What is wrong with my video card?

[SimpsonKnight]

So today my brand new Radeon 6850 video card came in the mail and what ensued was a days worth of confusion, anger, and frustration. First of all it wouldn't fit. I then took out some weird antennae thing and there was barely enough room for it. Next it wouldn't turn on. I attributed this to the PSU which was a 300 W one. I bought a new, 500 W PSU and managed to successfully hook it up, which took forever since I have zero experience with such things. The video card still wouldnt work.

I thought that maybe I didnt connect the motherboard to the PSU correctly but whenever I removed the video card the computer worked fine, using its on board video capabilities. At this point I realized that in the installation manual it said to make sure that any sort of on board cards are unistalled before installing the new one. I did this and tried again but it still refused to work.

One thing I should mention is that when I had it connected to the old 300 W PSU, the card's fan didnt work at all but when I connected it to the 500 W PSU the fan did work at one point, even though there was no picture, but then it stopped working all together.

So ya, thats my predicament. At this point both my Radeon and my on-board cards dont work and I am left withh an atrocious, low definition picture. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

[Macmaster4k2]

Do you have the latest drivers for the graphics card? what are your specs for you computer like ram, cpu, etc.? Is it overclocked? I hate to say this but another problem that could occur for you is your power supply going out. I was running a phenom II 1090t with 8gb ram and a radeon hd 6790 and my 500w power supply blew.

[SimpsonKnight]

My computer is not what you would a gaming rig. Its pretty average (I dont know the exact specs but I can tell you it wouldnt be able to run anything like BF3 or Crysis) and I mostly use it to play Starcraft 2 and other strategy games. My video card broke about a month or two ago and I wanted to get a new one ever since. I figured that if I am going to buy one I might as well go big, you know, just in case I ever decide to build an actual gaming rig, I would already have a decent video card. As far as the drivers go, I dont think so because the card itself has not been installed on the computer so I dont think it downloaded any drivers.

I dont think its the PSU thats at fault since I did only buy it today and it was new. The computer seems to turn on perfectly and everything else works, its just the video card and the consequent screen resolution and picture quality that aren't working.

[Indigo]

What brand is the power supply? Cheap brands will cause the same problem that the 300 watt unit was having, by the way.

What brand is the video card? HIS? Sapphire? etc.

Also, what are the specs for the rest of the system?

[mesady]

Try to check if your video card is function properly.. or else try to see it with computer technician..
___________________________________
fivesquids