Graphics Card Problems - Diagnose

Help Diagnose Graphics Card Problems​

   Information

This tutorial will show how to get a great deal of information on exactly what is happening with a graphics card which is having issues.

Here's How:

1. First download GPUZ to your desktop

2. Right Click and empty spot on your Desktop, and create a new folder. You can name it anything you want. I name mine GPUZ Sensor Log.

3. Open GPUz, and click on the Sensors tab as shown below.

4. In the bottom Left corner, put a check mark in the Log to file box. Immediately a Dialog box will open. Navigate to your desktop, and select the folder you just created, the one I named GPUZ Log.

5. Leave GPUz open, and run a Stress program or a game that will always make your card crash, or cause whatever problems you are having. I always use Ungine Heaven, and benchmark it on the preset Extreme mode. It will stress your card extremely hard. Plus, it will give you a score, and is much more interesting than Furmark.

6. As soon as the test is finished, the card crashes or whatever problems you are having occur, close your program and uncheck the Log to File box in GPUz. If you use Heaven as I do, you will notice it will constantly update the Frames per second you are getting as well as the card temp in the upper right hand corner. I use EVGA Precision X which also tells me that as well as the fan speed, GPU frequency and most anything else I want. MSI Afterburner will do the same. I always set a custom profile for my Fan Speed too.

Once the test is stopped open the new folder you told GPUz to create your log in. This is what you will find there. Excuse the large photos, but there is a lot of info to show. Run down to just before your card crashed and you can see exactly what was happening and hopefully what caused it.

As you can see, there is little information about what was going on inside your card that the log will not show.



I hope this short explanation will help some people find out their problems.

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Install a New Graphics Card
• How to Overclock a Graphics Card
• How to Test NVIDIA/AMD Performance with OCCT
• How to Avoid NVIDIA Driver Problems
• How to Stress Test a Video Card with Furmark
• How to Flash the BIOS on an NVIDIA Graphics Card

 

[derekimo]

Nice work Steve, this will come in handy!

 

[essenbe]

Thanks, Derek.

 

[ganjiry]

Nice 1 Steve, good job mate

 

[essenbe]

Thanks, Ryan. I hope it can be of some help..

 

[ganjiry]

Thanks, Ryan. I hope it can be of some help..

You're welcome mate, no doubt it will come in handy for plenty of people

 

[Arc]

Very nice tutorial Steve! It will be very effective. Thanks for it.

 

[Britton30]

Very good Steve, I'm going to link to it now.

 

[essenbe]

I'm glad you like it, Gary. It really can help in some situations. Thanks.

 

[paulpicks21]

What are the key things to look out for in the logs if you get a crash? I am guessing Temps but if temps are fine what else? It looks like it covers a lot of things but I must admit I really don't know how to work out how a crash has occurred from the other things.

 

[essenbe]

You should be able to look at it and see just before it crashes, something changes dramatically. That should tell you where to look. Was it a voltage drop? That would normally indicate the PSU. If it was the graphics core clock drop it would indicate either a driver crash or the card itself malfunctioning. I would think a driver crash would show several things drop at the same time. If only one thing drops it should indicate the card. But, hopefully it should show where you need to look for the problem.

 

[paulpicks21]

Ok thanks Steve, hopefully I will not need to use it but at least I know what to look out for now if I do.

 

[Dude]

Great job Steve. Bookmarked

 

[essenbe]

Thanks Doug.

 

[andrew129260]

Great job!

May I make a suggestion?

Put this quote in the tutorial last step:

You should be able to look at it and see just before it crashes, something changes dramatically. That should tell you where to look. Was it a voltage drop? That would normally indicate the PSU. If it was the graphics core clock drop it would indicate either a driver crash or the card itself malfunctioning. I would think a driver crash would show several things drop at the same time. If only one thing drops it should indicate the card. But, hopefully it should show where you need to look for the problem.

 

[sharpnova]

This isn't very helpful. If you are trying to diagnose an issue that may be gpu related that is crashing your computer, then this won't finish its test due to a very subtle issue. It's subtle enough that I can't blame you for not realizing it when you made this post:

In order for the test to finish and log results and give you information that might be useful it has to be able to run up until the point of usefulness.

This is where it gets tricky. In order for it to run, it needs to be being executed in some way. It could be in the thoughts of some god or on what we call a computer.

For our purposes let's say we're running it on our computer. Let's call this computer X. Now let's say our issue involves X crashing.

At the point of the crash, X will no longer be able to facilitate the function of this diagnostic utility.

But we already stated that this utility needs to be facilitated by something which runs it in order for it to demonstrate its utility.

So we have proven, by contradiction (a useful mathematical tool) that this tool cannot be useful.

At least not in the case where you are trying to use it to diagnose a problem with your video card that is causing a crash.

Did you have some other use in mind?

 

[mjf]

Thanks.
I saw a strange graphics hardware error message in my event log on my GTS450. I'll follow the instructions. I'm not into gaming so this stuff is a little foreign to me.