This has randomly started happening just in the last two days, without any major changes to my system and I'm not really sure what the likely causes are.
While playing a game in Windowed mode, which I've done consistently for a long time, without problems, suddenly the screen will flash black for a couple of seconds, and when it returns the FPS in my game has plummeted dramatically and will struggle to run. Windows shuts off Aero and reverts to classic theme, and my graphics card fan starts spinning up to maximum speeds, while the temperature begins climbing dramatically.
Usually at this point, I'm forced to shut down windows and reboot because the temperature starts climbing over 95C and I start getting worried my card is going to melt. After a reboot, everything is back to normal and all runs fine for hours and hours. Then bam, it'll randomly do it again later in the day forcing another reboot.
What could be causing this? I thought perhaps it's something crashing because of overheating, but the temperatures are fairly steady 50-60C on the desktop and 75-82C while gaming, with the fan only hovering around 35-40%. And that's despite it being summer. I don't think it's an overheating thing, because the card only starts dramatically heating up AFTER the screen flashes black and Aero dies. I also tried leaving the side of the case open, because I thought if it is a heat thing that would help me diagnose the problem... but it still did the exact same thing with the case open.
Is this likely to be a software thing? Bad drivers maybe, and a driver crash is causing things to go crazy? I did update to the most recent drivers last week, perhaps I should try a revert? Or does this point to something else obvious?
I'm running a RadeonHD 6870 on Windows 7 (64-bit). No overclocking or anything like that.
While playing a game in Windowed mode, which I've done consistently for a long time, without problems, suddenly the screen will flash black for a couple of seconds, and when it returns the FPS in my game has plummeted dramatically and will struggle to run. Windows shuts off Aero and reverts to classic theme, and my graphics card fan starts spinning up to maximum speeds, while the temperature begins climbing dramatically.
Usually at this point, I'm forced to shut down windows and reboot because the temperature starts climbing over 95C and I start getting worried my card is going to melt. After a reboot, everything is back to normal and all runs fine for hours and hours. Then bam, it'll randomly do it again later in the day forcing another reboot.
What could be causing this? I thought perhaps it's something crashing because of overheating, but the temperatures are fairly steady 50-60C on the desktop and 75-82C while gaming, with the fan only hovering around 35-40%. And that's despite it being summer. I don't think it's an overheating thing, because the card only starts dramatically heating up AFTER the screen flashes black and Aero dies. I also tried leaving the side of the case open, because I thought if it is a heat thing that would help me diagnose the problem... but it still did the exact same thing with the case open.
Is this likely to be a software thing? Bad drivers maybe, and a driver crash is causing things to go crazy? I did update to the most recent drivers last week, perhaps I should try a revert? Or does this point to something else obvious?
I'm running a RadeonHD 6870 on Windows 7 (64-bit). No overclocking or anything like that.
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