Having an issue with my Asus GTX 970 turbo graphics card

[Keyblader]

I built a pc off of a build I got here from the forums in early October. It was my first build, but I followed a ton of pc building guides online simultaneously, and managed to do it, and the process was very rewarding. I had been playing games I've played for years, as well as the new battlefront game with ease, no issues at all, everything running fine.

Then last Wednesday I am playing Team Fortress 2, not a very graphically demanding game by today's standards at all. When I get a black screen, but I can still hear myself moving and shooting. So I task manager and end the task. Then I get a message Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered. Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 358.91 stopped responding and has successfully recovered. It shows up multiple times. I figure "oh I haven't updated the drivers since I initially did when I first got them." So I do that, then restart my PC. When I restart it I cannot open any programs, this includes steam or any of its games, league of legends, battle.net or any of its games, origin or any of its games, not even Google chrome without getting the driver message. The window opens, the screen freezes, then goes black, and then comes back to the desktop with the window trying to open, but I keep getting a freeze of the mouse cursor. If I try to close the window, eventually it stops, then I get like ten of the driver messages. I also will get messages that say an application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware.

I have tried rolling back the drivers, uninstalling then resinstalling the drivers, clean installing the drivers, downloading all of their old drivers. Two more driver updates came out after this happened, and it still happened. I have tried system restoring to an older point when it was working fine. I have taken out the graphics card, and reseated it, as well as put it in to the other video card slot on my motherboard. I should also note that I had not installed anything in the last 24 hours except for star wars battlefront. And I had logged like 10 hours into the game with no issues. So you can imagine my surprise when the next day I was playing something like TF2 and the video card takes a dump.

When this happened back on Wednesday I put in hours of research trying to find out what was wrong, and to no avail. I tried so many methods trying to fix it. I really don't want to format the computer and the issue still be the graphics card. I have sent a support email to ASUS hoping maybe to get a replacement card. However, with my research I have found other posts, on reddit and various other computer sites that have had this issue, and many of them say the same thing "This is a known issue, and NVIDIA knows about it, we just have to wait for them to roll out a fix." Some of these posts go back months! So what are these people doing? Sitting around not playing anything hoping to get a working driver soon?

I had to uninstall the drivers completely just so I could use google chrome and type up my issue to ASUS support. So now I'm on my 6 year old pc that I was using before my new rig. Honestly this fiasco has brought me to my knees, I know it's just a computer, but I put in so much money, and time and effort to build this thing. It ran fine, and then it was snatched from under me, and I have never once in my life felt depressed. But when this happened I seriously did feel that way, completely powerless.

So I have come to the conclusion that it is a hardware issue, and maybe the card is just faulty. At least that is what I hope it is, if it is just a permanent driver issue with the card, maybe instead of getting a replacement, I should just get a credit, or refund, and upgrade to a 980. I'm looking for any feedback at this point besides "It's a known issue, sorry, you're screwed."

Here's my specs just in case it matters.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition ATX LGA1150
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury White 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Windows 10 64 bit

[Evildeffy]

Try this current card in your old PC.

If it does the same thing than it's 100% the GFX, this is something that COULD be a driver issue and it could be something else entirely.

A GTX 970 should serve you well enough for a while and stuff like this shouldn't really happen.
Yes you will get the occasional driver crashes... everyone gets those.

But not to the point of your description.

Try the gfx in your other computer and see if it does the exact same thing.
Remember to use "Display Driver Uninstaller" in safe mode to remove any remnant of the old driver first.

Sucks it happened but you'll likely have to RMA it.

[Denpepe]

Well the driver has stopped responding was an issue earlier this year but it has been resolved now for almost 6 months, that's not to say it can't happen anymore at all, but for me they have completely stopped happening and it never happened to me at the frequency you describe, also further to deffy's post I would try my old GPU in my new machine to see if that works, not only the new card in the old machine.

[nameeraamer]

reinstall video driver, i had the same trouble, after everything is fine

[Keyblader]

Try this current card in your old PC.

If it does the same thing than it's 100% the GFX, this is something that COULD be a driver issue and it could be something else entirely.

A GTX 970 should serve you well enough for a while and stuff like this shouldn't really happen.
Yes you will get the occasional driver crashes... everyone gets those.

But not to the point of your description.

Try the gfx in your other computer and see if it does the exact same thing.
Remember to use "Display Driver Uninstaller" in safe mode to remove any remnant of the old driver first.

Sucks it happened but you'll likely have to RMA it.

Well unfortunately my old pc was prepackaged so the card is actually part of the motherboard and I can't really tamper with it. Do you think that getting a credit and forking out the extra 100 bucks would be worth it to just upgrade to the 980? I haven't heard anything bad about that card, and I'd rather not take a chance at this happening again.

[Silakka]

I have the same card but MSI one. I had that same problem about 6months ago? Was annoying af but it just went away with newer drivers.

[Keyblader]

I have the same card but MSI one. I had that same problem about 6months ago? Was annoying af but it just went away with newer drivers.

there were 3 new iterations of driver updates for me to install when this happened, tried all 3, still nothing :/

[Evildeffy]

Well unfortunately my old pc was prepackaged so the card is actually part of the motherboard and I can't really tamper with it. Do you think that getting a credit and forking out the extra 100 bucks would be worth it to just upgrade to the 980? I haven't heard anything bad about that card, and I'd rather not take a chance at this happening again.

It's irrelevant if your old PC's GPU is part of the motherboard .. as long as you have a PCIex slot to try it out on.

Personally I would not go for a GTX 980 because of price/performance.
Unless you are brand loyal to nVidia you should consider the R9 390X if you want max performance in that class.
Or R9 390 if you want slightly better than GTX 970 performance for the same or less as the GTX 970.

But before all that I recommend you to try the new GFX card in the old computer, only way to know for sure.

I know you stated that you removed the old drivers but I will ask this regardless:
Have you run Display Driver Uninstaller (in Windows Safe Mode) for removing the nVidia drivers?
If not ... have a go with that and try the latest drivers then.

[truulte]

Hardware faults are extremely rare. 95% of cases it's the users fault in one way or another.
1. Download latest drivers.
2. Verify that the GPU is running on stock settings. If you're positive you haven't fiddled with this before, then you can skip this step.
3. Restart in safe mode.
4. Download and run Malwarebytes full system scan.
5. Download and run CCleaner registry scan.

[Keyblader]

I know you stated that you removed the old drivers but I will ask this regardless:
Have you run Display Driver Uninstaller (in Windows Safe Mode) for removing the nVidia drivers?
If not ... have a go with that and try the latest drivers then.

Yep that is one of the first things I tried. Trust me I was trying to fix this for about 8 hours before I finally just sent a support ticket and put the pc in the closet.

- - - Updated - - -

Hardware faults are extremely rare. 95% of cases it's the users fault in one way or another.
1. Download latest drivers.
2. Verify that the GPU is running on stock settings. If you're positive you haven't fiddled with this before, then you can skip this step.
3. Restart in safe mode.
4. Download and run Malwarebytes full system scan.
5. Download and run CCleaner registry scan.

I've already done all this believe it or not haha.

[Mythbredor]

Alright so heres my best ideas. And just remember thease are purely ideas not sure fixes

First off try moving the card to the next PCI-e slot or like the others said try it in a completely diffrent computer. You could also get a friend to let you test your card in their pc. Also dust out your pc if its dusty. I haven't heard of dust causing a simmilar problem but I have dust cause some weird issues.
Heres a better bet wipe your hard drive get a completely fresh install of windows and then try it. If you have the same issues then its almost surely a hardware problem. Outside of that I don't know did asus customer support say anything of use?

[Keyblader]

Alright so heres my best ideas. And just remember thease are purely ideas not sure fixes

First off try moving the card to the next PCI-e slot or like the others said try it in a completely diffrent computer. You could also get a friend to let you test your card in their pc. Also dust out your pc if its dusty. I haven't heard of dust causing a simmilar problem but I have dust cause some weird issues.
Heres a better bet wipe your hard drive get a completely fresh install of windows and then try it. If you have the same issues then its almost surely a hardware problem. Outside of that I don't know did asus customer support say anything of use?

I already did the moving the video card. The computer is brand new so it isn't dusty. I dust it about once every 2 weeks. I'd rather not full restore the memory. ASUS still has not answered me. Which means I'm fucked for a while because tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I probably won't hear from them until at least Monday