failing gpu?

[apsoul]

Howdy all.
I recently moved my computer from my garage to the house, immediately wiped the hdd and did a fresh win7 install. Now the computer somewhat regularly freezes. Sometimes it will recover with a message that the graphics driver crashed but Windows was able to recover. Other times I need to do a hard reset. I have tried the drivers from the disk that came with my gpu and the drivers from the nvidia site. I also removed the card, sprayed canned air into pci-e slot and reinstalled. My psu is corsair 650tx that is probably only operating at about 50%-60%. I googled around a bit and the only things I have found is bad drivers or a failing card. I'm assuming it's not bad drivers as I was using the drivers from the disk successfully for years. If you all come to the same conclusion that I have (failing gpu) do you think it would be worthwhile to try a reinstall of win7? As in my problems could be a bad install of Windows or possibly the drivers were installed to a shaky section of the hdd? The reason I haven't done this yet is it takes me like a full week to download and install all Windows and game updates. And that's with dloads running all night and during work. I don't want to have to do that again so soon, but I will if it seems a likely cause.

Gigabyte 990fx ud3
Msi gtx460 768
Amd PII x2 555be
Corsair 650tx

 

[patonb]

It does point to a possily dying GPU.

 

[apsoul]

Thanks for prompt reply...

I believe I have about 2 months left on the warranty for the card. Should I try to return it? Also, is there anything else I could do to exclude other potential causes?

If returning the card is the way to go, anything I should/shouldn't do when returning it? I've never had to return faulty hw before.


Edit: so i just got home from work, and the computer would sieze up after about 5min. this happened about 4 times. 5 min of interweb browsing then freeze. GPU temp was 30c if that matters at all. So I hooked up an old HDD running linux and the computer has been going strong for about 15-20 min now... If nothing goes wrong here in linux, would it be safe to assume that my other HDD if bad and that is what is causing those lockups?

I did connect to my computer via teamviewer after it had frozen. It was at the user logon screen. I was able to click a user, enter the password, then it hung at the logging in process.

any thoughts?

 

[patonb]

Do you have access to a 2nd video card, or any quality?

I don't know how a HD would cause gpu issues, but maybe it could.

Have you tried the newest drivers?

 

[apsoul]

I believe i have an old 9300gt floating around somewhere... It doesn't have a fan but i could rig something up. IIRC i ran it passively successfully without crazy temps so long as i didn't push it.

My thoughts on the HDD causing errors is that the drivers are on corrupt sectors or something of that nature.

Yes, I tried the newest drivers. Although nvidia experience suggested a specific "gaming" driver that was different than what I had seen as the newest display driver for the gtx460.

So far so good with this HDD and linux... the only thing ive noticed (and probably only cause i'm being hyper critical of everything right now) is that typing occasionally lags a little.


EDIT:
Ok, so after playing around with the Linux HDD, I came back to my Win7 HDD and the computer has been running for a couple hours with no issues. the only thing that I changed was the SATA cable between the HDD's. Could my issues have been a poorly connected SATA cable? I will keep an eye on this and keep you all updated

 

[patonb]

|sounds good so far.

A 9300 doesn't need a fan, so you're good there.

 

[PP Mguire]

artifacts aren't the only thing... windows keeps crashing on me... sometimes will recover with message stating that the display driver crashed but windows was able to recover. Also if i increase voltage without changing clockspeeds it seems to cause artifacts. Weird right?

More info on the link to my thread (in these forums) dedicated to this issue

Yea, it's crashing and recovering because that's what Nvidia does on a bad OC without a BSOD. It's why I prefer their drivers over AMD among other things.

Are you upping the memory clocks at all, and what are your temps like?

 

[apsoul]

Ahhh... that's nice to know. Not at PC now but would I be able to downclock the gpu through afterburner software to keep things stable?

 

[PP Mguire]

Yes. If your artifacts go away then you just need to up the voltage a tad to retain the factory OC.

 

[apsoul]

well I have essentially undone the factory OC. Sitting at 675mhz/1800mhz for gpu/vram. Hopefully my pc stops crashing. If it does, thank you so much for the help Mguire, thanks to everyone else who replied as well.