Severe graphics artifacts, is card screwed?

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Rogue007

Weaksauce
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Mar 8, 2013
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Hi and thanks for reading.
I have an EVGA GTX690, when playing BF4 for the past month or so I had been getting screen artifacts on the loading screen, which would clear up before the game started so never worried about it. But now since last night I am getting very bad artifacts in game, which kind of come and go. They make the game unplayable.
I uninstalled driver and reinstalled the latest driver, which was 1st time I had updated for a month or so. But didn't get any better. I tried GTAV to see if it is just a BF4 issue, I still get it in GTAV but not as bad.
Is my card screwed? I hope not as I'm pretty sure the warranty ran out in March. It is less than 2yrs old and itself was a replacement for another card which failed completely.
I've checked temperatures with MSI Afterburner, and doesn't go above 70 degrees.
Any help appreciated, thanks.
 
are you overlocking. increase voltage or lower the clock
 
No overclocking at all, I was getting over 100fps in BF4 on ultra with standard clocks so never bothered.
 
What kind of powersupply and how old it is?

Have you tried playing with the GPU fan at 100%? Just as a test.
 
Similar to what this guy had been getting -
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...Artifacts-after-taking-over-an-outpost-Forums

Baking it ???
I will try with fanes at 100%, but it doesn't seem to be temps as don't go above 70degrees according to afterburner.
PSU is a Corsair 750watt, just over 2 yrs old as is whole PC.
Don't think its much help, but rest of PC is 4770k, 16GB Gskill 2400MHZ RAM, 2 x Samsung 840 Pro in RAID0.
Pc runs fine other than this problem.
 
Is the card overheating? Watch the fans and see if they are operating properly. Also seriously consider applying new thermal paste to it. After a couple of years it turns as hard as stone and literally cracks into dust.

Baking a card is when you literally bake the card to fix cold solder joints.
 
To reiterate what was said - replace the thermal paste. Use high % alcohol and paper towel to clean off the old gunk and use about a pea sized amount on each GPU and mush it down with the cooler.

Set a fan profile in MSI Afterburner or EVGA PrecisionX (or just set 100% fan speed).

Use either of the aforementioned tools to:
A) Increase the GPU voltage.
B) or decrease the GPU speed by about 50 or 100 MHz. (if this fixes it and you have warranty left the it is RMA time)

If that those tips don't work then the card is dying. RMA it if you can.
 
Baking it ???
Click to expand...
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792
Commonly use as a last resort for gpus that are about to be thrown away. The logic is nothing to lose by trying and it doesn't work. I have personally took ownership of other people's gpus that were going to be thrown out do to really bad artifacts....In my case it was a bfg 280x....and it worked so i was happy. You will hear a lot of people say its not worth doing and it's impossible to actually work...yea whatever give me your bad card and when i fix it its mine lol..I figure if the card is done for it don't hurt to try;) Now i haven't actually seen it work on a card that new....but as a last resort i would try
 
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EVGA warranty is 3 years IIRC. So if it is less than 2 years old just contact them and RMA it. You'll probably need a copy of the receipt though if you didn't register it with them already.
 
Thanks for replys, I'll give your suggestions a try. I just downloaded and ran 3d Mark. The system was cool having not long been turned on. the 1st test had terrible artifacts, then it would come and go, but strangely the last couple were clear with no artifacts at all and this is when the card would've been at its highest temperature. Afterburner reports highest temp as 72 degrees C on each GPU. Peak power as 119% on GPU 1 and 128% GPU 2.
I visited EVGA RMA page and put in serial, it said out of date or invalid. The original card was bought over 3yrs ago, this is a replacement as that went faulty, so it is only this card itself that is just over 2yrs old. I've sent them an email, explaining that this was a over £900 card when new and it is the 2nd to go faulty in just over 3yrs. Maybe they'll feel sorry for me, but I doubt it. :(
 
Yeah unfortunately that's how the warranty works. It's based off the original purchase not the replacement you got. Give the other suggestions a try but you might want to prepare yourself that the best option is probably going to be to get a new card.

The oven trick does work, I did a similar thing with a heat gun on my original PS3 that got the RLOD, it worked for several hours (enough to pull the data off the HDD to a new one), but as it stands, it works, but I can't play anything on it for more than a minute before it locks up. The video cards will probably be similar. If it is some kind of broken solder, the oven trick can fix it, but there is a chance you could make the problem worse and there is no telling on how long the fix will last. So really it's a last resort.
 
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