Experienced computer users are usually familiar with the concept of graphic card artifact. Basically it is a distortion of the image on the screen, caused by improper operation of the graphic system component. Due to the graphic card artifacts some “phantom” elements may appear on the screen, some of the displayed images are doubled, tripled and distorted in various ways, resulting in a fact that it is fairly difficult or even impossible to get information from the computer screen.
Graphic card artifacts may appear due to some software or hardware problems, and in this article we will discuss the most common reasons that most often lead to these problems.
GRAPHIC CARD ARTIFACTS: SOFTWARE CAUSES
Artifacts often appear on the screen when your PC is running a resource-demanding application. For example, it can be a modern game that is heavily loading your graphics card. To fix artifacts caused by software, it is recommended to do the following:
- Check how sufficient is your graphic card cooled under significant load. To do this, you may want to download any diagnostic application, for example, GPU-Z;
- If there are no problems with cooling, you need to go to the website of your graphic card developer and download the latest drivers from there. Important note: When loading drivers, pay attention not only to the graphic card model, but also to the operating system’s bit depth. After downloading necessary drivers, install them and run the game again to check if the problem persists;
- If the graphic card has been over clocked, you need to lower its frequency. You can do this through the application that was used to accelerate it. In some situations, lowering the standard graphic card frequency may help. To verify that there are errors during the operation of your graphic card at the current frequency, you can use the TestVideoRAM and VMT applications containing all necessary tests;
- Update the software needed to run the game or other productive application that causes artifacts on the screen when you launch it. For example, the necessary software includes: DirectX, Microsoft .Net Framework, C ++ libraries and so on.
If none of the above tips helped to fix the situation and artifacts still appear on the screen, when any productive application is launched, it is recommended to check whether the problem is related to the performance of a particular game. Artifacts can be observed on the screens of players with some certain graphic card models due to poor optimization on the part of developers. Most often, developers are fixing these errors with the first patches.
Please note: If the minimal system requirements for the game indicate the amount of memory necessary for correct operation at a level higher than that of the installed graphic card, it may often cause artifacts.
GRAPHIC CARD ARTIFACTS: HARDWARE CAUSES
If in case of some software problems, artifacts occur only while you are using certain applications, then when the graphic card hardware fails, image distortion will be ubiquitous. That is, artifacts will begin to appear immediately after the operating system is loaded, and then they will be present everywhere in the interface and various applications. There are two main hardware reasons for the artifacts to appear on the screen:
Detached graphics chip. In this situation, the computer is usually loading with artifacts, after which it runs for a while and then freezes completely; - Graphic chip overheating. If after the “cold” start of you computer, artifacts do not appear on the screen, and after 5-10 minutes of operation they arise, then most likely you are facing problems with graphic chip cooling. Perhaps the graphic card cooler is clogged with dust, the thermal paste has dried or other problems have occurred.
It is worth noting that the detachment of the graphics chip can be “cured” by various services. However, if this problem occurs, you need to think about buying a new graphic card, since the restored version usually works for no more than six months, after which the chip finally fails anyway.