Is my graphics card broken?

[Stephen McClymont]

Okay so I'm 99.99% sure that the answer to this is "Yes, for the love of everything that is holy, BUY A NEW ONE", but I'm forever optimistic about things and I figured that I may as well ask!

 

A couple of weeks ago I was playing WoW when all of a sudden areas of what I'd describe as static showed up. I took a quick screenshot (below) and then relogged and everything was good... or so I thought. 

 

 

Yesterday weird graphical problems started again, the sky box turning totally black, water turning black, huge black lines coming off of NPC's and going as far as the game could render. What's worse is that now I randomly get what I can only describe as a "QR code" show on a random region of my screen and that carries over from games and on to the browser, media player, basically anything displayed on the screen until I minimize every open window and get to the desktop, then it disappears until my next encounter with it. This doesn't show up on screenshots though, I'll take a picture with my phone the next time that it pops up! 

 

 

WoW is definitely the worst game for it, I've tried playing a couple of other games and found that in FF XIII the sky turned into a strobe light once, although it was fine other than that. I also tried Shadow Of Mordor and Divinity:Original Sin, both of which were fine. 

 

I'd like to point out that the problems with games come completely randomly and WoW is always fixed with a relog and FF XIII was fixed by exiting to the title screen and loading my save again. So..... is there any way that my graphics card isn't broken and that it's some super simple fix? I've tried re-installing Catalyst but that didn't solve it. I'm being too optimistic, aren't I?

 

I'm using:

Windows 8.1

Sapphire 270x Toxic Edition using Catalyst 14.9

850W beQuiet PowerZone

22" Samsung S22D390HS

 

EDIT: Whoops, I somehow logged in with Facebook, what a moron! My actual account is The Dingus Diddler, so I'll reply to everything on it!

[+Zlip792 MVC]

- OS?

- GPU? and which driver and Powersupply?

- Monitor?

 

Since as you mentioned it happening on browser window, media player and in certain games, I like to make guess that GPU could be the culprit but I will look at power supply and dust stuff and seating issue of GPU as well in mind...

[Mystic Mungis]

- OS?

- GPU? and which driver and Powersupply?

- Monitor?

 

Windows 8.1

Sapphire 270x Toxic Edition using Catalyst 14.9

850W beQuiet PowerZone 

22" Samsung S22D390HS

 

Sorry, wasn't thinking. I'll update my original post with those. Also I've tried re-installing Catalyst, and I've taken the card out, cleaned the fans, etc, and then re-seated it but that didn't solve it either :(

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Windows 8.1

Sapphire 270x Toxic Edition using Catalyst 14.9

850W beQuiet PowerZone 

22" Samsung S22D390HS

 

Sorry, wasn't thinking. I'll update my original post with those. Also I've tried re-installing Catalyst, and I've taken the card out, cleaned the fans, etc, and then re-seated it but that didn't solve it either :(

 

Will recommend you to try AMD Catalyst 14.9.2 Beta, because it contains few bugs discovered in Catalyst 14.9 later on.

Can I ask you about Motherboard as well? Powersupply seems to be enough to run this card.

 

For other helpers:

 

PSU review link - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/beQuiet/PowerZone_850W/11.html

 

Is your GPU with UEFI one or without UEFI one? 

GPU Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202047

[Mystic Mungis]

Will recommend you to try AMD Catalyst 14.9.2 Beta, because it contains few bugs discovered in Catalyst 14.9 later on.

Can I ask you about Motherboard as well? Powersupply seems to be enough to run this card.

Downloading the beta release as we speak, I'll let you know if it's done anything once it's installed and I've tested it out. As for the mobo I'm using a MSI B75A-G43 GAMING

[Mystic Mungis]

Is your GPU with UEFI one or without UEFI one? 

GPU Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202047

I have the UEFI version. I have the beta release installed now, just trying it out in WoW, the only problem is that things can be fine for hours at a time so I'll probably hold off till the morning before reporting back! Thanks for the input so far though!

[Anibal P]

Back when I played WoW if your GPU overheated it would do crazy things like that, I'd open the case take the card out and make sure the fans if any are cleared and clean 

[Mystic Mungis]

Back when I played WoW if your GPU overheated it would do crazy things like that, I'd open the case take the card out and make sure the fans if any are cleared and clean 

I wish that was the case for me, my GPU hovers around 34 degrees when playing WoW and only goes up to around 42 to 50 when playing more graphically advanced games, it has insane cooling!

[Noir Angel]

It's still theoretically possible the memory could be overheating, most monitors only show the heat of the GPU core. It's still worth checking.

[Mystic Mungis]

Sorry I should have added it to the main post but I did clean it, removed the shroud and checked for any dust that was hiding and then re-seated it.

[Noir Angel]

Is this a newly built rig, or one where you just upgraded your graphics card in?

[Mystic Mungis]

Is this a newly built rig, or one where you just upgraded your graphics card in?

Just built it in March, kept my old machine for working on so this was built with totally new parts

[Hum]

It is if you want it to be.

[Noir Angel]

If you have an older graphics card that's also capable of drawing power from the PSU that you know works, it's probably worth trying it out, that would at least allow you to eliminate the PSU as the source of the problem. The test will work best if the card has at least one 6 pin power connector on it, it will draw more power and stress the PSU more than one that draws all of it's power from the PCI-E slot. Even in a new PSU it's possible to have faulty capacitors.

 

What I'm also sensing is that you're able to take screenshots that look like they should which suggests that the card is capable of rendering your games properly. It might also be worth doing a memtest if you haven't already to make sure you don't have dodgy system RAM.

 

Lastly, you might also want to replace the cable connecting the monitor to the graphics card with one you know works. It's unlikely but possible, still worth checking.

[123456789A]

Very possible. Aside from the obvious glitching, the textures look like they're 10 years old.

[Mystic Mungis]

I'd not really been thinking of the PSU so I'll hunt around for my old 6770 and give it a whirl! I'll try a memtest as well for good measure then, I cannot remember for the life of me where I bought this card from so I'm really hoping I don't need to RMA it!

 

EDIT: Tried it with a different HDMI cable and a DVI cable as well but no luck :(

Very possible. Aside from the obvious glitching, the textures look like they're 10 years old.

I'm not sure if that's a joke about WoW or if you've never played it :p

[123456789A]

I'm not sure if that's a joke about WoW or if you've never played it :p

 

Well it wasn't really intended as a joke. I thought they had upgraded the graphics or something by now. Is that what they're really supposed to look like? I could have sworn they were updating the graphics like as far back as 2008. Is it on low settings?

[Tews]

Let me save you some time ... your card is toast, go buy a new one.

[Mystic Mungis]

Well it wasn't really intended as a joke. I thought they had upgraded the graphics or something by now. Is that what they're really supposed to look like? I could have sworn they were updating the graphics like as far back as 2008. Is it on low settings?

Old content still looks pretty bad, better water, mist and stuff but the base textures still look like a$$. The textures get better gradually as you go through the areas from each expansion but I played the beta for the new expansion and ever it looks pretty terrible! Believe it or not that's on ultra and I've played it on this PC before beside my friend and it really does look like that! Well it does actually look a bit better than that when it's not a low quality screenshot but not much better, just a bit smoother!

[Andre S. Veteran]

The Sapphire Toxic R9 270X is a heavily overclocked card. Make sure it isn't overheating (run a test like FurMark) and try downclocking it to standard speeds.

[Mystic Mungis]

The Sapphire Toxic R9 270X is a heavily overclocked card. Make sure it isn't overheating (run a test like FurMark) and try downclocking it to standard speeds.

I'll run FurMark in a bit and come back with the results and then I'll try downclocking it to 1000Mhz, I believe that's the 270X's standard clock speed, isn't it?

[Mystic Mungis]

Okay I'm doing multiple things at once so here are my results so far:

 

Still having the same problem after updating Catalyst to the latest beta release.

 

Haven't encountered the problem so far with my old 6770 in my main rig which the R9 270X is from.

 

I ran FurMark with the card in my old rig while I was testing stuff with the 6770 and this is what I got

 

 

So now I'm going to do a memtest on my main rig and see what it yields but I'm starting to think that I was a little too optimistic :p

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Why its showing Drivers as 14.4, if you had 14.9.2 Beta installed?

 

Though if HD 6770 is working fine in PC with same hardware, then I guess its your R9 270X card which is to blame.

 

Although I recommend one unusual thing to you.

 

Vist: https://register.msi.com/

 

Ask them about latest Stable or Beta BIOS for your motherboard. Why?

 

Because plain (non-Gaming) motherboard BIOS changelog from this thread: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=163695.0

 

Point toward this issue, which make me curious:

 

 

Fix PCIE GEN3 display card issue.

 

Since HD 6770 is PCI-E 2.1 while R9 270X is 3.0. If your current BIOS has option to change GPU to Generation 2 or PCI-E x16 2.0 then do so before going forward.

[Mystic Mungis]

Why its showing Drivers as 14.4, if you had 14.9.2 Beta installed?

Ahh I didn't update to the beta drivers on my old rig, I'd only done it on my main! I'll go and investigate the BIOS update and see if I can get any info on the Gaming version, thanks for that!

[123456789A]

I had a problem like this on a Mac once. It was the card. Replaced it and it worked fine.