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Graphics Card Stuffing Up

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Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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As the title says, my graphics card seems to be stuffing up mainly when I play games, or at least I am assuming that is what is happening. Basically, a bunch of lights come from the top left hand corner of the screen, and distorts everything. When something on the screen changes, it becomes more rapid. It is a bit hard to explain, so I took 2 pictures of it happening.

While in a game:
http://oi48.tinypic.com/140kgsw.jpg
On the desktop:
http://oi50.tinypic.com/9b9ogw.jpg

This use to happen in the past, and I put it down to not enough RAM, and once upgrading that, it seemed to be fixed, but now it seems to be the heat causing it (Summer heat in Australia the leading cause) but I am still unsure. The computer is no more than 1 year old, and the problem seems to only happen while playing games, or activities that would cause it to generate heat. My computer specs are as follows:-

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Motherboard: Unknown (computer doesn't register it?)
Ram: 16GB
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional

I am unsure of what else you may need. I was looking at purchasing 2 120MM fans, and 2 140MM fans for the computer as it has the space for them, I just lacked the money in the past. If someone could please help me, I would greatly appreciate it, as I do enjoy playing games, but just cant seem to anymore while this is acting up.

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Your photos look like a sync issue. The usual suspects are: incorrect setup, old drivers and/or firmware (update them), monitor issues. Bad RAM and overheating tend to bring a system to a halt or generate error messages.

Check your sync settings and ensure all drivers and firmware are up to date.

Replace the monitor with a known good device and monitor the situation.
Graphics card Expert

It may be a heat issue. Download and install Speedfan and run it wile you are gaming. You can go to the chart tab and monitor several temperatures there. Tell us the temps after it happens....

A good way to cool down your PC is to blow out all the dust that accumulates on your motherboard, cpu fan, and graphics card with canned compressed air.
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Graphics card Expert

Poor Australians. Gaming in that kind of heat you have in the summer time must be quite a challenge for your computers D... But yeah download a software that can monitor you GPU temperature and see what happens while gaming or benchmarking.

zdbc13 said:
It may be a heat issue. Download and install Speedfan and run it wile you are gaming. You can go to the chart tab and monitor several temperatures there. Tell us the temps after it happens....

A good way to cool down your PC is to blow out all the dust that accumulates on your motherboard, cpu fan, and graphics card with canned compressed air.


I have to restart the computer each time it happens, and by then, it has cooled down too much. I will try purchasing more fans soon and hope that it will work, if not, I shall lend the computer to my brother and hope that he can figure it out since he helped me put it together.
Graphics card Expert

Obviously, use a temp monitor of the graphics card when it is running in the system, keep an eye on it. If your at about 100c or more the card is overheating and causing the problem. Depending on how old the card is it may need a clean or a strip down as dust or dirt may be the cause of this problem, a lack of cooling due to the heat dissipation fins of the graphics card being blocked by thick matted coats of dirt and dust. strip it down and clean the inside of the cooling solution of the card out.

Some people go as far as to replace the thermal compound located between the Gpu die of the graphics card and the cooling solution, cleaning all the old pate of the Gpu die and putting new paste on. This in alot of cases solves the problem. However as said yours looks like a sync Issue with the monitor by the look of it. more than likely the card is trying to output a refresh rate it can to a monitor that cannot handle the higher refresh rate. You have an option in the grphics card driver app to set the Hz ouput range of a sized screen, so if the option is there lower the Hz refresh rate through this. see if the monitor screen returns to normal.

The monitor is a 21" (I think) screen that was recommended at 60Hz, and was told could handle 1920 x 1020 screen resolution. I do have a coolermaster case yet only have the basic fans as the guy at the store said that the additional ones weren't needed, and I was a bit out of cash. I will try to get back there as soon as possible and purchase the 4 fans that can be fitted. If that doesn't help, I will be back. Thanks.
Graphics card Expert

PheonixGRX said:
The monitor is a 21" (I think) screen that was recommended at 60Hz, and was told could handle 1920 x 1020 screen resolution. I do have a coolermaster case yet only have the basic fans as the guy at the store said that the additional ones weren't needed, and I was a bit out of cash. I will try to get back there as soon as possible and purchase the 4 fans that can be fitted. If that doesn't help, I will be back. Thanks.


Dude do the temperature test before going out buying something you may not need. Just saying.

Mahisse said:
Dude do the temperature test before going out buying something you may not need. Just saying.


I will be, don't worry, but I just know its something that I probably will need eventually. My room does get rather hot at times because of it, so I know I need an extra fan or two, but we cant really make it to the store too often, I think we only ever go once every 6 months, so its better to get extras.
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