6950 black screen while gaming
 

I have this sapphire hd 6950 2gb for about 18 months and it just started doing this.

Went into a game and got a black screen. System would not respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del, Atl-Tab, reset button or anything. Had to force power down.

Had a mild overclock on, but now it's reset and still doing it. Tried a different game, 3dmark11, same thing. After a few minutes black screen.

Going to reinstall catalyst, but I'm pretty sure something else is going on. GPU, PSU, memory, motherboard...don't know which.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

ADD:

Forgot that I'm running a 4.8GHz overclock, so testing at default and so far looking good. Perhaps it wasn't as stable as I thought at that speed, but still not sure yet.

I'd do testing with Furmark, if it get's the same, try different drivers, if still the same, I'd say there's something wrong with your system or the card.

Ok, been testing with furmak and now back at 4.6GHz on the CPU and running the card at stock. All is well.

I also was trying different monitors and didn't have any trouble on the others. But I think the real trick was reseating the card.

Now going to oc the gpu again and see what happens.

Stock cooling/thermal paste?

It is water cooled, and doesn't go over 60c usually. Didn't anything out of the ordinary with the temps.

But since reseating the card I have not had the same issue of the screen going black and the system hanging. Even put back my modest oc on the GPU.

Here's hoping that's all it was.