Is my graphics card dying? Or an odd little Steam Problem?

[spikopsycho]

Hey guys

Encountered something quite weird just now.

I was playing Skyrim, when it minimized to desktop, and I saw Steam was doing some kind of update. I just carried on playing till the game went very laggy.

I quit, restarted the pc, steam finished doing something (I didn't pay much attention to the update this time). Basically, every couple of mins the screen would go black, refresh, and come up with in a little bubble 'The display driver has stopped responding and recovered...)

I checked and updated graphics drivers, restarted again, same problems... So I uninstalled Steam.. Which has seemingly completely fixed the problem. :s

I was worried my graphics card was on its way out(over 2 years old now), but it was just the display driver crashing message and black screen I was getting, no funky colours or lines and the like.

Anyone ever heard of a Steam update causing something like this before? I have quite a few games on Steam, so ideally, I'd like to reinstall it, but if it just breaks things again, then its not worth it.

 

[spikopsycho]

Barely finished posting that, and had the crash again. Not as frequent as it was now, but still.

Should I take the display driver crashing messages and black screen as an impending graphics card sign of doom?

It's a GTX 460, a little over 2 years old now...

 

[steaky360]

I must admit I've been having issues with Steam lately and have just had to entirely re-install it myself. Although seemingly now I'm having other problems. I certainly need to do further testing to try and narrow down the root of my problems (my PC was simply crashing entirely, not just the display drivers).

Seemingly if uninstalling steam has fixed the issue its probably not a sign your cards are on the way out fortunately!

 

[spikopsycho]

Had GPU-z open in the background,and the GPU load will just shoot up to 97% sometimes, even when just using internet browser. If I don't move the mouse/do anything on screen when this happens, it will stay ok, but as soon as it's moved, it black screens, refreshes,display driver has stopped etc...

Also, when using chrome, after the black screen, tabs will appear completely black, have to close and reopen the tab, in which it will often appear completely white, eventually displaying the page properly.

Attached some images