Is my video card DoA?

[emzie]

I installed an 8800GTX shortly after buying my computer last year. Over the last few months, it's slowly been dying. It's covered by 2 warranties: seller and maker. Going through the manufacturer would have taken weeks that I didn't want to spend. The seller no longer has the card in stock so couldn't do a direct exchange. They offered me a choice of other cards and a discretionary credit in case of price differences.

I ordered a Radeon 3870, which was slightly better and slightly cheaper. I uninstalled the old drivers for the card I had been using, shut down, pulled the old card out, plugged the new in, went to boot, got a black screen. The GPU's fan was running though.

Onboard video was working though. BIOS was set to default to PCI x 16, and I could see no jumper switch to physically disable the onboard.

I've never had a DoA card before, and none of my friends have either. It's always been something we've heard of.

Is there any obvious answers completely alluding me or did I just pull an unlucky break.

 

[GoodGame]

I'd reseat the card, and double check the PSU 6-pin output to the mobo is good.

Your PSU is over 450watts right?

If the mobo has auto detection of card vs. onboard video, via BIOS, but not a physical switch, then you should be good there. I'd double check what the mobo manual says on that though.

Just double check everything, and if still a black screen on booting, then yeah sounds like it's DOA.
You could try checking the output of your PSU just to be sure it's not dying, as well.

 

[emzie]

I tried it with both 6 pin connectors my PSU has; both would run the card's fan but I always got black screen. It's a rather new 550w PSU -- I had been running the old card on a 450 and though the 8800gtx listed that as the minimum, it just didn't cut it. I tested it when the old card started acting up as that happened not too long (6 weeks) after I swapped PSUs, but it was (and still is) outputting proper voltages.

I think this is more a problem of my head -- if something has a low chance to not work, and it doesn't, I assume I did something wrong anyway.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If the HD3870 has more than one video output, try the other one. Some video cards dont display things on the secondary output until there is a first output plugged in.

 

[emzie]

If the HD3870 has more than one video output, try the other one. Some video cards dont display things on the secondary output until there is a first output plugged in.

I tried both DVIs, though I didn't try the S-out or whatever the one in the middle is. It wouldn't be set to that somehow would it?

 

[GoodGame]

Seriously doubt it. BTW, did you examine the DVIs? http://www.windows-media-player-updates.com/dvi-connection-explained.html