Friday, November 2nd 2012
Some Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 Cards Affected by "Black Screen" Issue
According to an investigative report by BeHardware, some Sapphire-made Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition graphics cards may be affected by a "black screen" issue. Some Sapphire HD 7870 users could notice random screen blackouts. A collaboration with AMD unveiled the cause of the screen blackouts to be caused due to a "noisy" GPU electrical signal (voltage is controlled by pulse-width modulation). The cause for GPU electrical signal noise is found to be bad quality ceramic capacitors responsible for conditioning power to the GPU.
AMD has been investigating the issue for months, and had already informed its add-in board partners (AIBs) about components responsible, and to take steps to correct the issue. BeHardware, however, was able to reproduce the problem in recent batches of Sapphire-made HD 7870 cards bought from stores. Following the investigation, Sapphire corrected the issue at their production lines, recalled inventories from French retailers, and relaxed its RMA policy towards existing users of its HD 7870 cards.
Source:
BeHardware
AMD has been investigating the issue for months, and had already informed its add-in board partners (AIBs) about components responsible, and to take steps to correct the issue. BeHardware, however, was able to reproduce the problem in recent batches of Sapphire-made HD 7870 cards bought from stores. Following the investigation, Sapphire corrected the issue at their production lines, recalled inventories from French retailers, and relaxed its RMA policy towards existing users of its HD 7870 cards.
37 Comments on Some Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 Cards Affected by "Black Screen" Issue
Went for ASUS instead but still the drivers are flaky.
All varying to different degrees based on the card model, game and driver version.
Sapphire's cards also exhibit the same graphic anomalies but also black screen with any card made before May this year.
I would have purchased a Sapphire HD7870 due to never having problems with them, but saw the ASUS model on special.
Seems most at this topic have no complaints of any graphic corruption or even blankouts?
www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173865
12.8 will show a black poly for less than half a second on rare occasion in Skyrim and Tribes: Ascend.
People have RMA'ed their cards to find the replaced card has the same issue.
This thread at GURU 3D is one of the two there which is all about the flickering.
There are probably links within that thread going to other forums as well.
i think there is a forum over in Germany talkng about the issue as well.
AMD forums have been removing threads on the topic for a while now not that there is any evidence besides dead links left by posters of other forums.
There are videos on youtube about the issue.
Soon...
Atleast they are making up for it, and 'relaxing their RMA policy'
Although, that unreal engine is bad, and the devs should feel bad.
I have a Powercolor 7870 (that originally came with the stock amd cooler), and almost certain this issue has happened twice. I kept messing with my HDMI cable and checking the seating of the card trying to figure out what the hell was going on...thinking perhaps I had lost the ability to do simple tasks like installing a video card, until it finally came on. Up until yesterday, it worked fine...when it happened again on a restart. I messed with the cable again, and the seating...and it magically came back on. I was pretty sure everything was fine before-hand since it's pretty hard to screw up plugging in an hdmi cable...now I'm sure of it.
Thanks TPU for reporting on the issue.
The card has been working fine in games...and while you are absolutely right hdmi cables/connections can be flaky, this set (I tried two) has worked fine for a long time. I used to use the current one on my ps3 for over a year. I'm fairly certain the issue is related to this, as the screen did randomly display a very unsettling 'not-off black' while the tv still registered a connection to the port. It also automagically turned back on afaict. I'll wait for it to happen again, and if it does will probably follow that advice.
this is just a reason why I buy a Separate monitor and then a TV.
FWIW, I totally respect the desktop devotees...was one for years. Now I really dig sitting on my couch with a keyboard remote most of the time (like now). If need-be I can still grab my keyboard/mouse off the shelf,raise the top of the coffee table, and game in a similar way. It's truly worth it for the media convenience imho.
Either way, regardless if the core issue of this thread pertains to me or not...guess those capacitors replacements MSI et al pushes are doing somebody some tangible good!
:(
hopefully the fanboi members will not try and blame every other part of your PC at fault or attempt to say who ever made your PC is lacking in skill.Will be lucky to get a response but yeah doesn't hurt.
Best to go through the vender you bought the card from or find a way to RMA with Sapphire.
I'm just wondering why they responded when the closing business hours even listed in the email itself was hours before.