what can i do about a graphics card that keeps restarting

[andreasaspenberg]

in one of my pcs i have a graphics card that stops running after a while. it starts working again right after but that crash the sims 3 and when the sims 3 crash i am locked out of the system. i tried to remove dust from it but that didnt help. do i need to replace it or is there a different solution.

 

[chobibo]

Are you sure it's the video card? (Please don't get offended) The cpu or gpu could be overheating or the power supply could be not supplying enough power.

If you're already sure it's the graphics card, try putting oil on the card's fan (if it uses a fan). Good luck.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

the problem started recently but i havent changed any hardware.

 

[GhostWolf]

Probably overheating, check it with HWMonitor or similar programs.
If it is indeed overheating, you would probably need to open the heatsink and re-apply the thermal grease layer (which probably voids your warranty, by the way).

 

[Maker]

If the video card has a fan, check if it is spinning or not. What it the model of the card?

 

[andreasaspenberg]

it is usually spinning but it stops spinning right before i restarts. it could be a problem with the gtx 550 ti cards though because i experienced the same issue with a similar card but then only in world of warcraft.

 

[Dr Super Good]

If it is overheating you can help prevent the problem by lowering shader related settings (not memory related settings, graphic memory does not produce heat). Vertical Synchronization is also very important as it limits frame rate to fractions of the display refresh rate thus making the GPU render fewer frames per second (and it only uses a lot of power when rendering frames).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

it tends to crash when nothing is moving on the screen for a while and the mouse is moved. i tried to reduce the graphics to 16 bit though and that seems to help.

 

[Dr Super Good]

i tried to reduce the graphics to 16 bit though and that seems to help.

It is not the year 1998 any more though. In this age of multi-tera flop machines, reducing colour depth should make little to no difference.

Try running something graphically demanding (like SC2 on ultra) and time how long it takes to crash. I choose SC2 because a select few cards have major overheating problems with it so should crash in under 5 minutes.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i tested the pc with the card that keeps restarting with a game where i kept doing stuff all of the time and then it didnt restart until i stopped doing something in that game. that means that the restart doesnt happen as long as the pc recieves controller input regularily. when however it stands unused for only a short time the graphics card restarts.

 

[GhostWolf]

That sounds like a driver issue, are your drivers updated?

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i had the problem even with the latest drivers but, those prevented older games from running so i went back to older drivers in order to get older games working but, the problem didnt change. (i actually tried to update the drivers when i got the problem.)

 

[GhostWolf]

In that case, I would suggest you to either swap the GPU with another one on your PC, or even better, swap the GPU of another PC with your one, and see if the problem goes together with the GPU.
This will be bothersome if you don't have a close-by PC with the same GPU manufacturer though (good luck at swapping between Nvidia and AMD without formatting).

Did you check if it's overheating just to be sure?

 

[andreasaspenberg]

my other pcs in the same room have nvidia cards but one have a card that is too demanding and the other have an agp. i do have a different gtx 550 ti card that i dont use so i could try that but, what puzzles me is that it restarts after the graphics have been inactive for a while.(i can play for a while without it restarting at all but when i dont move the mouse or use the keyboard for a while it restarts.)

 

[GhostWolf]

You can always search Google to find stuff like this.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

that solution didnt help me because i dont have the folder that is suggested nor do i have the file running on my pc. what i did however was run msconfig to look for suspicious software since i suspected that something similar could be the problem and that seemed to help. it havent restarted since.