Did Furmark break my GPU?

Karlos Hebron

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Mar 2, 2015
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I have a GTX 750 ti and got curious on how my GPU performs on a 1080p(?) monitor-tv and decided to run Furmark benchmark on it.

I've got the settings to run on 1920x1080, which is the native res, and upon pressing "Go" my system suddenly crashed, and rebooted. Upon reboot I keep getting nvlddmkm errors/warning on my event viewer, and decided to restart my system thinking it would fix itself, but now I dont have a display, the fans are spinning on the gpu but my monitor doesnt seem to detect it.
Did I just break my GPU?
 
Solution
Furmark is a stress test, emphasis on STRESS. So no, it does not represent real world use. You can use a videocard without worrying about how it does in Furmark.

However, now you know that the stress of Furmark is too much for your card. This could be for a lot of reasons, from a power issue to a temperature or throttling issue. In your position, I might consider cleaning off the old thermal paste and reapplying new paste. The 750 Ti dates from 2014, so depending on when/where you got this card, it could be due for a new application.

7664stefan

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
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10,960
I doubt that Furmark broke your GPU unless you played around with the clock rates upfront (did you?). It would just put clock rates to the defined 100% producing the related heat to check GPU stability.
How to continue now?
Would be good if you could list your full hardware and PSU first. Possibly the root cause is somewhere else.
Would you have the chance to test your GPU in another PC or have a different GPU on hand you could try out in your rig?

 

Karlos Hebron

Reputable
Mar 2, 2015
6
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4,510


I have:
DeepCool 400W PSU
Gigaybyte H81M-DS2
Intel I3 4170
8GB RAM
Palit GTX 750 ti

I didn't even try to oc or anything. I just popped in a GPU, installed the drivers, and ran Furmark.

I did manage to boot again using the Intel HD Graphics, and found out that my Nvidia drivers got corrupted, I downloaded a new one and my GPU started working again.

I also did some reading about Furmark (which I propably should've done in the first place) putting a lot more stress on a GPU than real world scenario.
I guess it's just Furmark not working with my drivers, I am using Unigine.Heaven now though and haven't got an error so far.

Thanks for the help!
 

7664stefan

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
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10,960
Well, Furmark is used when OCing your GPU trying out its stability. If you just run on default clocks and settings there is no use for Furmark. You may still run benchmarks like 3dMark or Heaven if you want to try your GPU.
 
Furmark is a stress test, emphasis on STRESS. So no, it does not represent real world use. You can use a videocard without worrying about how it does in Furmark.

However, now you know that the stress of Furmark is too much for your card. This could be for a lot of reasons, from a power issue to a temperature or throttling issue. In your position, I might consider cleaning off the old thermal paste and reapplying new paste. The 750 Ti dates from 2014, so depending on when/where you got this card, it could be due for a new application.
 
Solution

7664stefan

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
355
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10,960
I wonder why you suggest to replace the thermal compound without knowing about any temp issue?

Possibly the author just did not win the silicon lottery and got a lower quality GPU? Still you are right if you wanted to say that it might be worth checkings load temps to see if there is any improvement potential.