Hi there, I am new here and this is more of an inquiry - I wanna learn and make sure that I understand everything correctly. Not exactly looking for solutions, I found many of those already regarding this problem.
I have recently gotten the error 43 on my GPU and I would like to determine whether it is a software issue or whether the GPU itself is faulty.
Background:
I have recently (November 2019) built a new pc for gaming with the following specs:
MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX (ryzen 3 ready out of the box)
Ryzen 3600
NOCTUA NH-D15
16 GB RAM (2 x 8GB G.SKILL 3600 MHz CL16 Trident Z RGB)
RTX 2070 SUPER AORUS GIGABYTE 8GB
PSU EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 (overkill I know)
SSD Kingston A400 480 GB (where the OS and most of the stuff is)
HDD WD Blue 1 TB (clutter)
note: I did not OC anything.
Everything worked fine - the temps on my CPU running in 60s - the highest temp I ever got after a long day of gaming was 74 Celsius (= MAX value given by the monitoring program after one day of playing many different types of games). The GPU was set (in the AORUS gpu tool) to keep the temp under 83 - the highest value I got was 78 Celsius but it usually stayed in 60s or low 70s. Both CPU and GPU temps seemed fine given that ryzen 3000 apparently runs hot and the GPUs boost was 1905 MHz.
The problem itself:
Yesterday (after 3 months of no issues) while playing Warhammer Vermintide 2 with my friends the game suddenly crashed. After about 5 more seconds in the desktop the PC went into a BSOD while also displaying purple artifacts. After rebooting the PC it worked for about 20 seconds before restarting again (this time it did not show a BSOD, just a restart). After the next boot, the screen is in 800x600 resolution and when running DirectX Diagnostic Tool it says it is using Microsoft Basic Display Driver (under chip it still says NVIDIA and under Memory it still says 8 GB so I am assuming it is some sort of emergency mode of the GPU itself). In Notes it says that there is a problem with the RTX 2070S and it lists error 43.
Now I have gotten this error before on my old (different) PC on my GTX 670. I do know that this is a generic error which can be caused by many different reasons - usually problem with the drivers. I did go through many online posts here and on other websites trying to find a solution - there were many of those: removing all drivers using DDU and reinstalling, making sure the GPU is plugged in correctly, updating BIOS, etc.
Now instead of going through most of these I just simply swapped my GPU with my brothers GPU (he had a desktop PC in the next room - GTX 950). My PC then started to work normally (I had his gtx 950 in my PC at that point) whereas his PC with my gtx 670 did not. That made it (IMO) certain that the gpu is dead and it is not a software issue.
The questions (TL;DR)
If I swap my GPU with my brothers again (this time my 2070S for his 2070) and my PC will work and his will display error 43, is it then certain that the GPU is dead?
If I do a clean installation of OS (completely wiping the disk before) and the GPU still wont work and display error 43, is it then certain that the GPU is dead? (assuming that the GPU is plugged in/mounted correctly)
The reasons for these questions is that both of these seem much simpler to do than any of the other 50 or so fixes that I found online, but rarely do I see people suggesting/using these, even if they often want to mainly know, if their GPU is dead. These solutions will determine the dead gpu vs software issue 100 %. Or am I completely wrong?
Any answers are appreciated, thank you very much in advance.
P.S. I did go through many posts here trying to find similar posts - If I missed it, then I am sorry for posting.
