Pink Screen Of Death

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irelative

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Feb 17, 2012
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Hello guys.

I've recently purchased a new PC of which I was pretty pleased until I started to get some really weird behavior involving the screen showing pink artifacts and eventually, the computer freezing completely.
So basically I'm suspecting the graphic card because before I got all the components for my new PC, I was using that graphic card on my old PC, an AMD x2 4000+ with 3gb ddr2 and asus m2n-e mobo and I had a "pink occurrence" on that system as well. which leads me to believe it's the graphic card since it was the only component present in both PCs. another reason why I suspect the graphic card is, when the image freezes and pink artifacts show up, if for example I'm watching a youtube video, the sound keeps playing in the background, which makes me believe it's not CPU and/or RAM, motherboard related. If I try to press Ctrl + Alt + Del or Ctrl + Shift + Esc, everything freezes completely (including sound, mouse cursor). I have installed 2 different Windows 7 OSs, x86 and x64, latest drivers, etc. everything was brand new installation every time, and it happens randomly, sometimes on desktop, sometimes during fullscreen flash videos.

Note: I have a 19'' Samsung SyncMaster940N connected to the graphic card trough a VGA to DVI adapter (yes I made sure the cable is properly connected).

Components are:
Core i7 2600 (not K)
AsRock Extreme3 Gen3 Z68
Leadtek GTX560 (2GB GDDR5 - 256 bit)
8GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance CL8 - 1.5V
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200rpm - 64MB buffer
OCZ ZS series 550W PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

I have uploaded 2 photos that show the nature of the problem. I know they are not the best quality because I took them with my phone since printscreen is not an option when the problem occurs.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21007326/IMG00328.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21007326/IMG00329.jpg

Sorry for the long post.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
 
yea another monitor would be an interesting thought, although I doubt it could have something to do with it since most 90% of the time everything is very smooth, except for when it goes crazy and does that stuff. another thing, I noticed on some youtube videos when I change the cursor in the seek bar I hear a soft audio beep in the headphones. every click makes a beep. i don't know why. this is very strange.
 


I tried the burn-in test and it reached 89*C at which point I canceled the test since I think it's way too risky to let it operate past 90*C. what do you think? is that normal temperature?

on nVidia.com it says that the maximum operating temperature is 99*C but I cannot be sure since my card is manufactured by leadtek not by nVidia themselves. so.. I don't know. It started to smell pretty hot around the case so I canceled it.
 
That pink overlay in 99% of scenarios is one of the following:

- The video card itself is bad
- The monitor itself is bad
- The cable or vga to dvi adapter is incorrectly seated or bad (you said it's in correctly so it'd be a possibly bad cable or adapter)

- The monitor settings - some monitors allow you to change the tone of the picture. Pink is usually a "warm" tone. Mess with the color settings and themes it may have.
- Possibly some settings with the video card that has the same "warm" tone having the pink overlay

That just about covers the possibilities. Being that you've said the video card is the only component in both, and you've reinstalled multiple times you can eliminate video card settings as to being the problem. If the problem happens sometimes but not all the time (usually after use) it's not the cable or the settings either. If you've tried different monitors then it can't be that. But given the freezing and crashing as well that pretty much narrows it down to specifically the video card if it's only one thing wrong with the computer.

It could also be a combination such as a bad monitor and a bad motherboard or the like that could create the same issues, but if it's only one bad component, then it's probably the video card. It's likely the video card given that you had the same problem on a different system but same video card.

BTW: You currently have a 2gb video card and the max resolution that monitor has is 1280x1024. Unless you're looking for room to upgrade the monitor, having anything greater than 512mb is a waste of money. More ram means more pixels/resolution. Higher bitrate (256 bit for your current one) ram means more framerate and performance. If you plan on going to a 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 resolution, you only need 1gb for your replacement card. 2gb is for larger than 1920x1200 resolutions.
 
That temp will not kill anything. But to test if it is a temp issue get an overclocking program for you video card Precision or something like that and turn the fan speed up to 80 or 100% yes it will be loud but then do everything you normally do for a while and see if your problem stops.. if it does i would take the heat sink off and repast it..

Thent
 
@joe nate:

yes, you are right, the 2gb memory is quite big. it is because of 2 reasons. the first reason is that I'm planning to get a bigger monitor, specifically 23 inch wide, and the second reason is that I'm frequently playing microsoft flight simulator x with high definition textures such as rex (real environment extreme), added the anisotrophic 16x that renders textures up to the horizon it is quite an understandable necessity.

however, I doubt that the memory size on the graphic card could play a role in the problem I'm experiencing.

About the monitor: image looks crystal sharp 99% of the time, settings are all reset to factory defaults, I am very picky about monitor color settings since I work 8 to 10 hours a day in Photoshop. Therefore, there couldn't be anything wrong with the monitor color settings since the pink artifacts present themselves as stretched lines and not as a smooth overlay such as in the case when you play with the RGB settings in your monitor menu. the cable I think is alright because given that I don't move it from it's place, and it works fine 99% of the time, it probably means it's not it. the motherboard, I don't have information on how it could affect the quality of the image on the screen. the only other thing that I can think of is, since the motherboard has a z68 chipset which takes advantage of the gpu chipset integrated in the i7, it might be that it's trying to kick in the onboard graphics when i'm not using anything gpu intensive. but even if that's the case, it still doesn't explain why I got the same behavior on the older PC which is an AMD.

I will try to investigate if it does the same thing on the other DVI slot, and I will also try a different adapter. the thing is the VGA to DVI adapter I'm using right now is the one I received with the new card and is the one with the most pins, the others that I have are a lot older and have about half the number of pins on the dvi side. which I'm guessing is also a factor.

@Thent

Thanks mate. I'll try that.

I will be back with updates.
 
Anything greater than 512mb is a generally waste of money...if you want to max out AA in games like BF3 you need at least 1.5. I'd call the 512mb more of a rule of thumb.
 


I don't play BF3. I play Microsoft FSX on directx 10 with ultra high settings, which is quite intensive on most systems. you can get an idea if you search "fsx extreme graphics" on youtube.
 
its your video card bro. Older Video card hits 80C, gives Pink artifacts.
Could be a driver issue but i have had it happen with my GPU's and the screen go black and turn into a driver crash and respond issue.
 
yea I'm quite sure it's the graphic card... the only problem is that the shop I bought it from doesn't really replace stuff unless you show them the actual problem while it's occurring, which is like a needle in a haystack. 90% of the times you bring it to the service guys "it works just fine" as far as they're concerned, and they really don't do intensive testing like try it for an hour or two doing the same stuff and see if it breaks. they kinda plug it in and tell you "looks pretty good to me". I really picked leadtek because I know they used to make the best nvidia cards (of course except for nvidia themselves but they are pretty expensive). Interesting thing though, I didn't have any pink overlay in fullscreen games, such as FSX. only on desktop and in youtube HD fullscreen so far.
 


Yep.

Does your GPU change clocks to save power?
 


hmm interesting thought, it might.
I will have to do some research on that and get back to you with details.


@Rockdpm - I tried FurMark burn-in test and it reached 89*C without any artifacts so I'm guessing it's not temperature related either. It didn't do that pink stuff so far in intensive fullscreen games, only on desktop and youtube, which makes it even harder to understand the problem. I didn't let it go past 90*C during the test , because I feel it's a bad bet that will cost me a lot of money given the poor warranty expectations offered by the dealer's service, which at this very moment don't even have another one like mine in their stock to replace it with.
 


89c is a little warm for my tastes. What case do you have?

Also: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=222815&st=40

GL
 


thank you. you are awesome. I'll get back to you with details.
PS: I use MaxCube Amoris 6010 - nothing fancy, just a nice case with 2 fans 120mm each. I don't overclock so I figured it's enough for FSX and stuff on normal clocks. I did the burn-in test on the highest possible settings, 1280x1024 and 8x aa. might have something to do with the high temp.
 
It appears that the problem is driver related since a lot of people on the nvidia forum in the link above seem to have that problem with various nvidia graphic cards from 500 and 600 series, with various monitor models etc. the problem appears to be related to the "hardware acceleration" function in the adobe flash player settings, as well as to toggling the hd function in the player while in fullscreen. there are some reports that some steam games also do that. however, it appears like the diver version 295.73 (which is older) does not have this problem. This still doesn't explain why I got the pinkscreen while I was working on desktop but at least it gets me closer and it comes as good news since it confirms that there is probably nothing wrong with the graphic card itself, hardware-wise (at least hopefully). I'm not very eager to downgrade to 295.73 so I disabled hardware acceleration in the flash player settings. so far so good. if the problem persists I will try downgrading to 295.73 and go from there.
 
I had the same problems with my GTX 560. It was Nvidia's new 3xx.xx drivers. I rolled mine back to 295.73 and all of my issues were gone.

I originally thought my card went bad after six months and was about to call EVGA, till I dug around on Nvidia's forums and found my issue.
 


This pink screen has happen twice this week and I only just updated my nvidia drivers last weekend because Steam was telling me to. I'm going to roll mine back as well. I was reading this whole thread thinking it was the update and of course those above are right. BTW I have a 560TI and have had zero issues until this week.


 
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