Is my GPU failing? Pixelated black areas

[ringmany]

Hi everyone,

Recently I've been experiencing issues on my PC, where videos and sometimes images on my PC that contain black / dark areas are incredibly pixelated.

Here's an example of 3 images / videos on my screen right now that I took with my phone (May take a while to load):

Spoiler

This started happening a few weeks ago. Here's the steps I've taken so far in my investigation:

• 
  I've viewed the same videos on another PC, they look perfectly fine, so it's a local issue.
  I have 2 monitors for my PC, they're both showing the same pixelation, which leads me to believe it's either the GPU or software / drivers as both monitors show the same. (Both monitors use Display Port).
  I've unplugged my GPU, fully cleaned it, replugged back in, checked for no loose cables, still the same.
  I've uninstalled my GPU driver, turned off the PC and re-installed. This appears to have fixed the problem for about a day. Then it reverted back to dark areas being pixelated.

I'm uncertain what else to test. My GPU is "MSI - GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V", I've had it for 3 years now. It isn't overclocked, I haven't played games or done any rendering / editing with it for about a year, so it isn't heavily used.

Is there anything else I can check to confirm if it's a software or a hardware problem with the GPU? If you need any other details, let me know and i'l do my best to provide.

Thanks.

 

[Dunlop0078]

Well if reinstalling the drivers fixed it for a short time I would assume it's a driver issue. I would run DDU while the computer is in safe mode, to properly remove all the display drivers, then do a clean reinstall of the latest drivers. I linked an article on hoe to use DDU properly below.

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/367109-display-driver-uninstaller-how-use.html