Peculiar Artifacting

[z3liff]

Hi all.

I've got a question pertaining to artifacts.

A friend's computer is showing artifacts typically on the log in screen only. As far as I have been able to tell, it appears that it happens only *after* the screensaver has kicked in (was set to Win7 Ribbons, now have it set to blank to test if it's at all correlated with the ribbon screen saver). The artifacts disappear after logging back on.

The computer does not suffer from any BSOD, unexpected shut downs, or other crashes.

So far, it has been a relatively unpredictable occurrence (only about 30% of the time).

Computer is ~5-6 months old. The problem started roughly a month ago.

I do not have information pertaining to gaming issues since the person doesn't really play 3D games on it. But no issues occurred from testing it with Video Card Stability Test.

Graphics Details:
Nvidia GeForce GT 420m
Windows 7 x64, with Nvidia Driver from Windows update

Here's a picture of the screen:

Any ideas what is going on specifically? Is it bad graphics memory, potential system RAM issues, or what? More importantly, do you think it is indicative of an issue that is likely to get worse?

Thanks!
Z

 

[cognitoo]

More than likely its a driver issue. If windows update installed drivers, I would goto nVidia.com and reinstall the driver from there. Be sure to uninstall the current driver before installing the one from the site.

Personally, if the banding goes away after booting up I would do nothing. If the screen flickers or starts banding while running windows or other programs I would do the above. For a more detailed procedure on installing drivers, do a search on here for explicit instructions. There are a couple of 'driver cleaners' to choose from, read what is said about each.

Cog

 

[techgeek]

I have seen this when a card hits a certain temperature, not necessarily too hot, but has been put under some stress. I have seen it where it will cause the computer to crash, and in other cases where the problem goes away after a reboot or cooling down.

Have you tried something like OCCT GPU stress test. If there's a physical problem with the card, this should aggravate it.

I had an ATI 1900XTX do something very similar in games that were stressful. The GPU would hit 75C and I would get screen corruption. If I stopped playing and let it cool back down, the artifacts would go away. Of course they came back the moment I stressed it to that point again.

In another case (just recently) at work I had a ATI FireGL V7200 that would reboot the system. At start up there were random pixels turned on, you could log in, and sometimes it would remain stable for hours, and then it would reboot. I suspected the video card, so I ran OCCT GPU stress test, it reboot in under 7 seconds. It was very repeatable. Dropped another card in (luckily had another workstation) and it was fine.

From your description, I am leaning towards the card. That is not to say however that it couldn't be related to a driver problem. Its just that the Windows 3D ribbon will push the graphics card slightly and it will cause it to warm up.

If you can reproduce the problem with a GPU stress test, you may want to find out what the GPU temperature is. It could be hitting ridiculous temperatures due to dust or failing fan, in which case the problem could be fixed without replacing the entire card.

Let us know what you find.

 

[z3liff]

Thanks folks. I'm trying to get a hold of my friend. We'll go ahead and run the OCCT GPU test first, if it's inconclusive, we'll update the driver to the nVidia version, and repeat the test. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks again!
Z

 

[sparkyuiop]

No way is that the driver my friend. It's bad RAM I can assure you.