How do I know if my 780M is fried?

Hello guys,

I have a 2013 Alienware 17 R1 with a Geforce 780M. Worked great for 4 years, repasted it last year.

Two days ago I was playing FIFA and the game hanged, then got a system error message and restarted. I tried the game again and it hanged again after a few seconds with some minor graphic artifacts. At this point I also got the "video driver crashed and was restarted" message in the taskbar, so I thought I'd update the video drivers.

I tried a few, but it soon became clear that the drivers weren't having any effect and did not install properly. Basically, from device manager, my 780M had the yellow sign and the code 43 error, which says the device was stopped because it is having a problem.

Now, no matter what I do and which driver I try, old or new, I can only switch between "basic video driver" and "780M with a yellow sign".

I also:
- used DDU in safe mode and cleaned everything with driver installations
- used a system restore point from the day before the event
- re-flashed my AW A14 BIOS
- run diagnostics from BIOS and it comes out ok but I've read around here that's useless
- never had a laptop shutdown or other charger-related issues. Machine runs fine on the Intel integrated card now, it's just that the dedicated Nvidia one is unavailable.

I'm fully prepared for the possibility that the card just died, but before looking into buying a new one, how can I know for sure (short of trying a new card in my laptop or moving mine into someone else's - both impossibile) if it's fried or if it's just some Windows screw-up?
I suppose I could format the HD and fresh install Windows, but isn't there some diagnostic tool? What would you guys advise?

Thank you so much for any help you can provide in this difficult moment!

UPDATE: Today something happened. I kept working on the software side of things, again removing and reinstalling different drivers, always cleaning up with DDU. And at some point, it worked - Device Manager was seeing the card correctly, no yellow signs, and the Nvidia Panel was back. I tried one more restart to see if it would stick, but things went back to what they were with Windows saying the card has a problem. Weird.
Oh, and the system now takes longer than usual to boot up.

 

Serendipitously for you, the exact same thing happened to me a couple of months ago. I can't promise this will work for you, but re-seating the GPU fixed my issues where DDU, Windows driver update and everything else failed. Is it possible that you banged the table your laptop was on?

Obviously it could be totally dead, but sometimes outside-the-box solutions can work.

 

Thank you for your reply.

I thought about doing that (and I still do, willing to try whatever comes up), but the fact that it was a game that made the system freeze without any physical incidents, plus the few artifacts, makes me think we're looking at something different. Still, I'll try tomorrow.

Also, today something happened. I kept working on the software side of things, again removing and reinstalling different drivers, always cleaning up with DDU. And at some point, it worked - Device Manager was seeing the card correctly, no yellow signs, and the Nvidia Panel was back. I tried one more restart to see if it would stick, but things went back to what they were with Windows saying the card has a problem. Weird.

Oh, and the system now takes longer than usual to boot up.

 

well its simple...when the gpu starts showing artifacts and crashing randomly, it means life has came to end and needs a proper reballing of its chip to make it work again for few more years...you can try reseating but i dont think that it might work like that...still worth a try

 

Yeah, I had that happen to me in the past but it was always a clear decay with shutdowns, artifacts etc for a while before giving up completely. Never seen something like this, with one single crash and then Windows preventing me from using the card (and thus preventing me from verifying it's actually dead).

 

For me it happened with World of Warships. It froze, Thr message box popped up, then it died.