Having some weird Screen Artifacts/Tearing/Splitting going on.

[Haydest]

Hey There All,

Well I've tried posting this issue on various other hardware/tech forums and unsurprisingly, my questions/plea for help go unanswered over the course of weeks while the guy asking for opinions on a new video card gets hundreds of replies . I've had pretty good responses to my computer issues in the past here on this forum so I'm hoping to get help here once again!

To begin, my specs:

i7 2600k
Coolermaster Hyper 212+ Aftermarket Cooler
ASUS P8-Z68 V LE
Corsair Vengeance 1600MHZ 8GB RAM
Powercolor 6850 1GB DDR5
ASUS VE-248 24" Inch LCD Monitor
Coolermaster Silent Pro 800W Gold Certified
Seagate Baracuda 7200RPM 1TB HDD
I forget the brand of my DVD-RW, but it's LG or Litewriter...anyhow, irrelevant for the most part.
My SSD has been out of commission for a few months, so I've been running on that 7200RPM for a while now...surely a hit for games and windows booting, but until I get more funds (which may be a while since I'm probably replacing one or another here shortly..) it will have to do.

So as of the past week, I've been experiencing a number of problems with my screen and I want to believe I've isolated it down to either the GPU or Monitor that needs replacement/servicing.

To start, my screen began with BSOD's from Windows with the BCCode of 116 and 117. I did some Google research and it appeared to be related to video card hardware or software failure. I uninstalled the drivers in safe mode, ran a drive sweeper + CCleaner and then I was on my way to reinstalling new drivers after a reboot.

After that, I no longer saw the BSOD's my problem did not go away there. Associated with my previous BSOD's would be the screen either blacking out, having white horizontal lines across (with no actual picture) or a green background with the same effect. Some times, my screen would literally tear/split and my desktop/view becomes all garbled--the start menu appears on the right side and everything appears to have been pushed to the left.

I'll give an example of my issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fatXP1232pA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fatXP1232pA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fatXP1232pA

These are not my computer or video's, but this guy had the exact same problem and just like me on Tom's Hardware, he never received a reply and I'm going to assume he somehow fixed his problem...but I inquired to him about it via PM and he has not responded. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/32...-crashing-6870)

Now, IF the screen goes black sometimes I can wiggle the DVI cord and the picture comes back. However, if the screen tears the only way I can fix it is through a reboot.

I've tried a memtest86 to see if my RAM had any issue, but it yielded no errors. I've been closely monitoring my temperatures for the past 3 days and the CPU's have remained at 26-33c under idle, while the GPU is at 35c under idle. Under high load, the CPU goes up to about 55c max and the GPU at 65c--I suspect this is not an issue of overheating.

I have tried replacing the DVI cable, and the problem still persists. I currently do not have another GPU or Monitor to test things on. It should be noted however that I have attempted to clean out and reseat both my GPU and memory to no avail. I have even tried updating my BIOs to the latest revision and that did not solve any problems.

Now, my general sneaking suspicion on why this 90% likely to be my GPU is the fact that these glitches/errors/tearing/artifact do not occur unless I have been playing a 3D game. I can surf the web for 10 hours straight or watch a movie and nothing will happen. However, I can be playing anything from Minecraft to Skyrim to SWTOR to WoW and the errors will occur, some times within 5 minutes of the game and other times after hours. There are even some days where it doesn't happen at all!

I've have not overclocked the GPU ever, and for the purpose of testing everything else, I have even returned the i7 to stock levels.

Any suggestions at this point would be great, thanks for your time!

[OhpUldum]

You won't find much of a debate here. That looks like a pretty clear video memory issue, which equates to GPU replacement.

[Haydest]

You won't find much of a debate here. That looks like a pretty clear video memory issue, which equates to GPU replacement.

Thanks for your time - I just needed a second opinion before I went off to venture for a new GPU. I know this sounds silly, but you have no idea how glad I am for you to respond to this. It was rather frustrating to receive zero replies across 5 computer forums and I was beginning to wonder if my issue was unheard of or something.

Off to Newegg.com I go...!

[FlawlessSoul]

Don't forget to check whether your GPU has a warranty either from the original seller or Powercolor themselves that is still in date You may need to ship it off to them and be without it for a while, but it'd save you quite a bit of cash if either will replace it.