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Is my graphics card about to die? (Update: RMA woes, excess solder on back of card?)

T

Techhog

Platinum Member
So, I started up a flash video, and suddenly my screen went with colored lines everywhere. It's been really jumpy due to changing clocks, and Afterburner confirms that it was not at idle clocks when it happened. It looked like an extended version of one of the jumps. The strange thing, though, is that I was on stock clocks at the time. I only have it overclocked when I actually need the extra power. It's really strange. Any ideas?
 
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sandorski said:
Your whole screen or just the window/view area the video was playing in?
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The whole screen. It's pretty safe to say that I'm screwed, isn't it? It probably won't be covered under warranty due to the overclock... I guess it's gonna be HD 4600 gaming for me very soon. 🙁
 
Techhog said:
The whole screen. It's pretty safe to say that I'm screwed, isn't it?
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Doesn't sound promising. It may last awhile yet, but you might want to start shopping around for a replacement, IMO. Unless it's still under warranty.

That said, it may have just been a glitch. Keep using it for awhile, see if the problem occurs again or not. If you haven't Restarted(complete Power off) your PC since, give that a go as well.
 
sandorski said:
Doesn't sound promising. It may last awhile yet, but you might want to start shopping around for a replacement, IMO. Unless it's still under warranty.

That said, it may have just been a glitch. Keep using it for awhile, see if the problem occurs again or not. If you haven't Restarted(complete Power off) your PC since, give that a go as well.
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Yeah, I just restarted PC. And it should still be under warranty, provided that they can't somehow find out about the overclock. Also, it happened again when I tried to close Chrome.

Either way, it's staying at stock clocks permanently. I have no money for a replacement, so I'll be stuck with this for at least 6 months unless I take a major downgrade.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I only get the screen jumping/tearing issue when I overclock while Chrome is a visible window...
 
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Good luck. It might last 6 months at Stock, but in my limited experience once stuff like that occurs I have only had a video card last a few weeks. Make sure the Fan is still working, maybe check to see if it is really dirty or something, it could just be overheating.
 
sandorski said:
Good luck. It might last 6 months at Stock, but in my limited experience once stuff like that occurs I have only had a video card last a few weeks. Make sure the Fan is still working, maybe check to see if it is really dirty or something, it could just be overheating.
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Temps are fine... Ugh. I can't believe this is happening...

I think the reason this happened is because, while gaming when overclocked, goes down to 2D clocks every time I hit a 2D screen, like a loading screen. It seems like it was just switching too much and couldn't handle it. What do you think the chances are that I'll be able to get it replaced under warranty?
 
Techhog said:
Temps are fine... Ugh. I can't believe this is happening...

I think the reason this happened is because, while gaming when overclocked, goes down to 2D clocks every time I hit a 2D screen, like a loading screen. It seems like it was just switching too much and couldn't handle it. What do you think the chances are that I'll be able to get it replaced under warranty?
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No idea really. Contact Manufacturer explaining the issue. Some companies are good about it, some are not.
 
IMO, don't tell them you overclocked unless you really pushed it. A 10Mhz OC isn't going to be the deciding factor in a cards life. Same idea tends to go for repasting etc. "If you know you didn't break it, it isn't a problem."

EDIT: 1234 posts! Best post ever! :awe:
 
Bubbleawsome said:
IMO, don't tell them you overclocked unless you really pushed it. A 10Mhz OC isn't going to be the deciding factor in a cards life. Same idea tends to go for repasting etc. "If you know you didn't break it, it isn't a problem."

EDIT: 1234 posts! Best post ever! :awe:
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Um...............

>.>;

I'm wondering if I should wait to see if it dies or if I should call them right away and hope that i can somehow hide the fact that i pushed it.
 
Yuriman said:
Did you ever touch the voltage?
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Yes. I've accepted the fact that it's dead and that I did something that I wasn't in a position to do, so I'm just gonna let it die, save for a new one, and never overclock anything ever again.

I'm so stupid. I should have seen it coming...
 
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So, what are the odds that it would go down "silently"? As in, I keep it at stock clocks but doesn't happen again though still dies randomly.
 
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Techhog said:
Yes.
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he means: did you flash the bios or do any other volt mod on it. not just use the power slider in some software tool like afterburner.

if you did, well you could try baking it, you could try selling it for parts, you could try to RMA' it by lying like a dog.

if you didn't, you are still under warranty. the OC you did is on your PC's settings, not on the card itself. RMA techs will have no way to identify that you have overclocked or raised the power on it .. because you didn't.
 
DigDog said:
he means: did you flash the bios or do any other volt mod on it. not just use the power slider in some software tool like afterburner.

if you did, well you could try baking it, you could try selling it for parts, you could try to RMA' it by lying like a dog.

if you didn't, you are still under warranty. the OC you did is on your PC's settings, not on the card itself. RMA techs will have no way to identify that you have overclocked or raised the power on it .. because you didn't.
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Oh no, I didn't touch the vBIOS. I only raised it in Afterburner. Like I said, it seems like the problem is that it doesn't like changing voltages or waking up from sleep while overclocked.

However, I did use unofficial overclocking, so that might have voided it...

Also, I meant doesn't in my last post. I haven't seen any issues since restarting my PC.
 
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Bubbleawsome said:
I'm honestly thinking I might have pushed my card too far too. 1352 has gotten unstable. :\
Good luck!
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Heh.

I'm gonna hope that it's fine, but even if it lasts a while I'm gonna upgrade within a year. I really think it's just that the VRMs don't like having the maximum voltage changed.
 
I'd call them; about the artifacts; wait is it only happening in Chrome? *I hate that browser buggy pile of* try turning off hardware acceloration on it and see if that helps.......
 
DigDog said:
you could try to RMA' it by lying like a dog.
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That is fraud, and highly frowned upon by this forum.
if you didn't, you are still under warranty. the OC you did is on your PC's settings, not on the card itself. RMA techs will have no way to identify that you have overclocked or raised the power on it .. because you didn't.
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While I cannot say whether or not the company could "detect" overclocking, it's not true that it's just a "PC settings change", it does directly affect the card, when you change the voltage slider.

And he mentioned he enabled "Unofficial Overclocking", which means he went beyond the BIOS / mfg-supported overclock ranges, meaning he intentionally violated the warranty, and possibly damaged the card.

All of that said - perhaps not all is lost. Chrome's hardware acceleration is notoriously buggy. Try turning it off, and see if your PC is stable otherwise.
 
MeldarthX said:
I'd call them; about the artifacts; wait is it only happening in Chrome? *I hate that browser buggy pile of* try turning off hardware acceloration on it and see if that helps.......
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The thing is that the artifacts only appear once I have overclocked the card and stay until I either restart the computer or put it to sleep and wake it up... I wonder if the problem is partially that Chrome is loading the GPU while I change the clocks. I could test, but I'm afraid to...
 
I'm not getting artifacts, but my temps are increasing massively and in one game I'm getting short freezes every now and them. I'm guessing I only have a few days left...

GPU-Z also claims that my voltage jumped to 1.498V at some point, but I doubt that's actually true. GPU-Z has glitched out on me before.

EDIT: The higher temps are due in part to a higher ambient temp, but 67C at stock still seems high, especially since the game I was playing was Lego Batman 2 and vsync was on
 
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Looking at my GPU-Z log file, the spike to 1.498V was for less than a second. Is that probably just a glitch in the program?
 
Your opening post sound like a variant of GSOD, what drivers are you using? Flash videos was giving me a similar problem with 13.12, but I use Firefox, switched to 13.9, no problems so far.

VirtualLarry said:
All of that said - perhaps not all is lost. Chrome's hardware acceleration is notoriously buggy. Try turning it off, and see if your PC is stable otherwise.
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^^^Also try that.
 
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