Video card or What?

I have an alienware M9750. It has dual Nvidea Geforce Go 7950 GTX's in SLI. I use it alot, and I've had it for a few months. Recently, after playing games for a little while, I saw the framerates drop. It stopped the other day. This morning, I went on Need for Speed on it, and It crashed about 5 minutes in. I thought, "Okay, well then I'll just reastart it." It didn't start. I tryed again. The screen comes up like its going to show somthing, still nothing. I opened it up, checked the SLI cable, and made sure everything was seated. Nothing. I decided to start it up and let it start. IT dosent show the boot screen. It eventually boots Windows, and I can use it for about a minute, and the red lines show up in the backround, and it crashes. Blue screen, reboots, and then repeats the process. I cannot access the HDD to get to the DMP files in any way, but I'll take a pic of the screen ASAP. Seems like one of the cards blew. Anyone got ideas? I'm usually good with hardware, but I'm stumped.

Edit: I removed the slave card, and it did nothing to help. Same issue. Can I put the slave card in as a master, or do I need to flash the BIOS?

 

Chances are ur daughter (master) card is toast and no use putting the parent (slave) card in the primary slot it won't boot.
Only 3 options u got left is
1. try fix the card by baking it like a cake XD.
2. flash the parent card BIOS into a daughter one and use it as a single.
3. buy a new card

Do keep in mind baking is a good idea and cheapest if u follow the instructions but won't always fix it.

 

Wait, so the card that says daughter is the main card? I have tried it with only the parent, only the daughter, and the parent and daughter in switched slots. But not the daughter in both slots. Thats it. I will bake it today, I just found it odd it was such a sudden failure.

 

Well you really should read up on the naming before messing around with it! The Daughter card is the primary GPU, a parent card on its own will not work at all. The primary slot is the centre slot. What happens when you move the system around? It could be the slot or the card, if you move the system and the behaviour changes then the slot is likely the issue, otherwise it'll be the card and baking should fix it.

 

I've moved the cards to every possible position, and the only way that does anything is the normal way. I start, gives a whole lot of artifacts, and crashes. Hence, somthing is wrong with the card.