How to stress test a GFX card

[Larcosa]

Good day all,

So my new GFX card should hopefully arrive today!

My older GTX 570 was sometimes giving me a driver error in certain games where the nvidia driver would crash.
Various reinstalls / different versions of the Nvidia drivers did not sort out this issue.

That being said I cant in clear conscience sell my GTX 570 if it was actually a hardware issue prompting the problem.

Does anyone know of a service/software that diagnoses these types of issues?

I would much rather the few hundred rands being in my bank than a potentially perfectly healthy card just sitting in a cupboard.

 

[RandomSheepZA]

Furmark probably would be your best bet.
Similar to intel burn for cpu's
Will quickly tell you if it was driver or card.

 

[Larcosa]

What type of errors would I expect to see? Or what indications would there be that the card itself is faulty :] ?

 

[Sola Scriptura]

There are many programs, but id recommend rather using a different system to test the card in.
Id recommend furmark or MSI kombuster, they pretty much the same thing, big ol hairy donuts. Heaven is also good, not as intense, a bit mor realistic. Sometimes these bench/stress tests will not make your gpu crash but as soon as you start playing a game it will eventually crash. So id still think its better to test the card in a different system with the same games that crashes when playing them on your system with that gpu.

 

[Kuga]

Furmark and OCCT.

OCCT has a test to check the VRAM chips on the GPU, Furmark will make your GPU sweat until it has nothing left to give

 

[Larcosa]

Ah thank you for the assistance the issue being the driver would crash anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours and finding a PC to troubleshoot on will be a mission and a half for me. But thank you all, will definitely do the stress tests initially and evaluate from thereon!

There may be a GTX 570 for sale sometime in the future. We'll see!

 

[Kuga]

Could also be a faulty PSU - I've seen strange shit happen with faulty PSU's. Best is to test the new card as well, before going through all of this.

 

[Oj0]

All modern (from the last five years or so) drivers will throttle the card on Furmark, so it's not the best bet.

 

[Larcosa]

Could also be a faulty PSU - I've seen strange shit happen with faulty PSU's. Best is to test the new card as well, before going through all of this.

Hopefully not! Its a "Newish" 700 watt from this site

The feeling of getting a new card and having the same problems as before, certainly hope that wont be the case.

((Although that being said its certain types of games Skyrim/Witcher/other) Other games that tax my system do not have the error its odd...)

 

[SCHUMI4EVER]

Just remember to run DDU when you get the new card....in fact also DDU the old card before you stress test.

 

[Larcosa]

Just remember to run DDU when you get the new card....in fact also DDU the old card before you stress test.

Display Driver Uninstaller?

So clean slate before installing the new card?

So install new card into PC then run DDU then install new Nvidia drivers?

 

[SCHUMI4EVER]

Display Driver Uninstaller?

So clean slate before installing the new card?

So install new card into PC then run DDU then install new Nvidia drivers?

Yep. Since you have driver issues I would also do that now though.
It's pretty much painless unless you have hundreds of individual game profiles set up. Also select clean install when installing the new drivers, and make sure you are disconnected from the net if on Win10, and that Afterburner or any other monitoring apps are not running.

 

[Larcosa]

Yep. Since you have driver issues I would also do that now though.
It's pretty much painless unless you have hundreds of individual game profiles set up. Also select clean install when installing the new drivers, and make sure you are disconnected from the net if on Win10, and that Afterburner or any other monitoring apps are not running.

So download the new standalone drivers for nvidia and install while offline? If I may ask the reason for this?

 

[SCHUMI4EVER]

So download the new standalone drivers for nvidia and install while offline? If I may ask the reason for this?

Because Windows 10 is a streamlined pile of crap. Autodetecting newly attached devices and and automatically obtaining the drivers for you is really nice and convenient. It is however a lot less so when that detection happens in the middle of installing your own. Often these days the drivers fail to install properly because in the middle of installing your own manually windows was automatically installing some as well. Without the net it can't phone home to get in your way.
At least that has been my experience in the last few months and I know I am not only one when looking at the GeForce forum.

 

[Bencrisp]

I always start a GPU test with Unigine Valley or Heaven. This way you can keep an eye on temps for the first benchmarks. If all temps look correct, then move on to more stressful means if your heart desires.

 

[Xtreme]

0jO mentioned also, stressing gpu at certain temp mark ,the driver will intervine to let the card drop it's clocks to let it cool down.