Dying GPU?


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I've had my Zotac GTX260 for about 5 years now. Recently it's been acting...strange.

When I leave my desktop alone for a couple minutes, if I move my mouse or press a key on the keyboard, the screen partially flashes black, everything freezes for a bit then resumes. And sometimes if I carry on (normal things, alt tabbing to switch windows) then the Nvidia display driver stops working, and recovers itself etc etc.

I tried updating the drivers, same problem. Clean install + rollback to a previous version, still screwed.

The GPU was quite warm and the fans were spinning up quite high doing simple things like YouTube (never did that before)

I've given my system a good dusting, the temp is back to "normal" but the issues persist.

Memtest came back clean so I don't think it's the RAM. Doubt it's the CPU. Is my GPU dying? :(

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I'd take it apart and redo the thermal paste on top of the CPU.

And try to improve the fan/CPU cooling.

Otherwise, replace the graphics card/chip.

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I've seen a similar problem where the screen would blink on and off randomly, and replacing the GPU solved the issue. Since you've had yours for 5 years, I'd say it got a pretty good life.

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Have you tried to boot in safe mode and see if it still happens? Could be some other software issue...

Well that's the thing, I haven't made any software changes :\

I'd take it apart and redo the thermal paste on top of the CPU.

And try to improve the fan/CPU cooling.

Otherwise, replace the graphics card/chip.

Yeah I'm gonna swap the GPU with my brother's tomorrow, to confirm it's the GPU. Otherwise I'll redo the thermal paste on both the GPU and CPU and pray :p

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Well that's the thing, I haven't made any software changes :\

Yeah I'm gonna swap the GPU with my brother's tomorrow, to confirm it's the GPU. Otherwise I'll redo the thermal paste on both the GPU and CPU and pray :p

Yeah! Don't add any thermal past to your graphics card - you might not like the results ;)

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Yeah! Don't add any thermal past to your graphics card - you might not like the results ;)

Why? :s

Have you added any Windows Updates from last Patch Tuesday?

Read here:

http://www.neowin.ne...#entry595561688

Hmm, not actively, but you never know what Windows Update has done by itself :p

Thanks, I'll take a look when I get home

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So I tried your suggestion Gary7, that didn't work

I swapped out the graphics card, that didn't work either

I'm lost, now what?! :s

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Have you tried running performance monitor or looking at CPU temps? When things hang I tend to think CPU first. GPUs usually start to have visual blips and bleeps before they die.

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Out of interest are you running Windows 8? A few weeks ago my GTX 260 was doing the exact same thing (the screen going black / nVidia driver randomly crashing), it did it for about 10 days (even persisting across a format) and then hasn't done it since.

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Have you tried running performance monitor or looking at CPU temps? When things hang I tend to think CPU first. GPUs usually start to have visual blips and bleeps before they die.

Yeah CPU temps are normal. And I'm getting black flickers on the lower half of my screens.

Out of interest are you running Windows 8? A few weeks ago my GTX 260 was doing the exact same thing (the screen going black / nVidia driver randomly crashing), it did it for about 10 days (even persisting across a format) and then hasn't done it since.

Nope, Windows 7. It's only just started doing this the last 2-3 days

I've just swapped out the PSU, it's still ****ed :cry:

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Yeah CPU temps are normal. And I'm getting black flickers on the lower half of my screens.

Erg, well, if a GPU switch didn't fix it, it's probably the motherboard, PCI slots do die on occasion.

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Nope, same problem but I suppose that doesn't cross the motherboard out :(

Well, it's slightly better but it's still happening. Thoughts?

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Dont think it will be IRQ if nothing has changed

have you tried your card in your brother machine does that work fine?

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Yeah I didn't think so either but worth a shot.

Don't see why it wouldn't if his card produced the same problems as mine?

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SOLVED!! :D

Turns out it's a new virus called iehighutil.exe - some sort of remote bitcoin farming thing. I have NO idea how it got on my system :s

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SOLVED!! :D

Turns out it's a new virus called iehighutil.exe - some sort of remote bitcoin farming thing. I have NO idea how it got on my system :s

Give you a hint 'most commonly distributed in pornographic/warez torrents' - that help?

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Give you a hint 'most commonly distributed in pornographic/warez torrents' - that help?

I got it and I don't use torrents, so try again.

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