Video hardware error

[Sammyjo20]

Found this on my PC when I got home. Nothing rebooted or restarted. All the screens looked fine. Temps I assume were fine. It was just downloading Steam games with the screens off.

What is the problem? It's a fresh install of Windows. I had this error before, that's why I did a fresh install but before there were lines all over my screen when I got back. What do you think is the issue?

- Sam

 

[leo2kp]

Could be a bad video card. Is the card still under warranty?

 

[Sammyjo20]

Could be a bad video card. Is the card still under warranty?

I think so. Could it be my PSU? I haven't had the card long. Less than a year.

- Sam

 

[Sammyjo20]

Or maybe drivers? I've got the new AMD Crimson drivers.

 

[leo2kp]

Well, lines on the screen usually means a problem with the card itself. A PSU issue would usually cause BSOD and restarts.

 

[Sammyjo20]

When I rebooted it when there were lines, It was fine after that. My PC was locked today, like the time I had the lines.

- Sam

 

[leo2kp]

Or maybe drivers? I've got the new AMD Crimson drivers.

Could try downgrading the driver. The hard part is replicating the problem to know if that's really the issue or not. If you are able to replicate it by stress-testing the card, that would be a great first-step. I use a paid copy of 3DMark and loop the combo test for hours, but I'm sure AMD or Sapphire has their own version of a stress-test somewhere.

 

[leo2kp]

Did the lines come up after the reboot? Were they clustered at the top of the screen?

 

[Sammyjo20]

Or maybe drivers? I've got the new AMD Crimson drivers.

Could try downgrading the driver. The hard part is replicating the problem to know if that's really the issue or not. If you are able to replicate it by stress-testing the card, that would be a great first-step. I use a paid copy of 3DMark and loop the combo test for hours, but I'm sure AMD or Sapphire has their own version of a stress-test somewhere.

Okay, thanks. Gaming has been fine over the past few days. Fallout 4, GTA V. All of that. Shall I do Furmark for a couple of hours? When would I know if the issue actually is the graphics card?

- Sam

 

[Sammyjo20]

Found something!

 

[leo2kp]

Or maybe drivers? I've got the new AMD Crimson drivers.

Could try downgrading the driver. The hard part is replicating the problem to know if that's really the issue or not. If you are able to replicate it by stress-testing the card, that would be a great first-step. I use a paid copy of 3DMark and loop the combo test for hours, but I'm sure AMD or Sapphire has their own version of a stress-test somewhere.

Okay, thanks. Gaming has been fine over the past few days. Fallout 4, GTA V. All of that. Shall I do Furmark for a couple of hours? When would I know if the issue actually is the graphics card?

- Sam

Well, replication is key if you can make it happen. Then from there it's process of elimination. For stress-testing, you have to keep the card at full-load. Unless you can do that with a free version of Furmark, you may have to buy a license or use another stress-tester (I haven't researched them in a while). The combo test will stress the CPU and GPU, so it could still be PSU at that point. Perhaps running a stress test that only tests graphics and not CPU would work best first to eliminate the GPU as a problem. If you can do that for a few hours, run the combo to get your power usage up and see if you crash.

 

[leo2kp]

Yep could be drivers. If the lines you saw were at the top of the screen, I've seen Windows 7 do that after a reboot when it's doing the hard-drive scan after a crash. I thought I had video problems too when I saw that.

 

[Sammyjo20]

Yep could be drivers. If the lines you saw were at the top of the screen, I've seen Windows 7 do that after a reboot when it's doing the hard-drive scan after a crash. I thought I had video problems too when I saw that.

That's almost exactly it! It looked a bit like this though:

Not that many lines though.

I saw that the event viewer said "Windows Shutdown Unexpectedly" (Last time), so that means it must have booted and then shown those lines!

- Sam

 

[Sammyjo20]

I will go back to a Catalyst driver and see if it happens after a couple of weeks.

- Sam

 

[leo2kp]

Oh ok, different lines than what I saw. The ones I'm used to are clustered at the top of the screen, not the whole screen.