xfx radeon hd 6950 cuts out after a few minutes

Question

I am putting together a pc, and having a problem with a XFX radeon hd 6950.

The machine works fine with an old nvidia card, but whenever I put in the new card, it runs and boots windows, lasts for a few minutes, and then the video cuts out, a red led comes on the card, and the fans seem to speed up. The machine does not power down, but can be powered down and restarted fine, but to the same result.

The same symptoms happen if I just enter the bios setup and let the machine sit for roughly the same amount of time.

I've got a Corsair TX 750 PSU, so that should be enough power for it. The machine also has a dual core intel 3.4 GHZ processor, a hard dive, and a DVD RW drive. The mobo is an Asus p5n sli.

Is it a bad card? Or something else on the machine that doesn't work with the card?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this should be a comment, or an answer, but I still have no idea what is causing this.

In the end, replaced the card with an Nvidia 560 Ti (roughly equivalent card) and everything works fine.

The original card was tested where I returned it, and they couldn't find anything wrong with it in their test machine.

So my guess is some combo of motherboard-card-bios unhappiness.