Help diagnosing problem with my system please.

[arisoh]

Hi. I'm pretty stupid with computers, so any help would be appreciated.

For a couple of months now, I've been getting NVIDIA kernel crashes. On Saturday I got a BSOD and my graphics card seems to have stopped working. I boot up and the icons are super large, I reboot again, the colors are off and the icons are still large.

I look at Device Manager and see that Windows has disabled my graphics card because of Error Code 43. So I looked it up and saw that it was a driver issue. I uninstall my drivers, reinstalled the newest on from NVIDIA, but the problem persists.

A guildie told me to check if the PSU was working. So I opened my tower up, spray can cleared everything and powered it on. The fans on the card are spinning, so doesn't that mean the PSU is working? Anyway, this didn't solve the issue.

Does this mean my card is dead? Or did I just not check my PSU enough?

Anyway, if it IS my card, what's a cheaper alternative to a GeForce GTX 750 that will allow me to play WoW, light video editing and Photoshop?

Thanks so much.

[Kagthul]

.. there's not much out there cheaper than the 750/Ti that would deliver acceptable performance, honestly. Particularly in that power profile.

GPU wont affect Photoshop at all, unless theyve recently added CUDA/Compute support to it that im not aware of, and light video editing (im assuming nothing pro-grade, where it might have compute support) is unlikely to be affected by your GPU at all either.

Hell, i do Photoshop and iMovie (and sometimes Final Cut when i need a bit more options) on my Mac Mini and that thing has a simple Intel Integrated HD 4000, and ive never noticed any issues with performance that id attribute to the GPU (RAM, sure, before i maxed it out, but not GPU).


What your guildie likely meant about your PSU is to check and see if its starting to fail and not give your GPU enough power - but you need a meter to test that (any hardware store will have a voltimeter or multimeter for 20$ or so, and its good to have around for any electrical diagnosis issues in your house) and watch a tutorial on what to check.

Sounds, honestly, like a bad card. Artifacting (especially the colors being off) is usually a sign of the card going teats up. If it is still within warranty.. RMA it.

[arisoh]

Rig is about 3 years old, so RMA is out.

Alright. THanks for your help. I'm thinking I should probably buy the exact same card to avoid issues about it fitting.

[Vermicious]

Have you tried older drivers? maybe going back a version or two.

[arisoh]

Yeah. But Windows just wont enable it. Is there any way to force? Or is that a super bad idea?

[OhpUldum]

It's been a while since I've done the price comparison but a cheaper alternative that gets the job done would be the AMD Radeon R7 250X (look for the 2GB GDDR5 version). I used that for a few months before a free upgrade to my current 270X.

[Deleted]

Hi,

This behaviour is totally consistent with a gpu fault, but you need to make sure the card is getting reliable power before it can be said for certain.

What PSU do you have, can you try the card in another pci-e slot and 6 pin power if the card takes it, or try it in a friends box?