Question From your own personal experience, what are signs your GPU is dying?

[takearushfan82]

I see it's a common question but I'm looking for anyone with personal experience on this matter. I bought a GTX 1660 from ebay in December and the return window closed 7 days ago. I think it's dying already unfortunately. I'm getting occasional freezing and occasional blue "collecting info" screen. I'm hoping it might be some other issue.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

5 Signs Your Graphics Card Is Dying

• Graphical Glitches Gradually Worsening. This is one of the most obvious signs a graphics card is reaching the end of its lifespan. ...
• Strange Fan Noises. ...
• Crashes Galore. ...
• Significant Frame Drops. ...
• Blue Screen of Death.

Buying used GPU can be risky because you never know if it going to break in next couple off months. I do not have any cards that died yet but in my experence of other things that died in my computer.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I had a defective replacement GPU sent to me from XFX. It was an RX 5700 XT THICC-III and it had some really weird columns of artifacts on my ASRock splash screen. It didn't always do that but when it did, I'd get an instant BSOD upon Windows being loaded.

It got more and more frequent which made loading Windows almost impossible which told me that the card was dying. Jim from AdoredTV told me that it was definitely an issue with the VRAM. It was a bit (ok, more than a bit) frustrating because I had already had to return the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT Triple-Dissipation that I had originally bought. While I was pleased to get upgraded to a THICC-III model, I wasn't pleased that the replacement was also defective. The first card had some power distribution issues that caused hard reset crashes which was already annoying as hell.

However, XFX paid for the return shipping and sent me another THICC-III that worked perfectly and I've had it ever since. I've owned six XFX cards in my lifetime and five of them were perfect from day one so I didn't fly off the handle and call XFX cards garbage. It's just a fact of life that sometimes you get a dud (or two) and it doesn't matter what brand of card you buy.

Other than that, I've never had a video card die on me or even begin to. Even my old XFX HD 4870s both still run perfectly. They'd only be glorified video adapters at this point but they still work.

The thing is, that's just one way that a card dies. There are so many others that have completely different symptoms.

 

[takearushfan82]

5 Signs Your Graphics Card Is Dying

• Graphical Glitches Gradually Worsening. This is one of the most obvious signs a graphics card is reaching the end of its lifespan. ...
• Strange Fan Noises. ...
• Crashes Galore. ...
• Significant Frame Drops. ...
• Blue Screen of Death.

Buying used GPU can be risky because you never know if it going to break in next couple off months. I do not have any cards that died yet but in my experence of other things that died in my computer.

Hmm. So far semifrequent crashes and one BSOD. This doesn't look good 😞

 

[takearushfan82]

I had a defective replacement GPU sent to me from XFX. It was an RX 5700 XT THICC-III and it had some really weird columns of artifacts on my ASRock splash screen. It didn't always do that but when it did, I'd get an instant BSOD upon Windows being loaded.

It got more and more frequent which made loading Windows almost impossible which told me that the card was dying. Jim from AdoredTV told me that it was definitely an issue with the VRAM. It was a bit (ok, more than a bit) frustrating because I had already had to return the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT Triple-Dissipation that I had originally bought. While I was pleased to get upgraded to a THICC-III model, I wasn't pleased that the replacement was also defective. The first card had some power distribution issues that caused hard reset crashes which was already annoying as hell.

However, XFX paid for the return shipping and sent me another THICC-III that worked perfectly and I've had it ever since. I've owned six XFX cards in my lifetime and five of them were perfect from day one so I didn't fly off the handle and call XFX cards garbage. It's just a fact of life that sometimes you get a dud (or two) and it doesn't matter what brand of card you buy.

Other than that, I've never had a video card die on me or even begin to. Even my old XFX HD 4870s both still run perfectly. They'd only be glorified video adapters at this point but they still work.

The thing is, that's just one way that a card dies. There are so many others that have completely different symptoms.

This is frustrating because it'd be the second card that died in a 3 month period and I simply am in no position to get another. I don't have integrated graphics either. Sometimes if I leave my PC on I'll turn on the monitor and there Will be the desktop still displayed but frozen. Other times it won't freeze until opening Chrome. Fingers crossed that it's something simpler, like a driver issue.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

Best advice is to save up for new card and that will have warranty and you feel more secure!. Otherwise you be paying more in long run with use cards

 

[takearushfan82]

Best advice is to save up for new card and that will have warranty and you feel more secure!. Otherwise you be paying more in long run with use cards

Yeah. I wish I could lol

 

[General_Cool]

Sucks that it happened. In the mean time you can keep using it safely if its not too much of a hassle since its extremely unlikely (higher chance of getting struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark) to damage your other components. Since you don't have integrated graphics and it sounds like you're on a tight budget, if this is your only PC and you must have access to it, I'd recommend grabbing a GT 1030 off of Ebay (try to look for the DDR5 version, they're the same price as the DDR4 version but multiple times better). They're only about $40 bucks and they're still getting driver updates. If that's a bit too much an R7 430 is only about $10 bucks, but keep in mind its no longer getting driver updates, so your mileage may vary on the long term usability depending on how long you need to spend saving up. Good luck!

 

[stonecarver]

I'm getting occasional freezing and occasional blue "collecting info" screen. I'm hoping it might be some other issue.

Being as this is card #2 now your having issues with, question how old is power supply. But more so have you did a clean install of windows or are you still using the Windows install that you were using with the first glitchy GPU?

Do you have a spare Hard Drive?

It seems money is tight and I get it so trying to help you with little or no money out of your pocket.

When I have seen card dying most of them had pixelated glitches like someone punched a LCD TV. Or card just black screens.

If your still getting to desktop and games than the crash there is some hope.

The easiest less hair pulling test is to unplug your now working hard drives.

Throw in a spare Hard Drive, Load Windows , drivers, and games. Test.

If the card starts playing nice you know it's your OS you were using that has a glitch.

If the card still acts up like before than hardware. AKA card or like I asked how old is your power supply.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I would take a look at your power supply. Sorry that you’ve had 2 die on you. In my experience usually you may get pixelated screens, bsod at times or just general system instability that likely could get worse over time.

That said I’ve bought multiple cards used and the last time I had issues with a card was actually a brand new card that I had to return to microcenter. My experience typically is once a card is working, unless it’s abused or overheated a bit it usually doesn’t just stop working.

I’m wondering if perhaps your power supply isn’t providing clean power and is killing cards somehow.

 

[nasch007]

Are you overclocking your rig? I thought my crashes were due to either a bad gpu or faulty RAM stick but it was actually RAM overclocking that did me in.

Did you repaste the card after you got it? Are all the fans working? I've gotten cards RMAd that had almost not paste on the die. Main symptoms I've seen were black screen after sleeping and not coming back, pink lines (vertical column a pixel or two wide) and solid color screens (green usually). I've also seen abnormally high temps but that was most likely due to M$I not knowing how to apply thermal paste on the cards they're sending back as warranty replacements/refurbs.

Best of luck troubleshooting. Regarding other poster's advice: yes, older AMD cards are stuck with the drivers you can get but many of their drivers aged like wine. Nvidia cards though I might say are a tad more user-friendly imho.

 

[Flayed]

For me, it was failing to install the drivers half way through the install process.

 

[wondra2]

Personally: there is no telling what so ever.
My GPU recenlty died and literally burned. Did I get BSOD/freezes? Absolutely. However, I did get those frequently two years ago as well in the very same game. So did I when it was brand new and I messed with OGL/drivers. Did bad nvidia drivers causing BSOD/freezes killed the GPU? Maybe. Did it indicate it? I dont think so, its more about how you use the GPU, some apps/workloads lead to more frequent glitches/freezes. All my dead GPUs so far just didnt boot one day (and the latest one burned day after).

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't know if it will help but a lot of computer shops with service departments can perform repairs on video cards. The problem of course is that you might end up paying more for the repair than if you just bought another video card.

I don't know what kind of financial shape you're in but I did get a working RX 580 2048SP 8GB from AliExpress for only $70CAD including shipping. That's only like ~$52USD. It's some weird brand called JXZ Jisoonzer (I'm serious, that's what it's called...LOL).

I bought it for my mother's HTPC because she's using my old FX-8350 but it wouldn't work with her BIOS because, for some odd reason, it only likes UEFI, something that her 990FX motherboard (that I bought in 2011) doesn't have. I ended up getting lucky and found some weird clearance sale on a Powercolor RX 6500 XT ITX. It cost me about $180CAD:

The card's performance is pretty trash for an RX 6000 as it's only 13% faster than the RX 580 2048SP (and that's only if you have PCIe4). I was actually worried that there would be problems because a 990FX motherboard only has PCIe2 and so this card would be running at PCIe2x4. It works just fine for 2D applications though and has a TDP of only 107W instead of 150W so, good enough.

I didn't know about this strange aspect of Polaris cards and I took it to a Memory Express store to be tested. They said that the card was defective and gave me a printed estimate to that effect. I submitted that as evidence that the card was defective and successfully got a refund from AliExpress. About a month later, I was tinkering with the card (took the cooler off, put new thermal paste on the die, etc.) and, to my shock and amazement, it worked perfectly on the Biostar A320MH motherboard that I used for tinkering.

I found out from a user named eidairaman on TPU that it wasn't uncommon for Polaris cards to require UEFI to work properly. I felt pretty bad about getting the refund because it was a great deal to begin with but, by that time, it was too late for me to do anything about it. The card works though, I tested it with 3DMark, Unigine Superposition and did some benchmark test runs with older games like Godfall and Far Cry 5. It played those games just fine at 1080p native and for more advanced games, it supports FSR.

I know it's not ideal but it could be a workable option for you.