Origin of the problem:
The other day I tried to play a game called Sir, You are being hunted. I got to the main menu and set graphics to max because the game didn't look very demanding. I started a new game and everything seemed to be going fine but once the loading finished and my computer tried to render the world I got several weird graphical glitches on my two monitors - everything was going blue or brown and there were these strange horizontal lines everywhere. After about 15 seconds the computer became unresponsive and I had to turn it off manually.
The problem:
When I booted it back up there were these weird colorful horizontal lines across the screen (about 6-8). They only appeared once Windows actually loaded (so they weren't there when the Windows 7 logo was displayed during the load.) I have by default set the classic windows 2000+- theme and explorer and system-related stuff like that seems fine. But when I open Chrome for example the whole screen goes black, PC becomes unresponsive and I have to shut it off the hard way.
The colorful horizontal lines make me think that it is my GPU dying on me. It's a ATI Radeon HD 6870 that I had since 2011. I don't have spare PC so I am not sure how to actually test this theory. If I go to safe mode however, the graphical glitches are not there and everything seems to go fine which further leads me to believe that the failures are graphics card related.
What I tried:
I opened up the PC, cleaned all the dust out, took the cover off the GPU and cleaned it as well, put it back together and reinstalled the drivers in safe mode, checked for disk errors, defragmented, restored the system to a previous point in time (not in that order) and the issue prevails.
Questions:
Is it safe to assume that the problem is GPU related?
If not, how can I test the components considering that I do not have a second PC to try the components in?
If it is, would you help me choose a new graphics card? I would like to stick to around 130-180 euros. If you know of such a card with decent performace please feel free to recommend! Also this site currently has some nice discounts within that price range available in my country. The site might not be translated perfectly but that's all I got atm.
System information:
PartPicker:
Here
SysInfo:
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Processor Count: 4
RAM: 8155 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 305242 MB, Free - 142578 MB;
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd., H61M-DS2
Antivirus: ESET Smart Security 9.0.318.0, Updated and Enabled
Please let me know if you guys need adittional information and thank you in advance for any help or advice.
The other day I tried to play a game called Sir, You are being hunted. I got to the main menu and set graphics to max because the game didn't look very demanding. I started a new game and everything seemed to be going fine but once the loading finished and my computer tried to render the world I got several weird graphical glitches on my two monitors - everything was going blue or brown and there were these strange horizontal lines everywhere. After about 15 seconds the computer became unresponsive and I had to turn it off manually.
The problem:
When I booted it back up there were these weird colorful horizontal lines across the screen (about 6-8). They only appeared once Windows actually loaded (so they weren't there when the Windows 7 logo was displayed during the load.) I have by default set the classic windows 2000+- theme and explorer and system-related stuff like that seems fine. But when I open Chrome for example the whole screen goes black, PC becomes unresponsive and I have to shut it off the hard way.
The colorful horizontal lines make me think that it is my GPU dying on me. It's a ATI Radeon HD 6870 that I had since 2011. I don't have spare PC so I am not sure how to actually test this theory. If I go to safe mode however, the graphical glitches are not there and everything seems to go fine which further leads me to believe that the failures are graphics card related.
What I tried:
I opened up the PC, cleaned all the dust out, took the cover off the GPU and cleaned it as well, put it back together and reinstalled the drivers in safe mode, checked for disk errors, defragmented, restored the system to a previous point in time (not in that order) and the issue prevails.
Questions:
Is it safe to assume that the problem is GPU related?
If not, how can I test the components considering that I do not have a second PC to try the components in?
If it is, would you help me choose a new graphics card? I would like to stick to around 130-180 euros. If you know of such a card with decent performace please feel free to recommend! Also this site currently has some nice discounts within that price range available in my country. The site might not be translated perfectly but that's all I got atm.
System information:
PartPicker:
Here
SysInfo:
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Processor Count: 4
RAM: 8155 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 305242 MB, Free - 142578 MB;
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd., H61M-DS2
Antivirus: ESET Smart Security 9.0.318.0, Updated and Enabled
Please let me know if you guys need adittional information and thank you in advance for any help or advice.