Also, look out for massive frame drops which could indicate a cooling problem. Sometimes with a faulty GPU, you may experience the computer spontaneously restarting, freezing, or shutting down.Įxamples of artifacts would be weird colors breaking up in some frames while the testing is being carried out. Keep an eye out for any anomalies or artifacts that could indicate a faulty GPU. Keep running it for a minimum of about 2 hours.
If you don’t have a favorite game you love playing on hand, download the free version of Benchmark Heaven. All that needs to be done now, are some longer tests to make sure that the GPU’s stability can be sustained after being used for a few hours. If you have made it this far, things are looking promising. Run some GPU performance tests or play some games for a few hours Once you have an artifact free load test, combined with a healthy temperature range, you are then able to test the GPU for a longer period. This will help avoid any further damage to the GPU. If you are replacing your GPU cooler, don’t run the graphics card until it’s replaced. If your overall GPU temperature exceeds the recommended maximum at any time, you will need to either replace the GPU cooler or find out what is wrong with the existing cooler and if it’s capable enough to keep your GPU cool after you have done everything you can. You will see the temperature of your GPU amongst the information. If you press the GPU-Z and GPU Shark buttons, some extra panels will open alongside Furmark with more information about your GPU. Making sure that the GPU is running at the desired temperature range is of utmost importance when it comes to a GPU being able to work properly. Combine the stress test with a temperature test This will quickly tell you if your GPU cooling is sufficient or not. If your test is successful, we can move on to checking the temperature of the GPU when it’s working hard. This means that your GPU cooling fan is responding to the increase in temperature from your GPU itself, because of the heavy workload. You should hear your fan(s) on your GPU cooler increase speed while the load test enters its first few seconds of the test. To conduct a stress test with Furmark, click on the ‘GPU Stress Test’ button, then press the ‘Go’ button in the second window that pops up.
This is a very intensive test and you will be happy that you inspected your hardware first, avoiding any drastic overheating issues. This step is extremely important, as there are times where your GPU fan(s) won’t spin up as it should if you run a stress test with everything set up out of the box.ĭownload and run the Furmark GPU Stress Test tool. Next, proceed to download MSI Afterburner and set it up with a fan curve using our article on speeding up your graphics card fans. Make sure the cooling fan(s) is in good conditionĭoing some load tests will put the GPU under stress while you check that the graphical output to your monitor is stable and without any artifacts. Important: Make sure your computer is turned off and no power is connected to it before proceeding. To do this, we need to inspect a few things on the graphics card. Cooling is paramount, so we need to make sure that the GPU cooler is in proper working order. I prefer to have a look at the hardware first so that anything potentially damaging cannot harm the GPU any further.
If not, download and install the latest drivers or update the existing ones before continuing. I’m assuming that you have the correct graphics card drivers installed on the system that you are using the check the GPU with.
Important: I highly recommend disabling any overclocking in your system’s BIOS or overclocking software that you may be running before proceeding. Additionally, there are some basic hardware inspections and maintenance procedures that you can do to contribute to your graphics card running with improved stability. We can conduct a few different tests in order to establish whether or not your GPU is up to the task.
Knowing how to check if your GPU is working properly, goes a long way to make your system more stable, especially when gaming. Graphics cards are what contribute greatly when it comes to gaming.