RSoD! Is a Faulty/Dying GPU to Blame?

[Brandonriess8]

OK! I've been hoping to narrow down the source of my sudden stuttering in ALL games, and by Jove, I think I've got it! Today, I've been playing GTA V for a few hours, biking up & down Mt. Chiliad. During a long gameplay session at "Very High" settings, the sound started to buzz, the screen went completely red, and the system crashed.

If I'm corrects, this is referred to as a Red Screen of Death, or RSoD, and is SOLELY the fault of a faulty GPU or drivers. All I need now is calming closure ensuring me that simply upgrading to a GTX 980 will fix my stuttering, pop in, and freezing in games.

What do you guys think? Upgrade the GPU and I'll be fine?

Current Specs:
MOBO: Gigabyte GA X79-UP4
CPU: Intel Core i7 4930K @3.7GHz (Custom cooling kit)
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 290X (Hopefully the heart of the problem!)
RAM: 32GB ADATA XPG V2.0 @1866MHz
HDD: 500GB Western Digital Velociraptor (10,000 RPM)
SSD: SanDisk 128GB SATA Solid State Drive

 

[ingtar33]

depends... gpu issues typically result in blue screens, or just crashes.

Not saying it isn't the gpu, only saying it might not be the gpu. The main question i have for you is "what is your OS"?

if it's windowsxp or vista the red screen of death basically means hardware or hard drive is failing. it's a critical hardware failure, which could be a number of things. if you have a later OS, the red screen is typically a gpu error, be it an unstable overclock, or driver failure.

So that's why i said it depends. if you're rolling with win7-8-10 then yes, it's probably a gpu or driver issue (outside chance of a power supply problem).

 

[Brandonriess8]

depends... gpu issues typically result in blue screens, or just crashes.

Not saying it isn't the gpu, only saying it might not be the gpu. The main question i have for you is "what is your OS"?

if it's windowsxp or vista the red screen of death basically means hardware or hard drive is failing. it's a critical hardware failure, which could be a number of things. if you have a later OS, the red screen is typically a gpu error, be it an unstable overclock, or driver failure.

So that's why i said it depends. if you're rolling with win7-8-10 then yes, it's probably a gpu or driver issue (outside chance of a power supply problem).

I'm running Windows 10, and I'm using a 1,000W PSU which I don't think is faulty. Is there any way to test the power supply itself? Really hoping this is GPU related so I could just get a 980 and be over with it!

 

[ingtar33]

depends... gpu issues typically result in blue screens, or just crashes.

Not saying it isn't the gpu, only saying it might not be the gpu. The main question i have for you is "what is your OS"?

if it's windowsxp or vista the red screen of death basically means hardware or hard drive is failing. it's a critical hardware failure, which could be a number of things. if you have a later OS, the red screen is typically a gpu error, be it an unstable overclock, or driver failure.

So that's why i said it depends. if you're rolling with win7-8-10 then yes, it's probably a gpu or driver issue (outside chance of a power supply problem).

I'm running Windows 10, and I'm using a 1,000W PSU which I don't think is faulty. Is there any way to test the power supply itself? Really hoping this is GPU related so I could just get a 980 and be over with it!

well, lets knock out the most likely cause of error for the GPU, CPU, Motherboard and PSU. Temperature.

Pop the side of your case off and stick a room fan in the opening. put it on full blast. Then play your games and see if the error comes back. If it does not something is overheating (you can figure out what really easily. turn off the fan then play a bit, then touch some stuff and see what is hot enough to burn you. very easy)

if the red screen still happens, i'd say replace the gpu. If you've had the PSU for almost 4 years i'd budget replacing it too. My rule of thumb in high end pcs, is to replace your psu every 4 years (or sooner if you suspect your psu is failing)

 

[Brandonriess8]

depends... gpu issues typically result in blue screens, or just crashes.

Not saying it isn't the gpu, only saying it might not be the gpu. The main question i have for you is "what is your OS"?

if it's windowsxp or vista the red screen of death basically means hardware or hard drive is failing. it's a critical hardware failure, which could be a number of things. if you have a later OS, the red screen is typically a gpu error, be it an unstable overclock, or driver failure.

So that's why i said it depends. if you're rolling with win7-8-10 then yes, it's probably a gpu or driver issue (outside chance of a power supply problem).

I'm running Windows 10, and I'm using a 1,000W PSU which I don't think is faulty. Is there any way to test the power supply itself? Really hoping this is GPU related so I could just get a 980 and be over with it!

well, lets knock out the most likely cause of error for the GPU, CPU, Motherboard and PSU. Temperature.

Pop the side of your case off and stick a room fan in the opening. put it on full blast. Then play your games and see if the error comes back. If it does not something is overheating (you can figure out what really easily. turn off the fan then play a bit, then touch some stuff and see what is hot enough to burn you. very easy)

if the red screen still happens, i'd say replace the gpu. If you've had the PSU for almost 4 years i'd budget replacing it too. My rule of thumb in high end pcs, is to replace your psu every 4 years (or sooner if you suspect your psu is failing)

You genius! You wouldn't believe what I discovered! There has been this ticking I've been hearing in my case for the longest time. I thought it was simply a fan sticker coming off or something like that, but it was a faulty PSU!!! Just purchased a new one from Corsair. It's here today, so I'm gonna swap out the current one and report back. Wish me luck!

 

[ingtar33]

save the praise till we know this licked your red screen issues. you might have 2 things going wrong. but yes, it does look likely that the psu was the issue this time (or atleast it needed replacement ASAP anyway)

 

[Brandonriess8]

save the praise till we know this licked your red screen issues. you might have 2 things going wrong. but yes, it does look likely that the psu was the issue this time (or atleast it needed replacement ASAP anyway)

*annoyed sigh* Replacing the PSU seemed to give me faster boot times, but the stuttering persists. I'm going to have to save up a bit more now to get a new GPU. If that doesn't do the trick, I don't know what I'll do.

I see you inquired about heat issues? my CPU never goes above 60 degrees when I'm not benchmarking, but my GOU is almost always at 95 degrees Celsius when gaming, so if you put a drop of water on it, it may even boil when playing Crysis 3 at max settings. I understand that Nvidia GPUs manage heat far better. Your thoughts?

 

[ingtar33]

save the praise till we know this licked your red screen issues. you might have 2 things going wrong. but yes, it does look likely that the psu was the issue this time (or atleast it needed replacement ASAP anyway)

*annoyed sigh* Replacing the PSU seemed to give me faster boot times, but the stuttering persists. I'm going to have to save up a bit more now to get a new GPU. If that doesn't do the trick, I don't know what I'll do.

I see you inquired about heat issues? my CPU never goes above 60 degrees when I'm not benchmarking, but my GOU is almost always at 95 degrees Celsius when gaming, so if you put a drop of water on it, it may even boil when playing Crysis 3 at max settings. I understand that Nvidia GPUs manage heat far better. Your thoughts?

ah, are you running with a reference r9-290x?

because the reference cards always ran at 95C. They also had massive throttling problems, which is probably why you're stuttering so badly... if the red screens go away, then we know at least your gpu wasn't broken.

 

[Brandonriess8]

Yep. It's a reference; lousy cooler and all.

Well, the card used to sound like a wind tunnel all the time, but now th fan doesn't really kick like it used to. I'm thinking that could be a factor in the slow descent to the death of my GPU. The problem seems to be progressively getting worse, and I can only attribute issues like stuttering and slow texture loading to a GPU.

I ran a full system test however and it seems that my GPU scores higher than normal in benchmarks such as FireStrike, as well as my CPU and SSD. Can a high scoring GPU still be degrading slowly?

 

[ingtar33]

possibly. unlikely though. typically dying cards can't pass long term benches. there is a solution that's cheaper then getting a gtx980. you could get a new gpu cooler for your rig. something like an Arctic Accelero Hybrid 3 or xtreme IV http://www.arctic.ac/us_en/products/cooling/vga.html

 

[Brandonriess8]

possibly. unlikely though. typically dying cards can't pass long term benches. there is a solution that's cheaper then getting a gtx980. you could get a new gpu cooler for your rig. something like an Arctic Accelero Hybrid 3 or xtreme IV http://www.arctic.ac/us_en/products/cooling/vga.html

Normally I would invest in a better cooler, but the freezing and pop in happens regardless of the temperature of the card, so it's definitely not a throttling issue. All my components seem to score what they should in short benchmarks, but I haven't run any tests on the GPU that take longer than an hour. My red screen during GTA V happened after a few hours of max settings play, but the game still froze and stuttered a lot while I played it. I'll soon have enough to replace any component that's causing this, but I just want to get it right on the first try.

 

[ingtar33]

:\ yeah. well your first instinct that it was the gpu was always the most likely scenario. Since it sounds like the issue hasn't got better, the PSU failing seems to be an unrelated, coincidental event.

 

[Brandonriess8]

:\ yeah. well your first instinct that it was the gpu was always the most likely scenario. Since it sounds like the issue hasn't got better, the PSU failing seems to be an unrelated, coincidental event.

Thanks. A GPU is the easiest thing to replace, to be honest. I'll just pop out the current one, install Nvidia's drivers, and pop in a new one. Thanks for your help and your time; I appreciate it!