Your computer has been having problems for a while and you’re afraid your graphics card might soon fail? MeinMMO presents signs that indicate your GPU might be on the verge of breaking down.
When hardware breaks down, it’s always very annoying. But it becomes even more frustrating and truly expensive when the graphics card in your computer gives up the ghost. Because besides the processor, you often pay the most for the graphics card.
MeinMMO explains to you what signs indicate a faulty graphics card. However, please keep in mind that you should always check your entire PC before you (in the worst case) buy an expensive new graphics card.
1. Graphic bugs and glitches that get worse
Graphic errors that often occur are a good indicator of a faulty graphics card. This is because the graphics card processes textures and data so you can see something on your monitor.
Graphic problems especially occur in games and manifest as poorly loaded textures, screen errors, tearing, or random artifacts that appear on screen during gameplay. Sometimes these disturbances can also appear outside of games in the menus of your operating system.
If you can rule out a Windows update or a new graphics driver as the cause of the problems, you can be sure that something is wrong with your graphics card. If you can reproduce the problems with the same graphics card on another system, it becomes even easier to identify the graphics card as the issue.
2. Strange noises from your fans
Are you currently gaming on your PC and the fans of your graphics card are making strange noises while gaming? This can also be an indication that everything is not right with your graphics card.
Broken or faulty fans may not necessarily be an absolute sign of a defective graphics card, but they can cause your graphics card to fail faster. If the fans can no longer cool the graphics card, eventually the graphics chip will overheat.
With small tools like HWMonitor, you can quickly check the temperature of the graphics card.
A YouTuber was able to significantly improve the cooling performance of his graphics card with little money:
3. Crashes increase when you are gaming
If your PC crashes and restarts more often than usual, a faulty or damaged graphics card could also be the cause. Especially if your game regularly quits unexpectedly.
However, a crash can be caused by all sorts of things. It can also be due to bugs in the game or faulty software that you installed with an update. As a general rule, you should check other components as well.
4. Significantly lower framerate and severe framedrops
Ideally, you would be gaming your games at a stable framerate. The higher the framerate, the smoother your game feels. A YouTuber once tested whether a 144 Hz monitor makes you a better shooter player.
If the framerate regularly drops significantly during gaming or stays in a very low range (the game then “stutters” significantly), and your graphics card should normally handle the game without issues, then you should check your graphics card.
However, before you blame the graphics card, you should check other things first. Have you installed the latest driver or could your computer be suffering from overheating issues? You can quickly check the temperatures with tools like HWMonitor.
However, if the temperatures are within the normal range and you can rule out the issues otherwise, you should take a closer look at your graphics card.
5. Sudden and frequent bluescreens
Bluescreens occur when Windows detects an error in the system. This can be either an error in the data system (directly in Windows) or an error in the hardware – including the graphics card.
More articles about PC problems: A user also had problems with his gaming PC. He could only use his PC perfectly after discovering a problem that he initially hadn’t noticed. You can read the whole story here on MeinMMO:
A user can only play with his new gaming PC after finding a nasty error
