Failing GPU???

[kdw75]

I have a computer that I put together about 11 months ago. It hasn't been used for much other than web browsing until the past month or so. During the past month my daughter has finally started using it to play some BF3 and shortly after she started having black polygons randomly in game and crashes where the screen would go black and the only way to get out of the program was to use task manager and force quit it. After several days of this I started thinking it was a glitch so I restarted the computer. Upon restart the problems have gotten worse. While on the desktop of Windows 7 icons randomly disappear as you move the mouse over them. Sometimes the start menu turns black then as you move the mouse over it things will reappear. In the corners of the screen and along the bottom there is flickering. These issues affect programs, such as web browser and email, that are running as well.

The card is an MSI Twin Frozr GTX 460. The GPU temperatures seem to stay very cool so heat doesn't seem to be an issue unless it is memory heat which I haven't checked.

 

[nforce4max]

It is still the card even when the core temp is low lets say in the high 40s or mid 50s the power vrm on the card under full or heavy load can very easily top over 100c which shortens the life of the card. The vrm on most gtx 460 cards is rated to run up to 125c or so but only for very short periods of time and not sustained load. The end result with an average 100-115c on most samples due to poor cooling they often last only a few short months before failure. Also the vram on most gtx 460 cards is very poorly cooled but doesn't reach such high temps but overclocking often makes things worse in the long run. It is best to either try to force the fan speed to around 60-80% even when not gaming will help but it may already be to late. I suggest rma of this card. Also a bad or weak psu can be at fault here if it is unable to provide stable current to the card. The gpu can throw artifacts when starved of power but often driver can crash or system restart.

Fermi era cards also have issues rendering even when everything is normal or even optimal due to flaws in drivers as well architecture that result in missing textures or inaccurate image quality. Performance issues in openGL are well known as well less than expected performance in 32bit floating point performance which is what games mostly depend on instead of that Fermi was design to deliver which is 64bit double precession floating point performance. Compared to what Fermi replaced it can be and often is at times a disappointment. Build quality of Fermi era cards is well known to be rather poor given the short overall life span of many cards like the gtx 460 or the gtx 570 ect. Worse is the gtx 590.

 

[kdw75]

Best answer selected by kdw75.