Can a graphics card crash a system?

[ehume]

I have an HD 4670 graphics card on a system with an i7 875k BCLK=133, Turbo boost up to 30x. MB is an As.s P7P55DE-Pro with 8GB RAM. When I am doing graphics-intensive work it sometimes crashes. Just now I was working on a 1905x1905-pixel image in PSP 11; when I dragged my brush, I got a BSOD. Not the first time dragging a brush got me a BSOD. Forgot to write down the BSOD code. It wasn't a -0101. Ended with -E, is all I can recall.

Graphics card? Or unstable overclock?

 

[Arkadrel]

In all honesty, if your graphics card is running stock, but everything else is overclocked....
Yes it could still be the graphics card... however its more likely its something else.

Start by doing a few hours of stress testing cpu,memory.

 

[BrightCandle]

Most certainly your overclock. GPUs do crash systems but relatively rarely.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Most of the time the GPU drivers just crash and the screen goes black for a few seconds, they don't usually crash the whole PC.

 

[ehume]

Thank you. Makes sense. After all, a graphic app, PSP in particular, is CPU intensive.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Yeah it's probably not the GPU being stressed with an app like PSP unless it has hardware acceleration, chances are it's the CPU since that's overclocked as well, best thing to do is test, you can measure CPU and GPU load easy enough with task manager and something like MSIs afterburner and see what load you're getting.

Im betting your CPU overclock is unstable under certain conditions you need to stress test it properly to make sure it's stable, something like 12+ hours in prime 95 torture test (1 instance per CPU core) ought to be sufficient.

 

[ehume]

Yeah it's probably not the GPU being stressed with an app like PSP unless it has hardware acceleration, chances are it's the CPU since that's overclocked as well, best thing to do is test, you can measure CPU and GPU load easy enough with task manager and something like MSIs afterburner and see what load you're getting.

Im betting your CPU overclock is unstable under certain conditions you need to stress test it properly to make sure it's stable, something like 12+ hours in prime 95 torture test (1 instance per CPU core) ought to be sufficient.

I think you're right. I can get it to crash with Linpack, but I don't want to push the Volts anymore. I guess I'll turn off a power-saving function.

 

[lopri]

Hardware (CPU, GPU, memory, or disk controllers, etc.) and software (application, drivers, and OS) are all capable of causing BSOD. Try to remember what you had changed in your system prior to BSOD and take the steps of process of elimination.

 

[ehume]

Normally I would agree with you. But this is not so much a change in system as it is a change in demand. Editing large images -- 3648 x 2736 and wider -- is reasonably new. Whiting out backgrounds is straightforward, but dragging a paintbrush across an area to get the last grey bits on a 10+ MB picture is reasonably new.

Turns out I had already nudged up my Vcore offset a notch, so Linpack runs without crashing. And now that I have been thinking about it, PSP-11 is not the only program which crashed the system. SilkyPix, the RAW editor that shipped with my Panasonic Lumix, also crashed the system a while back. But the problem does lie with the CPU: I have my CPU fan set to fluctuate with the cooling demand, so I can hear when the CPU is working harder. I was hoping it would be the GPU so I'd have an excuse to buy a new one . . .