know in case the card dies which card should be best to upgrade? I run games on 1600x900 resolution. Will GTX 960 be a good upgrade over HD 6850? Will GTX 960 be fully compatible with the rest of my pc configuration? I want performance in ultra settings in modern games.
 
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No I would prefer nvidia this time. Driver support of AMD is poor. Also my budget is not that high. I am on tight budget of 10-15K.
 
rajan1311 said:
In the absolute worst case, you might want to revive it though heating it in a over (not microwave). Check out some videos on how to do that, many have claimed it to be effective.
Click to expand...

Lol that is the most extreme way to revive a card and, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have precise regulation over the oven temperature.

I saw one post where a dude basically fried his card inside an old oven, the IC chips and transistors exploded, the board itself melted and there were fumes everywhere.
 
Well, obviously you need to be careful. Its been a technique that has been in use for along time. Check Linus trying it out.
[DOUBLEPOST=1472816733][/DOUBLEPOST]
subhasis005 said:
No I would prefer nvidia this time. Driver support of AMD is poor. Also my budget is not that high. I am on tight budget of 10-15K.
Click to expand...
The RX 470 does cost around Rs 16.5k. As for drivers, have you had such a bad time due to driver? Has it ever made things unusable ?
 
No it never made things unusable but almost every title is optimized for NVIDIA. Also you must agree that NVIDIA has better driver support than AMD. That's why I would prefer NVIDIA this time.[DOUBLEPOST=1472896167][/DOUBLEPOST]Will GTX 960 run on Corsair GS600 PSU? I have no money to upgrade the psu right now?
 
GTX 960 will easily run on your PSU.
I have the same GPU and I also game on 1600*900. What I can say is that it will play most of the games maxed out. Though not really sure if it will be able to max the new titles this year and coming years. It will run anything on high just fine for quite some time though.
 
but dont you think an RX 470 even with its so called bad drivers is still better than a 960 ? Just check any review online. Or if you want to go with Nvidia so bad, go for the 1060 3GB (3GB is a little less, even at 1080p) or wait for the 1050. Absolutely no point getting a 960.
 
rajan1311 said:
but dont you think an RX 470 even with its so called bad drivers is still better than a 960 ? Just check any review online. Or if you want to go with Nvidia so bad, go for the 1060 3GB (3GB is a little less, even at 1080p) or wait for the 1050. Absolutely no point getting a 960.
Click to expand...

I agree with this that there's not much point in buying a GTX 960 when we have RX 470 for almost the same price as it is a superior card. Availability might be less at this time but you should wait till it becomes available.

Another option is buying a used GTX 960 (I have done this and advised another user on TE and even he bought a used 960). One year used and under warranty cards are readily available for 10k. GPUs have a very long lifespan. So you can save a lot of money there.
 
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