One of my displays just freaked out, turned gray, and started flickering

[Dankk]

Fortunately I have a dual-monitor setup. Just a few minutes ago, I was browsing the internet - no gaming, nothing intensive - and one of my monitors suddenly turned gray and started flickering very quickly. It scared the crap out of me. The whole screen was gray except for a few horizontal black lines about 1px thick. Completely fubar.

This occurred on my secondary monitor, and I wasn't using it. My primary monitor was unaffected. To check if my monitor was having problems rather than my GPU, I turned the panel off and back on. Monitor seems to be working fine. Something was definitely wrong with my GPU output.

Since my main monitor was still working fine, I just click on Start > Shutdown and was able to reboot the computer gently. The flickering went away and things are back to normal.

My primary monitor (the unaffected one) uses DVI, and the secondary monitor (the one with the gray screen) uses HDMI, if that means anything.

I know this has only happened once, but... is this a bad sign? I've heard of the fabled gray screen of death, but I can't say I've ever experienced it... until now I guess. Did I just get a gray screen of death? Is my card going bad? :'( I'm using a 7870 on Windows 8 x64.

 

[Ketchup]

A bad cable/connection will do this. See if you can make it re-occur by moving the cable at both ends (see if either connectors are loose too).

 

[CakeMonster]

That happened once in a while with my 7970, one screen went gray/garbled. I'm not sure, but I think it only happened when I had OC'ed it in the CCC. It would typicall happen in Windows and not under load in games so I suspect it was something with the OC function and not the OC itself.

 

[blackened23]

Maybe a bad connection? I've had DVI-D cables wiggle out ever so slightly and cause similar issues.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had issues with my GTX460 using HDMI out, using an included mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter that came in the box. I thought it was an issue with the adaptor, sometimes the screen would turn black on me, suddenly, and then sometimes it would come back, and sometimes not. My screen is a 26" KDS 1920x1200 LCD display.

It turned out to be the HDMI cable. I replaced the (thicker) generic HDMI cable, with a (thinner) Firefold-branded HDMI cable, and it started working much better.

 

[tweakboy]

Try diff monitor ports.. properly seated. gl

 

[Dankk]

I tried to reproduce the problem by nudging and jiggling the video cable on both ends. No dice. The connection looks absolutely solid.

I should probably also mention that while the problem was actually occurring, I tried jiggling the cable to see if I could do the inverse and make it stop. It didn't work.

That happened once in a while with my 7970, one screen went gray/garbled. I'm not sure, but I think it only happened when I had OC'ed it in the CCC. It would typicall happen in Windows and not under load in games so I suspect it was something with the OC function and not the OC itself.

Thanks. I have my card overclocked in CCC. Nothing too extreme; 1100/1400 with PowerTune set to +20. It's possible that this may have caused the issue.

I've noticed that since upgrading to a dual-monitor setup, the memory clock on AMD cards always remains at it's max. Thought this was a bug at first, but I looked it up and learned that it's supposed to work this way... with multiple monitors, memory doesn't downclock to idle values, regardless of whether or not you're playing a game. So maybe it was related to the clock being at 1400Mhz all the time.

Anyway, I've simply disabled the overclock for now. I'll play it by ear and see what happens next. Who knows if or when I'll get the bug a second time. Thanks guys.

 

[tweakboy]

Could this be a specific ATI bug I think.

 

[spat55]

I think I wouldn't worry about it, seems software related anyway, so at least it doesn't appear to be hardware related. If I were you I would overclock it in a different program, I have heard bad things about CCC and don't like to use it myself.

 

[Ketchup]

Glad to hear it's just software. Possibly more irritating, but no money involved. I remember some Nvidia cards I had doing that when I overclocked the memory too far.