Display driver causing BSOD.

lilreap2k3

A few days ago I decided to try out the trial for Rift. The first day I had no problems. The next day I was playing and all of sudden I started getting messed up purple pixels popping up everywhere and then my pc froze. I had to manually restart using the button on the tower. I tried the game again and had the same problem, so I figured there was a problem with Rift and my graphics drivers. No other game was having any problems before this. I figured maybe I should try updating my drivers. I grabbed the newest drivers and tried again. Same problem when trying to play Rift. After that I just decided to not bother with Rift for now.

Now a bigger problem has arrived. Today when I first got on my computer I started getting bsod while playing a beta for another game. After restarting my computer, I am now unable to boot my pc past the windows logo. In the middle of the windows logo animation I get a bsod and the pc restarts.

I am able to get to the desktop in safe mode. So I proceeded to uninstall my display drivers. Upon reboot I can get to the desktop while not in safe mode, but as soon as I install any type of drivers for my gtx 570 I start getting bsod again. I have tried a couple older driver versions as well and have the same problem.

Anyone have any idea what is going on here? Everything was working fine until I tried playing Rift, then everything just went downhill from there. I am hoping that my graphics card isn't just crapping out on me, but at this point if I knew that was the problem for sure I would buy another.

jdnewell

Sounds like your GPU has gone bad.

If you have access to another gpu of any type I would install it and see if the errors continue.

 

The graphical artifacts while gaming usually indicates overheating . After experiencing those, then crashing, and basically everything going to pot from there to me sounds like a GPU problem.

lilreap2k3

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Originally posted by jdnewell
Sounds like your GPU has gone bad.

If you have access to another gpu of any type I would install it and see if the errors continue.

 

The graphical artifacts while gaming usually indicates overheating . After experiencing those, then crashing, and basically everything going to pot from there to me sounds like a GPU problem.

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As far as overheating goes. I had software monitoring the temp while I loaded up Rift. The temp never went over 65. The gpu load on the other hand would jump to 100%, which makes no sense at all. I haven't had any problems until just recently and at one point I was quad-boxing Diablo 3 and didn't go over 80%.

I will try out my old 8800 gt and see if I still have problems. If everything runs fine with that card, would it be safe to say it's time to replace my gtx 570?

EDIT: Here's what my desktop looks like when the driver starts failing. http://i.imgur.com/uq1XM.jpg

Ridelynn

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Originally posted by jdnewell
Sounds like your GPU has gone bad.If you have access to another gpu of any type I would install it and see if the errors continue. The graphical artifacts while gaming usually indicates overheating . After experiencing those, then crashing, and basically everything going to pot from there to me sounds like a GPU problem.

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I agree - it ~usually~ indicates overheating or an overclock gone too far, and fixing either of those brings it back inline, but it can also just be a GPU on the fritz about to die completely.

The fact that the driver fails and BSODs the computer under no load - it's dead, Jim.

lilreap2k3

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Originally posted by Ridelynn
Originally posted by jdnewell
Sounds like your GPU has gone bad.If you have access to another gpu of any type I would install it and see if the errors continue. The graphical artifacts while gaming usually indicates overheating . After experiencing those, then crashing, and basically everything going to pot from there to me sounds like a GPU problem.

I agree - it ~usually~ indicates overheating or an overclock gone too far, and fixing either of those brings it back inline, but it can also just be a GPU on the fritz about to die completely.

The fact that the driver fails and BSODs the computer under no load - it's dead, Jim.

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Alright, thanks for the help guys. Gonna go ahead and order a new card I guess.

Quizzical

As others said, that sounds--and looks--like a video card dying.  If you've overclocked it at all, then reducing the clock speed may help.  The power circuitry on a reference GTX 570 really wasn't adequate for any overclocking.

As for the GPU running at 100%, that makes perfect sense.  Unless there's code to specifically tell the computer to stop and do nothing for a while (e.g., vertical sync), if a game is running, something is always going at 100%.  It could be the processor, the video card, the PCI Express bus, the hard drive, a single core of the processor, or whatever, but if nothing was going at 100%, then everything could speed up simultaneously and make the game run faster.  It's common for a game to bounce around from waiting on the processor one millisecond to waiting on the video card the next, which may create the illusion that nothing is going all out, but the system will usually be pushing something as hard as it can go.

lilreap2k3

Went and bought a GTX 660. Just got through installing the drivers and so far so good. I believe you guys were right about the 570 dying. I had it less than 2 years. I will have to look and see what the warranty looks like.

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Originally posted by Quizzical
As others said, that sounds--and looks--like a video card dying.  If you've overclocked it at all, then reducing the clock speed may help.  The power circuitry on a reference GTX 570 really wasn't adequate for any overclocking.As for the GPU running at 100%, that makes perfect sense.  Unless there's code to specifically tell the computer to stop and do nothing for a while (e.g., vertical sync), if a game is running, something is always going at 100%.  It could be the processor, the video card, the PCI Express bus, the hard drive, a single core of the processor, or whatever, but if nothing was going at 100%, then everything could speed up simultaneously and make the game run faster.  It's common for a game to bounce around from waiting on the processor one millisecond to waiting on the video card the next, which may create the illusion that nothing is going all out, but the system will usually be pushing something as hard as it can go.

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I never overclocked it, so not sure why it just decided to die on me. Bad luck I guess.

Ridelynn

It happens sometimes.