Has My Graphics Card Pooped It?

[Kazaa]

Here are the cliffs of what has been happening:

No changes have been made to my PC for many months.

Screen would freeze and turn black when running applications in full screen mode.

Updated graphic card drivers and got the same result.

Some time later my computer would not go past the windows login screen. Had horizontal artefacts.

Checked CPU temps in BIOS and all looked fine.

Noticed a lot of artefact in the BIOS (Red Horizontal Lines)

Went into safe mode and swept clean all GPU drivers using software.

Computer would boot normally but freezes every time I try to install a GPU driver (tried three different versions).

I don't have a spare GPU to switch in and test but I'm pretty sure it's the GPU from what has already been said above.

Checked the device manager and the GPU isn't showing up (not sure if it's because lack of driver or not.

Thoughts?


ASUS Rampage II Extreme Mobo
Intel Core I7 2.6Ghz @ 4.0Ghz CPU
6Gb DDR3 @ 1600Mhz RAM
Nvidia 780GTX GPU
Samsung 850 Evo SSD
1000w Corsair Modular PSU
Windows 10

[Bizman]

Either it's the GPU but I suspect your power supply. Does it have dedicated plugs for your video card? Are they properly seated? I suppose the wattage is sufficient by the numbers, but is it of good quality?

[Kazaa]

Either it's the GPU but I suspect your power supply. Does it have dedicated plugs for your video card? Are they properly seated? I suppose the wattage is sufficient by the numbers, but is it of good quality?

My power supply was made by Corsair, it's 1000W and modular. It's about 6 years old now.

I'll test some different ports & cables.

[Bizman]

Strong enough (or maybe even too powerful) and of a well known brand, that's good. Six years is a long time, though. If you can, do a test with another. According to Nvidia, 600 W would be the minimum recommended for your card. Going past 750W would be overkill and might cause issues.

[Kazaa]

Just tried some different cables and different ports and still no change.

[Bizman]

Bummer. Can you get another power supply for testing? Or, do you have any other video card that uses the dedicated power cabling? Actually the older ones often use more power than your current one, so one of those would be perfect for testing.

[BaldEagl]

Graphic artifacts are typically the result of blown GPU memory although it could also be the PSU.  No way to know for sure without replacing one or the other but if I were to try one I'd try the GPU first.

[Kazaa]

Unfortunately I don't have either another PSU or GPU to test.

I'll RMA my GPU and go from there.

Thanks for the help.

[guncrasher]

normally if your ps is going out you will hear a high pitch noise in your speakers.  out of curiosity if in safe mode does your screen also freezes?  if it doesnt  something else is your problem.  my guess.


semp

[Chalenge]

Have you ever upgraded your BIOS on that MB?

[Kazaa]

Have you ever upgraded your BIOS on that MB?

Negative, Ghost Rider.

I was just on ASUS' website for updates to D/L and they don't support win10 in combo with my board. It is 6 years old now so I guess I can't be too mad.

[Kazaa]

normally if your ps is going out you will hear a high pitch noise in your speakers.  out of curiosity if in safe mode does your screen also freezes?  if it doesnt  something else is your problem.  my guess.


semp

No noises, mate.

[Chalenge]

Hmm, I would think the only difference your OS would make is in an auto-install routine for the BIOS. You should still be able to update it at boot.

[Bizman]

I was just on ASUS' website for updates to D/L and they don't support win10 in combo with my board.

Oh yes, Windows 10. A friend of mine said it has fried several video cards on her computers...

I re-read your original post and noticed you had mentioned stripes even in bios. I suppose that's the old fashioned very archaic looking bios, not the new mouse-operated one? If you get artefacts in such an early state, it often means the ram of your video card is failing as BaldEagl said. 

[Kazaa]

Oh yes, Windows 10. A friend of mine said it has fried several video cards on her computers...

I re-read your original post and noticed you had mentioned stripes even in bios. I suppose that's the old fashioned very archaic looking bios, not the new mouse-operated one? If you get artefacts in such an early state, it often means the ram of your video card is failing as BaldEagl said.

My board is from 2009.

I'll have to RMA my 780GTX and buy something in the mean time. Looking at the 970 because performance is similar and the price is good. Still little bitter that I'm dropping good money on a non-upgrade. Might as well go balls out to justify the expenditure and sell what/if I get back.