Diagnose my laptop please -- is it the GPU?

[Mikey_Gore]

Recently I've encountered this problem. My laptop would come to the screen of death. That is blue screen, then numbers, then the memory dump then restart and then repeats. Would go on forever.

Also, I can see stripes of lines on some of the screens.

I went into safe mode, unistalled the nvidia device drivers, restarted and it worked.

No stripes now. Only problem is the screen is now displaying in low quality mode (intel chipset graphics perhaps).

It works fine now. If I install the nvidia GPU drivers again, the same problem happens.

So tell me, GPU hardware problem? Can it be fixed? If not, warn me soon, as I am about to buy a new GPU from the internet.

Thanks

 

[LNCPapa]

First I'd try (since you're at the point of tossing the machine anyway) doing a clean OS install and then install the drivers. See if everything works like that first.

 

[Mikey_Gore]

Already done that my friend. Formatted the hard drive, and made a fresh OS install. Didn't work.

 

[nismo91]

is it older nvidia gpu? (pre-9series) if it is then some of them are notorious for being faulty. one way is to check is to re-apply thermal paste by opening the laptop bottom cover. tested to work with acer 5920 on nvidia 8600m gt, but problem persists after a week or so.

note that if your laptop requires complete disassembly to access the graphic card I would not advise you to do so.

 

[Mikey_Gore]

My graphics card is a nVidia GeForce 7950 GTX.

Laptop is a Clevo chasis. Rock X770.

Where would I apply the thermal paste? How could thermal paste help?

 

[nismo91]

that's because for an aged laptop (I assume with 7950GTX) the supplied thermal paste / pad have been worn out or goes dry. well since your card proven to show lines without the graphic driver, which exactly happened in case of 8600M GT I recently came across, I guess it's worth a try.

clevo X770 is a DTR laptop and im pretty sure you can access the graphic card without having to dismantle the entire chassis. I couldn't find any online disassembly tips, but if your laptop has a large maintenance cover, all you have to do is unscrew it and the heatsink will be exposed. remove the heatsink (usually copper or alumunium made) and you can re-apply the thermal paste.

I really hope it is not the result of graphic memory failing, as if it is im afraid there is no solution to it. often caused by prolonged overheating or overclocking, I experienced it once in a laptop with nvidia 7600, with stripes being permanently visible regardless of driver and getting worse each day.