ASUS 6970 Direct CUII runs terrible, overheats.

[KaylaF]

I uninstalled Catalyst and reinstalled it. Sometimes this fixes issues with C++, just stabbing in the dark at this point. Now When I run 3D Mark Vantage it fails. My card drops off at random points and the test stops.
I suppose this board would be great for people who never plan on putting their foot on the gas.
If I get arrested anytime soon I will tell the police to take my finger prints off my ankles because I have been bent over by this board for 5 days now. Is shotgun damage covered by the warranty?

[bananax]

I don't think shotgun coverage is included, that does sound odd, I had 1 6970 DCUII go bad too, but totally dead, also replacement was fast from Asus.

GL on the RMA :S

[KaylaF]

I got the new mobo in today, an Asus P8Z77 v Pro. So far I am impressed with the graphical BIOS menu. Very sleek. Anyway, no difference in performance as far as the Asus 6970 card goes I am sorry to say. Virtu MVP makes no difference. On or off. the performance is even worse now. I used to finish the 3dMark Vantage test, now during the hardware scan the whole machine blinks off. Man!!! My GPU is sitting there with 0% activity right now and is running at 93 Celsius. Does this card even work in newer chipsets or is this $400 card too junky? How much does a fool like me need to spend to play Skyrim for F'n sakes? A $60 takes $9,000 worth of hardware?? Should it I put it on a 486 board? I have loaded all the latest drivers and such from the web. Doted my i's and crossed my t's. I loaded Catalyst 12.3 and when I go to the "Performance" tab it gives me that warning about damage, bla bla bla, so I press next and it goes away and is no longer an option... I can not adjust or see anything now. So I used driver sweaper and go rid of all of it and installed 12.1, just before they made the 7000 series cards. This solved the "performance" tab from disappearing from the menu but all other problems remain. I took all the RAM out and reseated them. I reseated the card... Fliped between BIOS 1 and 2 on the card.... I have gone through all the XMP bios profiles and the auto settings and the manual settings and the default settings with no changes to heavy load performance. I don't know what to do guys...?!?!?!?!
Well I do know one thing. This is the last AMD card I every buy. First one, last one. This card has been on 3 different MOBOs, Z68, Z77 and a rampage 2 GENE... it has problems on every one. Runs really hot and with no ouptut to show for it. I hope AMD goes out of business. This is absolutely insane. I could drop in a 4-5 year old NVIDIA GTX260 and it would work just fine. I am so stupid for buying an AMD. Unless anyone here has a genius idea I think I will put this triple slot pile of feces on Ebay and just take a haircut on it.

[Dr_BenD_over]

Knowing Asus, they probably left the protective film on the GPU and it's not even making contact with the heatsink.

[KaylaF]

Originally Posted by Dr_BenD_over

Knowing Asus, they probably left the protective film on the GPU and it's not even making contact with the heatsink.

HA HA HA. Hey wait a minute, almost every comp part I have is ASSUS. So far all the MOBO's, monitors and 2 laptops still work, just this graphics card is being disagreeable. But what I do not understand is that on the older mobo the Rampage 2, I could get it to pull a 28,000 on 3d mark vantage WITH SOME LOVE.
I also have 202 hours of Skyrim @ ultra high quality racked up and the card usually ran in the mid 70's so long as you kept the fan set to manual @ 75%. MW3 ran good as well. Why getting this card to work with the 2nd/3rd gen intel chips I so problematic I have no clue. I guess if all else fails I can move the card down the the PCIex16 x1 slot and buy an iron skillet to place on the back of the card so I can cook up some eggs while I surf the internet. It will also keep a cup of Tim Hortons warm.

[KaylaF]

Originally Posted by Dr_BenD_over

Knowing Asus, they probably left the protective film on the GPU and it's not even making contact with the heatsink.

///------ begin transmission ------////
F'n A Jesus christ you were real close. REAL CLOSE to the sticker still on the chip theory. I got to thinking... maybe he is right... why else would it get that hot..... So I popped it out of the case and took off the four screws holding the cooling unit to the board. There was one small dot of paste in the lower left part of the chip. About 65% of the AMD chip had no paste. Neither did the heat sink that surrounds it. BASTARDS. ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! After applying some paste to the chip and square around it I reset the cooler to the chip and tightened the four screws back down and droped it back on the MOBO. After it fired up I looked at catalyst and it said 53C. I seem to have solved my overheating problems with the Asus 6970. HA HA HA! Happy day! She went from 95C+ to 53C. I used the $7 cooler master thermal paste. Now I just scored a 42,000 on Vantage.
AMD Radeon HD 6970 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2600K Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-V PRO score: P42855 3DMarks
Sweet.... Ok, time to spark one up and launch Skyrim.

All that because ASUS cheaped out on $0.40 cents worth of thermal paste. I must have broken what little connection there was between the paste and the chip when I took it off the old board and put in on the new one.

Thanks for all the comments and ideas everyone. Without the random snide comment from Dr Bend over I would likely still be up a creak without a paddle. Cheers to sarcasm!!!!

[Dr_BenD_over]

I'm a fan of ASUS as well, but the fact that they left the plastic film on the NB of a P5N-SLI board I had, means the first thing I check is to see if the person who assembled it did their job properly.

[KaylaF]

Well I am glad I figured it out and lucky it was a simple fix, but that should not have happened. I really don't want to void my warranty of a product on the date of purchase by taking it apart just to see if they put it together correctly before jumping off the Foxconn building. I guess if all you can think of is killing yourself all day, the amount of thermal paste on my GPU isn't a major concern.