Quote (kclla @ 28 Jul 2018 09:56)

Picked up a completely different 7970 even cheaper than the first one.

Gave it new thermal paste/pads

Simular issue, computer boots with card, when booted in safe mode or the basic VGA driver the computer works fine No artifacts/lines I even was able to play D2 with it.

As soon as I try to install a driver it freezes the whole damn computer. Tried Current AMD driver, 16.11 and 15.11. 15.11 is the only one that wont insta crash, it loads the driver but suddenly I can't get into windows I only get "Thread stuck in driver" error bluescreen and have to go back into safe mode and uninstall the driver.

Already flashed the bios to the correct one. I've used DDU to uninstall every trace of any driver before trying any of the above ones.

The only other thing I can think of is try windows 7/8.1 and use a driver for that os, or try it in a hackintosh with an apple driver.

Quote (marioo1182 @ Jul 28 2018 01:02pm)

I had this exact problem when I owned a 7950 a few years back. I remember I updated the driver, and then the computer would insta crash, too. Even if I restarted my computer, I would get nothing past the BIOS Screen and post.
Then I tried to re-install Windows, and the card worked just fine. But as soon as I resinstalled the driver, the same thing happened.

Then I RMA'd the card, got a new one, and the exact same issue happened. It was an MSI 7950 Twin Frozr II btw. I got fed up with it and changed to an NVidia card, and sold my RMA'd card on Craigslist.

My recommendation would be that if you buy that card, make sure you are running an old driver and don't update. Updating the driver will force you to reinstall windows and then install an old driver again.