Attempting to revive a HD 5870 Eyefinity - help?

[Centauri]

So I picked up this guy online, mostly for the novelty, and also because I figured with 2GBs of RAM and DX11 support it'd make a solid card for my backup Phenom rig.

But it's definitely got an issue of some sort.

Upon installing the card and powering the machine on, the card's fan goes into full-blast before the BIOS post even displays... but the machine does proceed to boot to desktop. From there, rebooting with the card still installed results in a failure to post at all. The only way to get the machine to post again is to remove the card and reinstall it before a fresh power up. Where I then run into the same problem again upon another reboot.

Additionally, once a driver is installed and the machine boots past the Windows boot screen and attempts to load the login screen, I get my first and only signs of artifacting - comically large, Tetris-esque red artifacting with no background image loaded at all. Just red on black.

I have tried with two machines, both of which have sufficient power supplies, including my Ryzen/Fury rig. Identical results.

I have also repasted the GPU and while doing so examined all the capacitors - they all look solid to my eye. No bulging at least.

Any ideas? I'm honestly willing to put some effort into reviving this guy.

Thanks!

 

[EXCellR8]

Had a similar occurrence with a HD 5970 years ago and it ended up being bad VRAM. I could get the card to the point where I could install drivers but after that it was artifact city; the screen would occasionally cut out completely. Had tried a bios flash and all that just because it was easy and I couldn't get it to work right.

 

[Centauri]

Hmmm...

I've seen some YouTubers and others mention sending cards off to get examined/fixed. Do you/anybody know where I would locate a service like that?

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, you could try down-clocking the RAM or GPU, but aside from that I honestly would get a card that works rather than paying to fix it. (would be better and cheaper). Good Hawaii and Fury air cards like the ones you have online would be a good place to start. I even spare ones I could get you a deal on if interested.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I wouldn't bother paying for a repair service unless you have a card with a current market value of $300 or higher. Even Polaris cards are iffy on whether to go for repairs or not because its so cheap used.

They are not cheap to repair. Unless you have the lab to do it yourself.

 

[EXCellR8]

Even if I had the means I'd probably toss it in the parts bin. I ended up selling my bugged 5970 for parts and that was still a good dual GPU card before the end of the HD series.

Worst case scenario is you use it for raw compute power but, as others have pointed out, there are better cards for that too that will use less power.