Screen drops in lines + turns purple /w EVGA560TI?

[iloqin]

I'm not too sure if this is in the right spot, but since Tomshardware folks are knowledgeable hopefully someone can answer my question or have a suggestion.

After about an hour of viewing videos and watching shows, my screen turns purple with lines fragments going down it. It recovered twice, and said that the display driver blah blah blah. But now when it's had that issue, it just stays there, fragmented and freezes the screen. I have to restart by pressing the button on my tower to get back in, and when I do it starts up normally, and the issue is resolved.

I called evga (which by the way have awesome support, I can tell within the first 2 minutes of conversation these guys are super helpful) and he basically told me that a bad power supply can cause these issues. He says that due to the issue clearing up after you've restarted the computer and doesn't persist for another hour that it's most likely the power supply. He told me to download EVGA's OC Scanner X and run the stress test for about an hour, or the same time thereabouts as I'm viewing videos, and see if any artifacts begin to appear or be counted. If there aren't any artifacts, he thinks it's a power supply issue and not the video card.
So as of right now I'm running the program.


What is wrong with my system? Video Card? Power Supply?

My Powersupply is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015
Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC "compatible with Core i7/Core i5" Power Supply

I've been using this powersupply since 05/2010

 

[smorizio]

a real stress test would be prime95. before running though see if you can see if it a power or temp issue. heat would be more that i would be looking at then power. with power if it the 12v line that was dropping you need your fans or other iteams in the pc dimm or stop. cpu-z or msi afterburger are program to run to look at the gpu temps. also take the side pannel off and see if any wires or iteams are in the fans. with video card drivers and bios most cards are pre set to 10-40 percent of max speed for noise. also check your case fans so that you have airflow going in and going out the back. sometime people have it so that all the fans are pulling in or pushing out causing very little airflow. i would also toss a few runs of memtest just to rule out the ram.
there is a good program called hardware moitior-z from cpu-z. it shows the 12/4/3 and 5v rails. you can have it on the desktop and see if there a drop and lock. one thing too java and flash have been buggy from the last driver that come out for nvidia cards. if you have the newest version of java loaded..try turning off hardware assist in java and flash and see if that stops the locks up.

 

[iloqin]

I'm checking out my temps at the moment, and they are where I expect them. Which is GPU temp hovering around 30c, when I stressed it with OC Scanner X it held good at 80C. The CPU temps are at 30c without load. I'm looking at the volts, especially the 12v and it's low is 1.39v and max is 3.29. Usually the hovering value is somewhere between 1.56 - 2.5v so that looks normal.

I have my fans in the front sucking in air, and the top, and rear pushing air out. So the air flow has been fine since I built the computer. Never had much issues with it. The wiring is fine.

The java and the flash is interesting to me. How do you access or turn off hardware assist in java and flash?

 

[iloqin]

I noticed that the value of my +12V listings in CPUID Hardware Monitor drops without too much going on with the computer.

The min is listed at 0.89v and the max was 3.35v. Is this fluctuation normal?

 

[dudewitbow]

have you updated to the most recent driver for your card? (also monitors surprisingly can get fixes as well)

 

[iloqin]

Yea, after this issue has been occurring, I ended up updating my video drivers right away, then it occured more often. Right now I just went to the plugins on Chrome and disabled one of the shockwaves that I heard could cause things to crash, Lets see how that goes.

 

[Sunius]

Power supply with not cause those issues.. It's bad card.

 

[iloqin]

Well I just messed around with a few things and realized that Adobe Flashplayer (absolutely buggy as heck as always) isn't workin' well with my video card. I can play games like Skyrim fine on Ultra Settings, etc. so it isn't the issue with the heating or the video card or the power supply.

Only happens when I'm viewing youtube videos, so I guess for now I'll uncheck the hardware acceleration and hope that it solves my problem for now... I wish we could kill the flash player like how Apple killed it for mobile devices. They were on the money for saying flash isn't needed. And sure enough that bloated/buggy software still hasn't been fixed. Boo.

I'm just happy I don't have to RMA a good product.

 

[iloqin]

Best answer selected by iloqin.