Octopus Overlords

Yesterday Bob's graphics card died. He was gaming and got a message about something overheating and the system restarted. After restart it shut down again. He has 2 monitors hooked up, one to the graphics card and one to the motherboard graphics port. We unplugged the power for the graphics card and the secondary monitor (the one connected to the mobo port) works fine.

If tldr - we think his graphics card is kaput and I am looking for suggestions for a replacement.
The old card is a GeForce GTX 950.

Help us hivemind - you're our only hope!

Buy a new system with a decent video card. Trying to buy a card alone? Good luck, I've been trying to do that for ...a year now?

I would suggest Newegg shuffle but that yielded zero for me after I don't know how many weeks of checking it daily.

The problem with the system buying is that manufacturers probably know people are buying them just to get the graphics cards, so they are shoddily put together, and have components like 256GB SSD. 8GB RAM, etc. Basically the crappiest specs avaiable, and I have heard that they use garbage, underpowered PSU's in these as well. Not even no-name companies, I'm talking about Dell, HP, etc doing this.

Of course, if you have cash to burn and a couple months (?) to wait, you can build a custom rig on one of the many sites, and get whatever card you want....for thousands of course.

To be fair, there are video cards available on Amazon but they are way overpriced. MSRP isn't really a thing for video cards anymore, except as a metric for you to figure out how much you are getting gouged. Assuming the rest of Bob's rig is 950-era hardware, putting in a GTX 1660 or even a much newer RTX 3050 will probably work with his existing power supply (both take 120-130w, vs the 950 taking ~90w). Prices for both are in the ~$400-500 range and take a single 8-pin power cable.

With the prices so close to each other I'd obviously push you towards the 3050, but the 10-series was a pretty big bump in performance over the 9-series and he'll enjoy a better gaming experience either way. If you were leaning in the direction of getting a new PC in the next year or so anyway, I'd go with Carpet_pissr idea and save some money by getting the whole package.

I'd try cleaning up the 950 first. Thoroughly blow out all the dust and and reconnect it. The fan(s) on it should spin up when you first turn on the computer.

On the good news side, card prices seem to be dropping. Not to what we used to consider affordable, but better (FWIW I dropped $500 on a 2060 last week).

Ranging from the high-end Nvidia RTX 3090 to the humble GTX 1050, we can see that every card tracked shows a downward trend from November 2021 to late February 2022. Considering that not a single GPU is excluded from this overall trend, this is pretty conclusive in indicating that demand is falling across the board.

Thanks for the suggestions and the pricing info. Bob ended up ordering from Amazon after looking at several other sites and felt they all gouge pretty equally. He's jumping up to an RTX 2060.

Bad Demographic wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:19 pm Thanks for the suggestions and the pricing info. Bob ended up ordering from Amazon after looking at several other sites and felt they all gouge pretty equally. He's jumping up to an RTX 2060.

If its a real 2060.

Hey man, no need to keep mentioning this so-called “Bob”. This is a safe place, and there’s no shame in admitting you’re in the market for a new gfx card. We’ve all been there.

LOL, give my best to Bob.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:21 pm Hey man, no need to keep mentioning this so-called “Bob”. This is a safe place, and there’s no shame in admitting you’re in the market for a new gfx card. We’ve all been there.

Be wary of nVidia driver updates in the near future

PSA If you haven't focused on the #Nvidialeaks and you work with any defense in depth teams, please take the time to today

For ones it appears Nvidia driver signing controls & certs were leaked & private API that allows for potential abuse

Attackers already planning to use this

Thread in tweet.1

That tweet is a little... confusing in its phrasing. Still, it seems like only upgrading through the GeForce Experience app is probably the way to go for a while.

I use it anyway for other functionality (the filters, the video capture, etc.) One thing that I've read (and was also mentioned in the comments on that post) is that it currently means that cheat makers can (for now) provide their cheats with Nvidia certification.

I didn't even realize cheats had to be certified, so shows me how much I know.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 2:51 pm I didn't even realize cheats had to be certified, so shows me how much I know.

They don't. In fact, just the opposite. (Complete non-techie's understanding to follow.) When driver functions hook into game to do 'stuff' involved in rendering the game, it's certified so that that the anti-cheat software knows to ignore it as a driver function, not someone hacking the graphics (say, to make enemies show through walls.) Obviously, the certification code (which I assume is a form of enchantment) is held close to the chest.

Now that the code has leaked, cheats are getting certified That means that either the anti-cheat software can't detect them, or else it will detect basic driver functions as cheats.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:12 am LOL, give my best to Bob.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:05 pm

Rumpy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 2:51 pm I didn't even realize cheats had to be certified, so shows me how much I know.

They don't. In fact, just the opposite. (Complete non-techie's understanding to follow.) When driver functions hook into game to do 'stuff' involved in rendering the game, it's certified so that that the anti-cheat software knows to ignore it as a driver function, not someone hacking the graphics (say, to make enemies show through walls.) Obviously, the certification code (which I assume is a form of enchantment) is held close to the chest.

Now that the code has leaked, cheats are getting certified That means that either the anti-cheat software can't detect them, or else it will detect basic driver functions as cheats.

Ahh, I see. Much clearer thanks to your explanation. And obviously, best not to download drivers from sources other than Nvidia (which is a good overall practice for anything). I assume Nvidia will introduce something like a code deviation in future updates, assuming it's something they could and would do. Makes me curious how they'll handle it.

Cheats are not a big problem, the more serious problem is that bad guys are using nvidia certificate to sign their malware. There are two confirmed NVidia certificates that were leaked. Both are expired, one at 2018 and one at 2014 but the 2014 one is a problem since Windows allow signed drivers that expired before 2015 to install on Windows. This is to provide compatibility with old hardware that doesn't have newer drivers. Now if Microsoft choose to reject drivers that are signed using that certificate, older NVidia cards are going to stop working. I think the solution is for NVidia to rerelease those old drivers and signs them with new certificates. Then Microsoft can reject drivers signed using the old certificate while still allow users to use those old hardware.

Yeah, that sounds like the easiest method. So, for instance would a 1050Ti be one of those drivers or would it have to be an even older card?

Rumpy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 12:15 am Yeah, that sounds like the easiest method. So, for instance would a 1050Ti be one of those drivers or would it have to be an even older card?

Older ones that are not supported by NVidia since 2014. Maybe GTX 700 series or older than that.

1050 Ti was from 2015.

Uh-oh.

So what exactly is the problem for those of us with 700 series cards? Just have to make sure any drivers we get are from the nVidia website and nowhere else? If so, I do that already.

Or is there something I should/can check that may have already happened?

Nvidia website or GeForce Experience.

As I understand it, it just means that other software can masquerade as certified drivers to get Windows to let it install in ways that software isn't normally allowed to. Don't overthink that it is certified as a 'driver', as it could be any piece of software.

So get your drivers from Nvidia, and be careful where you get other apps (like always.)

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:13 am

Rumpy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 12:15 am Yeah, that sounds like the easiest method. So, for instance would a 1050Ti be one of those drivers or would it have to be an even older card?

Older ones that are not supported by NVidia since 2014. Maybe GTX 700 series or older than that.

1050 Ti was from 2015.

Ok, thanks! With all these different models, it can sometimes be hard to figure out just when they came out.

I am late on the response, but after verifying the obvious that the fans are still working, check the heatsink on the video card to see if it came off or is loose. You may be able to fix it.