Major video card issue

LP

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Fuck this shit.

So I have an MSI OC... shit I'll paste it from newegg.

"MSI N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565

This thing was amazing the first few months I was using it (I got the comp in April 2010), and even for the first year. But then one day randomly while playing Dungeon Defenders with my friends, it did some nasty shit.

Nasty shit = artifacting, glitching, poor rendering.

I've not been playing a lot of graphics intensive games since, and have been sticking mostly with easy shit, apart from Diablo 3, which it ran totally smoothly and with no problems at all at full gfx settings.

I downloaded CS:GO recently and tried to play it. Here's the results with the old video card drivers:





And here's the results with the newest video card drivers:






Am I just SOL, do I need to get a new GFX card? Or is there something that I can do to fix this (other than firebombing MSI)
 
As always try drivers changes, if you are running newer get older ones, etc... otherwise I don't think there is much to be done. Try it in a diff machine if you can?
 
I'd see about RMAing it. It could be over heating. How hot does the inside of your case get?
 
I dusted the crap out of my computer just after posting this, and I might send it in to a professional for even more cleaning. I was lazy and waited too long I suspect and so components might have gotten heated up inside as a result.

I'm going to remove the video card from the mobo and dust it all out. Then I'll test it out without any other changes to see if it's a dust or driver issue.

If it persists I'll roll back the drivers one by one, and then if it still persists I will call up MSI and hopefully their customer support doesn't suck. I think it's a 3 year warranty at least.
 
Buy a can of compressed air, take the computer outside, blow the dust out. That's what a professional will do.
 
Yeah, give us some temperatures during gameplay, it's hard to determine what could be wrong with it just by this amount of info. My gut reaction is that some of the VRAM modules have bit the dust.

Also, if it turns out the card is bad and you are low on cash right now, you can try downclocking it - it should stop artifacting (or do it a lot less) while still working somewhat - find a balance
 
The "nasty shit" you mentioned earlier in your post makes me think you have a borked card, that's somehow managing to survive your subsequently reduced graphical workload.
Might as well RMA it before the warranty runs out.
 
Try downclocking your card, if the problem goes away, then RMA time. If it doesn't, then it might be a driver or game issue.
 
Buy a can of compressed air, take the computer outside, blow the dust out. That's what a professional will do.

Had 2 cans of compressed air, also used a microfiber cloth, and took the comp out. Sprayed the duster everywhere, cleaned out all the vents (which some of them can be removed and cleaned with water). Cleaned out all the fans of dust, tried to clear out as much as I could in terms of using the microfiber cloth to clean the dust from the fan blades itself. Decided to call it quits after a little while because it was a bit much and I had to head into the office and work.

Yeah, give us some temperatures during gameplay, it's hard to determine what could be wrong with it just by this amount of info. My gut reaction is that some of the VRAM modules have bit the dust.

Also, if it turns out the card is bad and you are low on cash right now, you can try downclocking it - it should stop artifacting (or do it a lot less) while still working somewhat - find a balance

Trying to find a way to get temperatures, I remember being able to monitor GPU temps, but forget what application I used. Do you know of a good one?

The "nasty shit" you mentioned earlier in your post makes me think you have a borked card, that's somehow managing to survive your subsequently reduced graphical workload.
Might as well RMA it before the warranty runs out.

I might try that.

Try downclocking your card, if the problem goes away, then RMA time. If it doesn't, then it might be a driver or game issue.

Ok.



Edit: so I plugged in everything after dusting the crap out of my computer and here are the end results in CS:GO with the new drivers








Now while that IS better, I still feel a bit nervous as I feel it could let go at any moment. Think it was system temperatures to cause the whole deal? I'll get some stats on that in a little bit
 
you could try MSI Afterburner. it lets you monitor temperatures, voltages, clocks and lets you define your own fan-control. in case you feel nervous about temperatures you could set the fan to a more aggressive setting than maybe stock-settings.
 
CPUID HWmonitor. shows all available temperature sensors. Really neat.
 
Ok haha, lots of suggestions, let's look at em one at a time I suppose.

I downloaded MSI afterburner. Before I started the game up, the temperature was at the minimum: 38C.

Once I fired up CS:GO, I did the weapons training course and it shot to a max of 70C, but petered out at around 60 odd C

GPU usage is at 90-100% during play.

Fan speed went up from 40-60%

Core clock went from 50 MHz to 800 MHz
Shader clock from 100 - 1700 MHz
Memory Clock from 100 - 2100 MHz
Memory usage from 183 - 790 MB
 
so everything is what it should be. temps below 70?C are more than fine. can't be that then :dunno:
 
Looks like it was an over heating issue then.
 
Agreed. Just make sure you keep the fans fairly clean. If the issue returns but the temps are still in the 70C range, try downclocking the memory (Use RivaTuner).
 
Agreed. Just make sure you keep the fans fairly clean. If the issue returns but the temps are still in the 70C range, try downclocking the memory (Use RivaTuner).

imo if the card isnt capable of running stock clocks, that's an RMA right there.
also: afterburner is based on rivatuner, no need to download additional tools :)
 
imo if the card isnt capable of running stock clocks, that's an RMA right there.
also: afterburner is based on rivatuner, no need to download additional tools :)

Even a good card won't run well if it is over heating.
 
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