[EMERGENCY] Fresh Install Laptop, Graphics Glitching Out

AmateurPCGuy · December 4, 2016

So I recently formatted an Acer E5-471 laptop (my classmate's laptop, actually) caused by slowdowns and "graphics malfunction". I also took of that opportunity to upgrade it to Windows 10, since it was running Windows 8.1 and she was lucky enough to not be caught by Microsoft's forced upgrade sweeps.

After all was said and done, I decided to benchmark the laptop with a 20-minute PS2 emulation scheme, as it was the only handy method I had. The problem is, after the emulation run, the display started to flicker out and glitch out from time to time, even under light loads, even watching a video clip using VLC shows it! The symptoms is similar to her description to "graphics malfunction".

I'm certain its not the driver, since it was a fresh install. And its unlikely to be Windows' fault since its not the Windows driver I used. I'm also certain that my PS2 benchmark did not cause it since it was running at 65 degrees when it was doing it, which is still considered to be good.

Is it possible that the graphics chip (nVidia 820M IIRC) is dying in that laptop?

December 4, 2016

Looks like the laptop has both integrated Intel HD graphics and an Nvidia GPU, try booting to the bios and switching exclusively to one or the other to see which one of the GPUs is dying

AmateurPCGuy · December 5, 2016

20 hours ago, guillaumedsde said:

Looks like the laptop has both integrated Intel HD graphics and an Nvidia GPU, try booting to the bios and switching exclusively to one or the other to see which one of the GPUs is dying

So I tried disabling GPUs using Windows Device Manager, and found out that the graphics glitches are caused by the iGPU. The nVidia driver runs it just fine, while the Intel one completely shits the bed, as depicted here...

and that is only on 720p YT streaming.

Although very unlikely, I'll try to see if re-formatting will do the trick.

December 5, 2016

Yeah doubt reformatting will do the trick, try anyways, could be a driver issue.

If the problem is still unfixed, its a good thing the laptop has 2 GPUs just disable the iGPU in the BIOS/UEFI and use the nvidia chip

AmateurPCGuy · December 6, 2016

16 hours ago, guillaumedsde said:

Yeah doubt reformatting will do the trick, try anyways, could be a driver issue.

If the problem is still unfixed, its a good thing the laptop has 2 GPUs just disable the iGPU in the BIOS/UEFI and use the nvidia chip

Apparently, its a driver issue. I found out that the driver that Windows installed before was the wrong one (no idea how), hence the graphics glitch.

Got the laptop re-formatted and I'm happy with the results as well. CPU is topping out at 60 degrees under load, while nVidia GPU tops out at 64. All that with zero presence of any graphics glitch.