A question for all our hardware gurus on the site:

I've got a relatively new laptop...performs admirably in all ways. I can provide the specs for all components if it would help, but would like to ask a general question first.

I have had no problems with the video display except in one set of circumstances. When I am playing a game with high end graphics, and there is a lot of moving action on the screen (multiple characters interacting/fighting, that sort of thing), the display will black out for a few seconds, then come back. every now and then, the display will go completely black, and i will have to restart the laptop to get it back. This does not happen any other time except during game play. the message i get from Windows is that the graphics display has failed and recovered (quite informative ). I've tried playing at a lower resolution, but the problem persists.

Before I start dumping lots on cash on upgraded cards, does this sound like a problem with the card overheating? Or more like a bum card?

Let me know any additional info I can provide that would be helpful.

My laptop screen sometimes goes black. Have you tried closing and reopening the "lid"?

I know it's a dumb solution, but it works for me.

If the GPU is overheating you'll normally see artifacts in the game. Weird textures off color stuff, etc... I've never seen Windows shut down a card because it was over heating. I've only seen the mobo do it to a CPU.

Thanks! I'll give that a try...any other suggestions as to what might cause such behavior?

Maybe airflow is bad and it's really causing other components to overheat. Can you raise your laptop or have a cooling mat? Also depending on the GPU, there are programs that can tell you what temp the card is at. I have nTune for my nVidia card.

I'll look into that as well...maybe monitor the temp as i play, then I can see if there is a matching pattern.

Thanks

So of course now that I'm monitoring to determine root cause, the stupid problem will not recreate!

I suppose that good news. Although I hate it when I can't recreate a problem and diagnose it.

Do you have an Nvidia GPU? If so they have a technology problem lately (mainly in laptop parts - 8xxx and 9xxx series), and warm-up and cool-down cycles trash their soldering or something (what you experience could be the early sign of this). They have a "fix", but it will only spin your fans all the time, thus it only postpones the effect until the end of the guarantee.

If it's a bum card then it sound like a memory leak on your graphics cards ram.

If it only happened on this one game then it could be incompatibilities between something in the game and your card. If you can't recreate it does it seem possible that it was fixed in an update for the game or card driver?