Last night my video card died, artifacts then crash. So I installed an older card. I installed the drivers, was working fine until I tried watching Twitch. Then the video froze, though sound kept playing, this went on for a few seconds before the monitor went dark and everything started working, and I got that message.

I figured it was a driver issue, so I uninstalled and reinstalled hoping for an easy fix. Afterward I was able to play a full game of Dota 2 without any issue. However went I tried watching a video I got the same issue.

So today I did a fresh OS install, but it didn't fix the problem. In fact it seems worse. I figure there is just a problem with this video card as well, though I don't know for sure and I hope someone can share some wisdom about this issue.

I'm on that PC right now, I haven't seen any issues except when I'm trying to watch video, and the fact that this is happening immediately after my other problem makes me worried it might be something else. I don't have the money to spend on a video card if its unnecessary.

The further complication is that a few weeks ago my power supply failed, I threw another one in and haven't had any other issues. I don't think its related but maybe it contributed to my video card failing.

Failing any solutions I'll need a recommendation for a new video card. Nothing too expensive, I only need something to play Dota and EU4.

 

This is a very common problem on both AMD and Nvidia cards that doesn't seem to have a common solution. I myself had that happen in the past with a GTX 260 - card worked 100% fine just sometimes randomly the driver would crash. I'd say that if it doesn't annoy you too much, just do nothing, since troubleshooting this could take hours upon hours of testing stuff, without actually fixing it in the end.

If it does annoy you too much, you could try using an older driver to see if that's more stable. You could also turn off the hardware acceleration in your browser, or since you specifically mentioned twitch, try out streamlink (if you still want to chat while watching with streamlink, just open twitch.tv/channelname/chat in your browser). If those things don't help, just google for "gpu driver stopped working" and you'll find thousands of threads in different forums with many things suggested to try and fix it

At the moment I really wouldn't buy a GPU, since prices, while slowly coming down, are still inflated from the recent mining boom.

 

Thanks for the advise, but it does seem debilitating. I can't even watch gifv without the drivers crashing. I'm able to play games and watch videos in VLC without it crashing, which just makes me terribly confused about what the issue it.

I'm going to try an older driver tomorrow, if that doesn't work I'll probably have to replace it even it's expensive.

 

No, but it isn't just in browser. Media player classic causes it too, though VLC doesn't even on the same content. I'll give that a try though.

 

You might want to check your card control settings and make sure that it isn't trying to force a settings override on things you don't want to. It can be wonky at the best of times if its trying to change something and can't for whatever reason.

 

I don't know what you mean. Can you elaborate?

 

You should have a control panel to control your card settings. AMD catalyst for AMD cards, or the Nvidia control panel. There are multiple settings in each that will let you force your graphics card to control the settings for whatever you're trying to display instead of letting the program handle it. This is can cause conflicts which lead to errors, and can lead to the driver crashing, and needing to restart.
If you haven't been playing with the settings, it shouldn't be a problem.

Links for more information on settings for both cards.

https://support.amd.com/en-us/download

http://www.nvidia.com/object/performance_group.html

If its the card itself and not the driver, make sure the card is seated properly and isn't overheating. The screen going black could be it trying to switch between the onboard graphics if it's disconnecting from the graphics card. If you have overclocking controls, make sure your card isn't set too high and setting itself on fire.

All I can think of off the top of my head.

 

I haven't changed anything in catalyst. At this point I assume it must be a hardware problem, but its so peculiar a manifestation that I'm not sure. I've tried several different drivers, on a fresh OS so I don't think it can be a software issue. Either something is wrong with the card itself or there is some strange problem between components in my system.

The driver doesn't crash under a heavy load, it doesn't crash from heat. It's so far only crashed when watching videos, and once when I launched a game. However I wasn't able to repeat that so it might've been something I had in the background running I'm not sure.

 

Not to be a buzz-killer, but if the problem persists across different OSes and drivers, it's almost certainly a hardware defect. I'd put aside some money 'just in case' for a new one. It might work for the next five years, it might stop working in the next month - impossible to say.

 

The best thing to do is find another computer and hook up your GPU there. You can know right away if the problem is the GPU or something else.

Are you sure the first card is dead and wasn't just a problem cause by this same issue? You can try cleaning your PCI slot. maybe it got dusty. Or try testing another PCI slot if you have multiple. It could simply be a faulty connection there. If your first card combusted, it could have somehow damage the PCI slot on your motherboard.

If you can exclude a GPU issue, your next target should probably be your memory.

Memory problems can cause all sorts of problems, and it's rare to only see a specific symptom when encountering bad memory.

If you have multiple RAM sticks, try removing one and testing it the other. If the problem still exists, remove the one tested and reslot the first one. You can also run a Memtest, but I don't find them completely reliable. Although if your problem happens that often, a Memtest should be able to spot it.

As far as I can see, you can reproduce the problem relatively easily, so it should be pretty simple to rule out memory as the issue.