Possibly broken GPU

[Oliver73]

I have just recently been having issues with my Nvidia GTX 780 3GB. There are screen glitches which happen everynow and then. Sometimes the screen goes completely black for a couple of seconds and sometimes longer. When I play games some textures are messed up in that textues are bright neon colours. Is it possible that my GPU is broken and needs to be replaced?

 

[R_1]

possible? yep. anything is possible.
have you tried a different driver?
have you tried another environment?

Boot to a USB drive with linux on it. grab a USB drive, a copy of rufus and a linux distribution.
http://distrowatch.com/ has tons of differing linux distributions and download links. I personally am fond of linux mint with cinnamon.
https://rufus.akeo.ie/ the utility used to extract the ISO file to the USB drive.

use rufus to extract the selected ISO to the tunmb drive. it will make the drive bootable and you can run linux from the drive once done.
Reboot into linux and proceed to test the hardware. connect to internet, watch videos, await problems.
if linux is good and stable the issue is most likely inside windows or otherwise software related.
this is a test of the hardware.

 

[Oliver73]

I have tried multiple different drivers with no changes. I also just had two blue screens within a 10 min period with a Whea_uncorrectable_error. Youtube also glitches sometimes with only field for the video going completely green or a checkered pattern overlaying the video shorty. Aslo what do you mean by different environment?
I have linked some images from Left4Dead showing the glitches in games.
Link:https://imgur.com/a/uqqxWjP

 

[R_1]

the windows environment versus the linux environment. they way the software interacts with the hardware is different in each OS. by changing the environment/OS you can test that the hardware is working. differing drivers and a different OS make up the new environment. if the hardware is functional in linux then problem must be the driver or the OS, if the hardware is bad it will not work in any environment.

you can boot into linux without having to install it. you can boot into a live environment (temporary OS run from the USB drive) connect to the internet and watch youtube and test the GPU. linux mint is the easiest to use for windows users

 

[Oliver73]

I have booted my PC in safe mode with no issues. I didnt notice any gliches or black screens. The same was with Linux Mint, there were no glitches or black screens. But just recently I have noticed freezing randomly for a 2-3 seconds at a time. These issues were not present in Linux or safe mode. Should I try changing my GPU drivers to an even older one?

 

[R_1]

I would. safe mode uses kernel drivers not the nvidia supplied drivers, linux has a different driver structure, which leaves the current driver as the likely issue. Download a previous driver from the nvidia. Use DDU Display Driver Uninstaller, google it, and remove the current driver. restart the system. install freshly downloaded driver.

the 780 is an old card and newer drivers are not written for that model anymore. having the most current driver on an older (retired) card is not always the best idea. find a previous version from 1.5-2 years after the card was released.

 

[Oliver73]

I have just uninstalled the old drives and found a driver from January 2017 which didnt work because windows 10 is not supported by the driver. Then I tried one from January 2018 which gave an error that it could not find the compatable graphics hardware. I have made sure that on the nvidia website I chose the right one. Should I try to find more recent ones?

 

[R_1]

retry the driver from 2017 using compatibility mode for win 8/7
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/set-compatibility-mode-windows-10
if you have not tried before this should help

 

[Oliver73]

I have used the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter and it helped to a certain extent. When I installed the driver it was unable to insteall the HD Audio driver and the graphics driver 378.49, but when I go to programs there is the driver 388.13 istalled even after I ran the DDU.