Is my GPU defective?

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2.71828183

Junior Member
Nov 22, 2012
19
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My new computer has been having intermittent glitches since I built it. I think it's related to video output, but I'm not sure if it's a hardware problem with my video card or something else.

What it does: Occasionally it will show a black screen on waking from sleep. I can type in my password blind and get the "logged in" ping, so I think it's normal other than a lack of video output. Sometimes the screen refreshes on its own after a longish wait, usually with a message "Nvidia driver xxx has crashed and recovered". Other times I have to power cycle the computer to get my screen back. These crashes happen very sporadically: I haven't found a pattern.

It has also occasionally exhibited similar behavior while I was using it; either the screen would blink and refresh with the same "driver crashed" message, or the screen image would hang (sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes until a power cycle), or everything would work normally except that my mouse cursor would be invisible. I've also gotten an OpenGL "error code 3" message. I do have a habit of idling the computer to sleep with paused Flash video in the background, but I don't think this is related to the crash: usually the video plays normally when the computer is woken up, and I've gotten crashes with Flash not open.

I should mention that I have two monitors, and my secondary monitor has a glitchy capacitive OSD that occasionally turns it off and back on. The monitor-turning-off does not cause a display driver crash.

I've had some problems with this card before: plugging my second monitor into the second DVI port caused an immediate BSOD on my previous rig (same graphics card, different processor/motherboard). However: that rig did not ever have issues with the crashing like my current rig does. I fixed that problem by plugging the monitor in with a VGA-DVI adapter (same physical DVI port on the card, but running as analog).

My current video card is a GTS 450 (Sapphire) with a fanless cooler. I don't think it's a heat issue, because the card reaches about 75-80°C load (45°C idle), and the crash almost always happens at idle. I will note that this behavior has persisted across driver wipes and reinstalls, and multiple updated driver versions.

The reason I'm posting this now (other than not having time to troubleshoot it before) is that it seems to have gotten worse: now my computer is consistently refusing to wake from sleep (black screen, requiring a hard power cycle) with the second monitor plugged in. I can plug in the second monitor with the computer awake and everything works fine.

The rest of the system:
i7-4770
Asus Z87-A motherboard
16GB DDR3-1600
256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD
650W Seasonic PSU
PCI-E wireless card (disabled in adapter settings because I have a wired connection now)
Optical drive
Razer mouse and keyboard (I mention this because the Razer drivers are kind of screwy; don't know if that's related to losing my mouse cursor or not)
Windows 7, everything with latest updates

So: does this problem sound like a GPU hardware problem? Is it related to my flaky monitor? Could it be software? I wouldn't mind upgrading my GPU (I don't really need more GPU power, but it is a couple generations out of date) but I'd like to figure out if that's likely to solve the problem first.
 
Last edited:
Ketchup

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
Couple things I can think of (if it isn't indeed the card):

If you have the "buggy" monitor unplugged from the PC, can you recreate the issue?
How many video card drivers have you used since the issue started occurring?
How long has the issue been occurring (even when it was sporadic?

Other than that, I think we are down to the card, especially with the driver crash when it wakes from sleep.
 
2

2.71828183

Junior Member
Nov 22, 2012
19
0
0
Thanks for your reply,

I haven't yet been able to recreate it with only one monitor, though that doesn't mean much since it's so sporadic. (I hate working with only one monitor, so I only thought to disconnect it when the problem got more severe, and that was yesterday.) It's normal to go a couple days, or even a week or so, without seeing any occurrences of the issue, so I won't know the answer to that for a while.

Something I forgot to include earlier: When I first set up this system (in June, not terribly long after Haswell came out if I remember correctly) I installed drivers for the integrated Intel graphics as well as the discrete card. I had the idea that I'd save a bit of power by letting the discrete card idle to sleep when I wasn't doing 3D work. This was horribly buggy (number 1 symptom: the image on the screen would lag about 5-30 seconds, and update at maybe 1-5 FPS) so I uninstalled both sets of drivers and started over. I did try with only the integrated graphics for a while, and I think that was slightly buggy too (also not powerful enough): but using only the discrete card, with the Intel drivers uninstalled, was what I settled on. The system has not been free of errors since I built it, and I never had issues with my previous system using the same graphics card (other than the BSOD thing I mentioned--don't know what was up with that).

I don't know how many driver updates I did exactly, but I kept updating to the most recent version in hopes that it would fix the problem. The version I'm running now is 331.82. Looking at the release dates on Nvidia's website, I believe I started with 320.18, then upgraded through 320.49, 327.23, and at least one of the two that are left (I may have skipped an update somewhere in there, I don't remember). So that would make five or six different driver versions.
 
2

2.71828183

Junior Member
Nov 22, 2012
19
0
0
Well, after all that, I tried to wake my computer up this morning and got a black screen after repeated power cycles--it wouldn't even give me a BIOS screen.

I physically removed the graphics card, and after a little fussing with drivers, successfully got the integrated graphics working for both monitors. So far I haven't seen a glitch on integrated graphics, but time will tell if that remains the case.

I guess that answers the question of whether the graphics card is faulty...

So, I guess now I'm in the market for a new graphics card. I don't know whether I should just ask here or create a new thread, but in any case: I'm looking for a graphics card with a TDP no more than that of the GTS 450 (~110W if I remember correctly), and it must be passively cooled. I'm comfortable with installing an aftermarket cooler, but I don't really know what I'm looking for in that regard. (The GTS 450 had a manufacturer-installed passive cooler--which the installation was kind of crappy, so I may be better off buying an aftermarket one and putting it on myself.) I also want it to be a significant performance upgrade over the GTS 450 I had before.

My budget is $200 max including the cooler if I have to get that separately--I'd prefer to keep under $150 if possible, but it depends on where the best price/performance is.

My use case is primarily CAD (Pro/Engineer), and light gaming (Starcraft II and Kerbal Space Program), so not too demanding.

I see Nvidia's GTX 650 and AMD's R7 260x in the right price bracket, but nobody seems to list TDPs. I'm not even 100% sure that these are the newest versions of the cards, or where they fall in performance terms.

As for aftermarket passive coolers, I have no idea where to look. It would be nice if the cooler would be reusable next time I upgrade graphics cards, but I don't know if that's possible to guarantee (I'm assuming the card geometry occasionally changes between generations).

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
2

2.71828183

Junior Member
Nov 22, 2012
19
0
0
I thought those were more like HTPC cards. Neither of them is in Anandtech Bench (unless I just missed them) so I'm not sure of the performance, but are they really a step up from what I had before?

From what I can tell (doing a 2-step comparison via the listings of the GTX 460, because the GTS 450 isn't in the '13 benchmark results) the GTX 650 Ti and the Radeon 7770 are about 30-40% better than the GTS 450. I don't know where that puts the GT 640 or the 7750.

(Side question: is the 7xxx the current generation for AMD cards? I thought they came out with cards with three-digit names, though maybe that's only for higher-end stuff than I'm looking for. I ask because that article is dated Feb 2012, which seems pretty old for computer parts.)

I did confirm from those links that the 7770 and 7790, and the 650 Ti (but not the 650 Ti Boost, which I'd think was nearly the same card but apparently burns an extra 30 watts or so), are within a reasonable TDP range, and since they're near the top of that range I probably can't go much (if any) higher. So that would mean I'd have to install a cooler, because I don't see any (not on Newegg at least) that ship with passive coolers. The cooler you linked is one option, but it doesn't appear to list the TDP it's rated to handle (the manufacturer's website goes to a 404 page, which is not encouraging...) Anybody used one of these and have a recommendation? For that matter, does anybody have a brand recommendation for the actual graphics card? It would be nice to not lose warranty coverage by changing the coolers, but I don't know if that's a thing or not.
 
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