Question Is my graphics card dead?

[Daritha]

Hi!
I'm wondering if anyone could confirm whether or not my laptop's graphics card is dead or not.

I have a CLEVO N960TD with Intel Core i7-9700 CPU and Nvidia 2060 RTX graphics card. And i have had it for approximately 3 years now


I was playing some days ago and everything was working as usual. But then the laptop suddenly got way warmer than usual and then shut down. When i restarted (after it had cooled down), it first wouldn't load properly but eventually it did. I didn't play immediately afterwards but when I did, I noticed that the graphics quality of the game (Overwatch) was a lot lower than usual. And while the game was playable, it was noticeably slower and somewhat blurry as well.
I thought this could be an internet issue so I opened another game that have worked well so far (Shadow of the Tomb raider) and while this game worked, it was also crazy slow in comparison to how it had ran before.

I thought it could be an issue with the graphics card driver so I updated it to the latest one but that didn't solve anything and furthermore, the laptop was also crashing somewhat often and showing that blue screen of death which was also saying that nvlddmkm.sys was the issue.

I uninstalled the driver and again re-installed it, but it was still crashing and showed the same error. I then tried a different driver (from July or may 2022) and that stopped the crashes. I installed the new driver again just to confirm and that made the laptop crash again while showing the same error.

While using the drivers that didn't make the laptop crash, i tried opening Nvidia Control Panel, but it wouldn't work and when I tried running it as administrator, a pop-up came that said that windows couldn't start the program.

I also went to the device manager and the graphics card had a yellow warning sign and when I opened it, it said " windows has stopped this device because it has detected problems. Code 43".
So i uninstalled it and restarted the computer. the graphics card no longer had this warning but the games still didn't work and when I restarted again, the warning was back.

Also, when I opened task manager, the graphics card was sometimes showing, although it was working at 0%, and sometimes it wasn't there at all and eventually it completely disappeared.

When I went back to the device Manager, I saw other programs or software with warning labels and several were some PCI devices.
So i gave them proper assignments but that also didn't solve the graphics card issue.

But interestingly enough, after assigning one of them (was called Unknown PCI device) and restarting, the computer did indeed recognize the graphics card again and Nvidia Control Panel also opened. but when I wanted to open a game to test if the card was running, the laptop crashed again and showed nvlddmkm.sys as the error.

I also did open the laptop to see if there was anything noticeably wrong on the Inside, in particular on the motherboard, but I couldn't see anything unusual.

And now only the Integrated graphics from Intel is running while Nvidia doesn't do anything.

So I am now wondering if the Nvidia graphics card is dead or if there's another issue that simply prevents it from properly connecting to the rest of the laptop. If so, is it possible for a repair shop to fix this?

And if it is dead, is it possible for a repair shop worker to remove it and solder on a new card onto the motherboard?
Or is it possible to simply get a new motherboard with the same (or newer) graphics card?

And is it even worth it or is it better to get a new laptop?

Thanks in advance

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Perhaps try and use DDU to rid your platform of all GPU drivers. Then manually reinstall the latest GPU drivers from Nvidia in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

Does GPU-Z show your GPU to have 0MB? If the device shows up as Code 43, the GPU's dead.

 

[Daritha]

Hi!
I did use DDU to get rid of the drivers before re-installing. And i did also try a few times to install the drivers as Administrator. No effect unfortunately.

And i just got GPU-Z to check. For the Nvidia graphics card, only "system memory used" is changing when i am running something. And the memory clock and GPU clock both stay at 0 MHz.
When i instead look at the Intel(R) UHD graphics, then the GPU-Z program shows many more options.
Like the GPU clock and memory clock have values.
Same with the GPU load, power and voltage.
And it also has a dedicated memory section that's also changing when I run something.

I guess this is further confirmation that the nvidia graphics card is dead and that only the integrated one is running?


And do you know if it's possible for a repair repair this or is it more worth it to get a new computer?