Diagnosing PC problems

The Dude With Herpes

Ok so in the last day or two I've had my graphics card driver "crash" several times. I'll start getting weird artifacts when I'm watching videos on hulu or whatever and then the video will just go green (only in the video player), my screen will flash and I'll come back with an error popup that my video drivers crashed and have been restarted.

I thought it could be my card overheating but I took apart my PC and made sure everything was all good, dust wise (I try to do a pretty thorough cleaning once a month); all clear there. My fans aren't going nuts but I don't have a temp monitor so I suppose they could be malfunctioning.

My card is relatively new, I got it in the fall; it's an EVGA GTX 460 which I totally forgot to register so I don't know how the warranty thing works out for that but I know it's well past the RMA date for Newegg.

However, I was having very similar issues on my last video card before I replaced it and I'm suspecting it's not actually the video card that is the problem but possibly the CPU or Mobo.

The problem is my whole pc is home built so it didn't come with any universal diagnostics and my CD's are in my daughters room that I can't get to right now to see if it came with anything of the sort.

I guess my question is: what would be the best way to narrow down where the problem really lies, without being able to swap parts out really? Is there some sort it, ideally free, diagnostics I can get somewhere that I can run to see if there are any errors on my mobo or cpu? I know my video card has a pretty good warranty but like I said, I'm really suspecting the problem isn't in the card, but somewhere else.

EDIT: Just for clarification, I have all up-to-date drivers on all my hardware; the only thing I changed on my PC in the past couple weeks is I got a new monitor which shouldn't have anything to do with this. My mobo and CPU are now several years old but they've been pretty reliable. My PC hasn't been used for pretty much anything in the past few days except as a passthrough for my 360's internet. And watching videos. I haven't gamed on it really in several days, and when I was before I wasn't having any problems.

EDIT EDIT: Just ran BF:BC2 and WoW for a few minutes each to see if anything happened and they are both running fine. I guess I'll have to wait for the problem to pop up again. And I'm sure it will; but it doesn't seem to be related to games.

acidlacedpenguin

your BIOS should have a setting to auto shut-off when CPU or GPU reach a certain temperature. 90c is where things start getting dangerous, but if you set it to shut off at 70 or 80c you could at least figure out if your videocard and/or cpu are overheating. Memtest should determine whether bad memory is an issue.

Where you're getting artifacts I'd guess it's videocard overheating. Nvidia should have an overclocking utility which will give you a realtime video card temperature reading which you could use while running your games to give you an accurate depiction of temperature.

grouch993

Could be the chipset overheating.

alexholliz

It sounds a lot like the 460 is getting too hot.

You could run something like 3dMark (or any other video benchmark tool), which should cause the artifact-ing to begin again. Note though, that if it is the video card, this could cause it to go up in smoke. Benchmarking is pretty intense, it's supposed to be, and if the card is on its way out, this could be a bad idea.

So, if that worries you, use Speedfan and have it record temps in a game. BF:BC2/SC2 might be a good choice, or to really test it, get something poorly programmed, like Dragon Age, that'll push your card harder. See if you're recording temps in excess of 75c, because (nvidia says it's fine up to 85c) EVGA cards tend to dislike heat.

You can also just try putting a small fan next to the card with the case open, see if the lower temps remove the artifacting.

Keep me updated, having a card go out sucks.