Random Graphical Artifacts and BSOD

anthony · January 20, 2014

Hello all! First time posting here on LTT in a while (I registered a while ago but usually just read through posts without signing in, sorry!) and everyone's expertise would be much appreciated...

Back in September of last year the MSI 560ti TwinFrozr Hawk in the PC I built for my family died outright. The rest of my system seemed fine, no scent of smoke or any other failed components. Being an avid follower of LTT I immediately switched power supplies and tried to boot my system, no dice. I then reverted back to the original PSU and tried out an old Geforce 210 that I had lying around and the system booted and ran fine, even low end gaming worked! Using this new knowledge I called up MSI to ask for an RMA, they approved it and I mailed my card to them.

When I finally received the card back it worked fine but every now and then games would crash or we (my family) would see visual artifacts and the screen would black out for a moment, sometimes we would get the message that the display driver had stopped working or crashed from Windows. As I was away at school I didn't see these messages until I came back for winter break and saw my brother playing Bioshock Infinite and have the game crash on him. Poor kid, he'd gotten used to it and didn't want to bother me at school. He plays Bioshock, Battlefield 3, Burnout Paradise, a Few Call of Duty's, and Surgeon Sim and from what I can tell this happens equally across them all, sometimes even at the desktop. Last night he showed me that if he taps the computer desk even with just a bit of force the system will blue screen or at least cause the game to crash.

Sorry for the long post! My question is: is it possible that I received a bad card back from the RMA, or is there likely another culprit at play here? I haven't tried the 210 in the system again, but will do that tonight. If that solves it I suppose I should try another RMA, right? Seems to be the GPU, but I just wanted a bit more insight since it's already been RMA'd once.

Thanks for all yourhelp in advance!

System specs:

Case: Cosrair 600t (Stock Fans)

CPU: i7 2600k (Stock cooler and speed)

GPU: MSI 560ti Hawk (Stock speeds)

Storage: Sandisk Extreme 60GB (OS) & 1TB WD Black (Data)

Memory: Patriot Viper Black 2 x 8GB

Mobo: MSI P67A-GD65

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W

roid · January 20, 2014

Might be a driver issue, make sure it's version 332.21. It's most likely your gpu, but try a different pcie slot on your mobo and different gpu power pcie from psu don't use the molexs.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/71704

Edit: also have you transferred your drive with the OS from a different pc setup? And what are your temps while playing games/at load? (Gpu and CPU)

anthony · January 20, 2014

Thanks! I think the driver is up to date but ill double check. As for the connectors and PCI-e slot, I'll try that when I get home tonight and post an update.