Is my graphics card fried?

[0186279]

I've got a mid 2010 MBP with 8gb, 500gb 850 Evo SSD, Nvidia 320m GPU. Never had a single issue with the machine. I've used Windows in bootcamp to play games since the day I bought it. Now, the other day I hooked it up to a really large TV for the first time ever and had it running for awhile. I realized that it was extremely hot in the upper left corner when I touched it, hotter than I've ever felt it before (but it didn't shut down or anything). This was in Windows. So I shut it off and unplugged it from the TV.

Now ever since that happened when I play games I get screen tearing pretty bad, which has never once happened before. It seems to be fine in OSX, although I don't have any games in OSX so maybe I should try that. I fear that I may have ruined my GPU having it output that the big screen? Thoughts? Thank you.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I've got a mid 2010 MBP with 8gb, 500gb 850 Evo SSD, Nvidia 320m GPU. Never had a single issue with the machine. I've used Windows in bootcamp to play games since the day I bought it. Now, the other day I hooked it up to a really large TV for the first time ever and had it running for awhile. I realized that it was extremely hot in the upper left corner when I touched it, hotter than I've ever felt it before (but it didn't shut down or anything). This was in Windows. So I shut it off and unplugged it from the TV.

Now ever since that happened when I play games I get screen tearing pretty bad, which has never once happened before. It seems to be fine in OSX, although I don't have any games in OSX so maybe I should try that. I fear that I may have ruined my GPU having it output that the big screen? Thoughts? Thank you.

Doesn't sound too great to be honest. A few other people have mentioned this too, though they seem to think the issues are software/driver related.

Regardless you can try to download GeForce Experience to install the latest driver to confirm this, and remove as much dust as you can inside of the machine. If it works a little better after an updated driver, it may be best to err on the side of caution and reapply the thermal paste on the GPU diode.

If you'd recently updated the GPU driver when the issue occured, rolling back to see if this works better is a good shout.

If the issues persist, I'm afraid it sounds like a hardware issue to me, based on what happened leading up to the problem.

EDIT: Having a look at more threads online, a lot of people say that the issues are driver related. It's difficult to say either way because both hardware and software can cause the issue you're having ...!

As such, please can you try a few other things to see if we can get to the bottom of this:

In Windows, press Windows+R (or CMD+R), then powercfg.cpl in the Run box. Change power plan to 'High Performance'.

Again CMD+R to run, devmgmt.msc -- expand display adapters, right click nVidia 320M and click Properties. Click Driver tab. What is your driver date and driver version, please?

 

[0186279]

Thanks for the reply. After trying many things I ended up simply reinstalling my Windows partition. With the default apple drivers that I install with bootcamp the issue is gone. Now I'm wary of installing updated drivers (the current driver is from 2011) as that may have been my issue. I guess I'll try a fairly recent driver and hope for the best.