This has been happening for a little while and I'm not entirely sure what it is. I'm hoping people can help me figure out the source. Rarely, I'll be using my PC normally when a gray somewhat transparent rectangle will appear and cover an entire portion of my screen. I'm not sure how to describe the rectangle exactly, it looks a bit like a dither effect. It's gray and made of tiny dots but I can still see the picture underneath. The rectangle only covers maybe 1/5 or 1/6 of my screen in height, but covers the entire width. It really only appears for less than a second, and happens maybe once a day. I've used both the newest drivers and older (16.11.5) drivers from when I don't remember this issue happening. Not too long ago I also had another issue where my PC would often give me a BSOD with the error tread_stuck_in_device_driver but I seem to have fixed that problem, while the gray rectangle happened before the BSOD and remains active. I would like to know if people recognize the problem I mentioned and know what it might be about. Or if they recognize the source of it: monitor cable, monitor itself, GPU, or even Windows. I'd appreciate any help.
Well my initial guess would be failing vram on your card...**** it happens. Its time to at least look into RMA procedures...what make is it? and your location? certain brands and areas go rather quickly.....others take several weeks try different ports and or cables in the mean time just to rule them out completely.
Sounds like this to me too, the only other issue I can possibly see is a bad cable and it's just sending the signal badly, but I'm with primetime, it does sound like a VRM failing. I'd suggest just doing a quick cable trade and see if anything changes. Be sure you're using DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort and not VGA. If this issue still happens I would look into RMAing the card.
Alright, thank you everyone. I guess for now I'll switch from my displayport cable to a DL-DVI cable I have and see if the issue happen. And I'll contact MSI to see what they think of the issue/of RMAing the card. Only thing that always scare me when it comes to RMA is that I'll send the product back, they'll try it for a little while, and since the error is so rare (once a day) they'll send it back saying it's working fine. But if the alternative is the card just dying on me, kinda what I have to do. At least I still have an old 7950 lying around to use while the process is underway. It's a MSI R9 390, I'm in Canada. I don't know how fast they're over here, but since I have a backup card I don't mind if it takes a few weeks as long as the issues are truly fixed.
When mine had similar issues over time it got worse and worse and to the point it was doing it non-stop. Take good pictures to and document what its doing and what you have done to fix it. The actual XFX rep here is the one who handled my RMA when i did mine and i was handled in a week....But with MSi its hard to say...It might be a good idea to wait till its showing errors all the time for the reason you mentioned...Cause yea that does happen and you or someone else ends up getting the same card back since not all techs are the smartest. When i tried different cables it seemed to fix it for a while...until the card started using the same faulty vram as before which just takes a bit of time. Here is my thread from years ago...And i realize you described a slightly different issue. https://hardforum.com/threads/xfx-7...driver-artifacts-bad.1863546/#post-1041654461
I've yet to buy a XFX card (everytime I say I'm going to Sapphire always has a deal going when I'm ready to buy) but glad to hear their RMA process is great. Sapphires is the same too, had no issue getting a replacement on a dying 7770 Ghz Edition and they sent me a higher end model due to not making them anymore. MSI I've done it once and it took them a week to test out the card to say it was in fact dead (the card straight up burned and caught fire) so I'm hoping it was just one of those they wanted to be sure it wasn't a user error that caused it because a fire issue is pretty extreme.
if you're absolutely positively 100% sure it's bad then put a small torch to the back/melt a spot then send it in for RMA......at least then me/no one else... will get it as a remanufactured card.
that seems like very bad advice they might accuse you of damaging the card and are thereby not liable for honoring the warranty and you would be double screwed.
There is one better than that. Use the lighter spark thing, you know, the thing that makes the spark to turn on a lighter. Called the piezo. Spark some components on the back to make it unusable. Fire does not bow well.
