Can artifacts damage my GPU?

[Guest]

Can artifacts damage my GPU? By damage I mean performance damage, not life span. I've been trying to overclock my GPU and the results were blue artifacts, black screen then display comes back again, or brown or grey screen (not sure) < when it's grey or brown I have to restart my PC because the display doesn't come back. Is this normal for overclocking?

CPU: I5 4690k
MOBO: MSI z97 PC MATE
GPU: EVGA GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0+
PSU: EVGA 650w supernova

 

[rolli59]

artifacts normally means broken card so if not recovering after OC then you just learned the risk of OC.

 

[Vellinious]

Is it normal? Yes. With an unstable clock. Will it hurt it? No. Having an unstable overclock will NOT hurt your GPU. You just need to make it stable. Either raise the voltage a little bit, or lower the core and / or memory clock. There's absolutely NOTHING in the stock 970 bios that will hurt that card. Crank it up, and run with it. Just watch your temps. High temps with the maxwell cards will cause instability, so balance the clocks, fan speeds, and voltage to find your GPUs happy place. On air, shoot for 1.256v, 1500 on the core and 2000 on the memory for benchmark runs.

Have fun.