Bitcoin Forum

Hello, i bought an occasion 7950 to extend my mining operations and the card is running very badly....

1 if i put it in a rig, when it shows up, it stays at 0k/hs
2 if i put it alone, i get some artefact a ubuntu loading screen and just freeze at login screen.

Did i just get robbed ? Is there anything to do?

Yes.  Either sell it on, return it, or mark it down to bad luck.

If you are getting artifacting on a card prior to the OS even loading drivers the card is the problem as long as you know the board/slot is fine with another card.  Overall sounds like a bad card!

Artifacts are usually a sign of a dying card. Specially in ubuntu if you haven't messed with drivers or unity...

If it is xfx branded the warranty is transferable for three months after you bought it from the original buyer. You may do an RMA, specially if you live in the states.

Also you may wanna change the title for dying instead of dead, since a dead card will not even give you display. But that is just grammar...

Good luck on this one

I guess when the person who sells it gave you a false number and has no record nor on facebook neither on her gmail address, i'm screwed.

Any way to try to get information about this person?
Like can i send an e-mail with something included that will give me her real IP address not just the gmail one? This would be a start...

Also, what is going bad on the card? Is it the proc or the memory? Nothing looks burned ... How can a card work "a little"? It is very frustrating :)

It could have being overclocked, overheated and failed. That seems a logical explanation for a card that new. Perhaps it mined for weeks at 100/110 C and that caused it. It could have been defective from the very beginning as well. There are plenty of scenarios.

In my experience once artifacts appear there is not much to do. You can try to underclock the gpu and the ram to see if the card becomes stable at some point. Perhaps the card has unlocked shaders and they don't work well? You can try to reflash the bios to the original one and see if it helps. Other than that I don't know if there is an easy way to detect which ram module failed or if it actually was the gpu, and after that actually fix the issue. Perhaps someone with more experience with dying/dead cards can help you out.

As for the ip I'm no expert in this area. But I can think of two ways to achieve that. One would be to attach a picture that is hosted on a host you control and only send the picture to him. You will have to log the ips that connect to the host and download the picture. Other would be to send some form of spam with a weblink to a host of yours and do the same thing if he actually clicks it.

But still you have to hope he is not under tor or any sort of vpn. And if you want to gain access you have to hope he is not the update type of guy. I think there are some people on this forum that offer their services to recover scammed money. But that is a bet...