Did I buy a bad GPU? (Consistent crashes no matter what I tweak)

[Reverencium]

I bought a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970 in all the Amazon Prime Day sale hype. It was a warehouse deal, so I knew it was probably used. It ran smoothly for a while, until The Witcher 3 happened.

Before I go on, my system Specs are:

Windows 10/7

i5 4670

Gigabyte G1 GTX 970

8gb Crucial RAM

120GB SSD

600B EVGA Bronze Rated PSU/750w EVGA Gold PSU

The crash in question happens consistently when I play The Witcher 3. A minute and a half into gameplay, the screen goes black, a loud buzzing noise sounds in my headphones, and my PC resets with a Kernel Power error. I googled the issue for 3 days and attempted every single fix available online, with no changes in the frequency or nature of the crash. This includes settings tweaks, driver rollbacks, NVIDIA control panel changes... if you can think of it, I probably tried it.

At first I suspected the PSU was at fault, so I replaced my 600B with a shiny new 750w from EVGA. The crash persisted. Then I realized that I had never updated my motherboard's BIOS after getting it. After the update, the exact same crash still persisted. Next I downgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 7, and 10 is a tad unstable for some gamers right now. Even on a completely different OS, the exact same crash persisted.

I've monitored my GPU and CPU temps, the GPU hovers around 50, sometimes skipping to 60 in game. The CPU is also pretty normal, sitting at 30% on menus and hitting 40-50 in gameplay. GPU usage hovers around 80% with a capped framerate on a mixture between high and medium settings.

Still going to try a totally fresh install of 7, but with how persistent this exact same crash has been across all configurations I doubt it will help. I'm starting to think I just bought a bad GPU. What do you guys think?

 

[Agash]

Only in "The Witcher 3" it happens? Does it happen in any other game?

 

[Reverencium]

Only in "The Witcher 3" it happens? Does it happen in any other game?

Yeah. I definitely verified the game cache though, and reinstalled from scratch twice. I don't believe it's the game's fault, unless there's some sort of conflict.

 

[Agash]

So, it happens with other games too? If so, then. it's the GPU's fault, RMA it. If only the game, it's the game. If it happens in other games, which ones (To name a few).

 

[Reverencium]

So, it happens with other games too? If so, then. it's the GPU's fault, RMA it. If only the game, it's the game. If it happens in other games, which ones (To name a few).

No, no other games. Just Witcher. To be fair though, I don't play any other games nearly as graphically intense as it. Just Rocket League and Battlefield. I've made several threads here and on Reddit though, and emailed back and forth with the game's developers for two weeks now. Nobody can figure out why my PC crashes every time I run this game, without fail.

 

[Agash]

Did you try lowering your settings, does that work? Did you install the latest driver? Where does it crash? After main menu, during, before?

 

[Reverencium]

Did you try lowering your settings, does that work? Did you install the latest driver? Where does it crash? After main menu, during, before?

As stated in the OP, I have tried dozens of settings configurations, including everything set to low, all post processing effects off, windows, windowed borderless, gsync turned off, frame rate capped and uncapped, and every combination of them. I've also tried multiple Nvidia drivers, including the latest one and their hotfix released recently.

It crashes a minute and a half into gameplay. Does not matter the settings, what part of the game, etc... One minute after gameplay begins, it will crash 100% of the time. I can let it sit idle on the main menu as long as I want with no issue, however.

Just recently, I tried it on a completely fresh install of windows 7. You guessed it- same crash. This is why I believe there is a problem with my GPU, I'm just looking for a more experienced opinion before calling Gigabyte about it.

 

[Agash]

Did you try underclocking the GPU? It seems to be the stock manufacturer overclock that may screw it up. It happened to me with driver crashes. Underclock it to the stock speeds; 1050 Mhz. Your card is at 1178 MHz. Use MSI afterburn to underclock it. If it works, then send a ticket to gigabyte e-support to see if you need to RMA it.

 

[Reverencium]

Did you try underclocking the GPU? It seems to be the stock manufacturer overclock that may screw it up. It happened to me with driver crashes. Underclock it to the stock speeds; 1050 Mhz. Your card is at 1178 MHz. Use MSI afterburn to underclock it. If it works, then send a ticket to gigabyte e-support to see if you need to RMA it.

Tried that, still crashed. Can I get an RMA even though I bought it used on Amazon Warehouse Deals?

 

[Agash]

Well, gigabyte gives 3 year warranty to all GPU's and seeing that the 970 came out 2014, you can RMA it no matter where you bought it from.

 

[Reverencium]

Well, gigabyte gives 3 year warranty to all GPU's and seeing that the 970 came out 2014/2015, you can RMA it.

Alright, thanks! That'll be the best solution since the issue seems to be with my card.

 

[Agash]

Yup, No problem.