Does this mean that my GPU is dying?

[VibeChecker]

I was having weird pixelated reflections in Battlefront 2 (and I couldn't find a solution to it) so I DDU'd the drivers and installed an older, known good driver. After the issue persisted, I switched battlefront 2 to DirectX 12 and the issue stopped, but now sometimes when I alt-tab out of the window I get proper artifacts on the screen. They're usually pink/white wavy stripes or green lines. A couple times I also saw these artifacts on the models of characters in-game (when I was alt-tabbing back into the game) but I didn't manage to get that on video. As you can see in the video, towards the end it magically stopped happening, but before the recording I was able to reproduce it pretty consistently. Before this issue, I've had all kinds of graphical issues, mainly with reflections and shadows. Here is the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvTaD1g0C2w

In the video you can only see green/orange lines but when I was testing earlier the colors were different each time, sometimes pink/white, sometimes yellow/green etc. and they would come in different shapes and sizes too.

Another symptom is that after alt-tabbing multiple times, my in-game FPS drops by alot.

I did run furmark about 12-15 times about 2 months ago when I was having other graphical issues (shadow flickering and grainy reflections in Unigine Heaven, raytracing/shader issues in minecraft etc) but only for about 30-40 minutes in total. I ran it multiple times for short amounts of time instead of letting it run once for a long time to avoid overheating, and I ran it across the span of 3 days (so 4 times each day).

So my questions are, is my gpu dying? Should I make a warranty claim? And could furmark have damaged it? I have no OCs, only a custom fan curve.

 

[DarkEnergy]

If the issue is progressing, then it's probably dying. Does it happen if you boot into windows safe mode? Are you able to run a fresh copy of windows from another drive and see if the issue persists?

[VibeChecker]

17 minutes ago, DarkEnergy said:

If the issue is progressing, then it's probably dying. Does it happen if you boot into windows safe mode? Are you able to run a fresh copy of windows from another drive and see if the issue persists?

It won't let me start the game when I'm in safe mode, it just crashes to desktop after the loading screen goes away. I really don't think a fresh installation of windows would help since there was absolutely nothing running in the background except for discord when the artifacts happened.

EDIT: MSI Afterburner was also running but it only has a fan curve modification.

[DarkEnergy]

2 minutes ago, VibeChecker said:

It won't let me start the game when I'm in safe mode, it just crashes to desktop after the loading screen goes away. I really don't think a fresh installation of windows would help since there was absolutely nothing running in the background except for discord when the artifacts happened.

Well that's because there's no graphics drivers in safe mode. I was suggesting a fresh copy of windows because there might be another driver or windows related issue on your current install causing it. You wouldn't need to reinstall windows, just put a clean installation on a drive you're not using. Otherwise if the gpu is under warranty then definitely use that.

[Jassen]

Hi there.

Had similar problem, long time ago with, little before GTX series. Mine started showing yellow squares,when alt+tab, and every time it switched resolution, briefly. Then the squares become green, then yellow and green. The problem started happening, more and more often. Until I bought a new card. I don't remember if I flashed the bios, but it turned out to be memory related, mine was out of warranty, but the card never died, crashed or restarted PC. That little fighter  .

If the card is under warranty, return it.

If not, go here: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ 

find your card, very specifically, Brand/Model/Model specific/ revision/etc. And see some guides, how to flash your GPU. Hope this will help.

 

 

[VibeChecker]

On 2/25/2021 at 3:17 PM, Jassen said:

Hi there.

Had similar problem, long time ago with, little before GTX series. Mine started showing yellow squares,when alt+tab, and every time it switched resolution, briefly. Then the squares become green, then yellow and green. The problem started happening, more and more often. Until I bought a new card. I don't remember if I flashed the bios, but it turned out to be memory related, mine was out of warranty, but the card never died, crashed or restarted PC. That little fighter  .

If the card is under warranty, return it.

If not, go here: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ 

find your card, very specifically, Brand/Model/Model specific/ revision/etc. And see some guides, how to flash your GPU. Hope this will help.

 

 

I tried to get it to happen again and it doesn't happen anymore, I also DDU'd the drivers one more time just to be safe and installed a newer (but not the latest) driver. I also did a VRAM test in OCCT and it showed no errors after 10 runs. Before I got the alt-tabbing errors btw I had an issue with minecraft where everything except the HUD went black, but it fixed itself when I joined a new game. I am really confused because I had all these errors but OCCT says everything is fine, and I don't get the errors when I'm playing Battlefront 2 or Microsoft flight simulator which are very GPU intensive games. I talked to the warranty guy and he said he will only replace my card if it's 100% certain it's a hardware issue and I really don't want to send it to him because who knows what he's gonna do to it and then he might give it back to me saying "everything is fine". So if someone could tell me if this is a software or hardware issue I would appreciate it alot.

EDIT: Btw I fixed the weird pixelated reflections in Battlefront 2, I just had to turn the post-processing setting to Minimum and now everything looks great.

[Jassen]

When did it stop bugging, what did you do? Like think of what you touched, if anything. The warranty is tricky, like If the bug doesn't show right away, no one will put in the time or the effort to re-create it. Only if it happens in a certain scenario, which is easy to re-create, even then, not 100% guarantee they'll replace it.

I didn't know you have a warranty, so IF you flash the bios, don't tell the warranty guy!!! And you must know that, YOU CAN BRICK, your card by flashing the BIOS. Do it only as a last resort, if the problem persists, or gets worse and they won't replace your card. And to make sure, it's hardware issue, clean install of windows, Re-seating the card and latest drivers(not beta). And if it happens again, record it with your phone, and tell the warranty guy what you did, and send him the video.

[VibeChecker]

2 hours ago, Jassen said:

When did it stop bugging, what did you do? Like think of what you touched, if anything. The warranty is tricky, like If the bug doesn't show right away, no one will put in the time or the effort to re-create it. Only if it happens in a certain scenario, which is easy to re-create, even then, not 100% guarantee they'll replace it.

I didn't know you have a warranty, so IF you flash the bios, don't tell the warranty guy!!! And you must know that, YOU CAN BRICK, your card by flashing the BIOS. Do it only as a last resort, if the problem persists, or gets worse and they won't replace your card. And to make sure, it's hardware issue, clean install of windows, Re-seating the card and latest drivers(not beta). And if it happens again, record it with your phone, and tell the warranty guy what you did, and send him the video.

It just stopped bugging the next day when I turned on the computer again, but I got another bug today, a horizontal white line appeared on the screen while I was playing minecraft for a split second, it didn't go across the entire screen though, only a portion of it. Someone else told me this could be a display output bug. I never actually had any proper artifacts though, except for when I alt-tabbed back into battlefront 2 but a restart seems to have fixed that. I really don't know what to do at this point, I emailed zotac support directly to ask if I can get a replacement directly from them so I don't have to deal with this shady retailer. But for some reason when I did a VRAM scan with OCCT it showed 0 errors so what does that mean?

[Jassen]

Well, change the cable, and the monitor if you can. What you using HDMI, DP, what Monitor/GPU. At this point could be anything, the port on the GPU,the port on the Monitor. Could be the Monitors panel, etc. Swap from HDMI to DP or vice versa. Did you re-seated the card, windows, drivers?

[VibeChecker]

20 minutes ago, Jassen said:

Well, change the cable, and the monitor if you can. What you using HDMI, DP, what Monitor/GPU. At this point could be anything, the port on the GPU,the port on the Monitor. Could be the Monitors panel, etc. Swap from HDMI to DP or vice versa. Did you re-seated the card, windows, drivers?

I have 2 monitors, one is a Gsync 1080p@75hz with HDMI and the other one is a Freesync 1440p@144hz with DisplayPort. I already reinstalled the drivers multiple times. Could this be caused by dust? Since I see a thin layer of dust directly on the components at the back of the GPU.

[Jassen]

It's not dust. I'm asking, What Brand/Model are the GPU/Monitors. Is it HDMI 1.4/2.0 DP 1.2/1.4 the GPU/Monitor/Cable? And I asked, did you re-seated the card,at least/ did you do a clean windows install/ did you install newest drivers. And OCCT, is not good god all mighty, it wont tell you everything, a bad port, monitor, etc. THIS you gotta figure out on your self.

[VibeChecker]

On 2/27/2021 at 4:37 AM, Jassen said:

It's not dust. I'm asking, What Brand/Model are the GPU/Monitors. Is it HDMI 1.4/2.0 DP 1.2/1.4 the GPU/Monitor/Cable? And I asked, did you re-seated the card,at least/ did you do a clean windows install/ did you install newest drivers. And OCCT, is not good god all mighty, it wont tell you everything, a bad port, monitor, etc. THIS you gotta figure out on your self.

I put the card in the second PCIe slot on the motherboard, DDU'd the drivers one more time and plugged the displayport cable into a different slot on the GPU and the issues seem to be fixed now, I also do not get the weird reflection glitch in Battlefront anymore. I don't know if it's the latest driver or changing the PCIe slot that solved it but I guess that doesn't matter.

EDIT: Nevermind, I still get the reflection glitch in battlefront but it seems to be less bad