No, your laptop's GPU isn't showing signs of failure. It appears to be functioning normally.
No, your laptop's GPU isn't showing signs of failure. It appears to be functioning normally.
I repeatedly attempt to play video games such as Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, VALORANT, and DREDGE, but both my screens freeze completely. Even though the displays turn off, I still catch my friends on Discord and hear music playing in the background. Stress tests like FurMark and Video Memory Test consistently show normal performance, with temperatures staying at 72°C during heavy use—well within safe limits. This problem started around mid-2023 and has grown more frequent recently, beginning last week. At this stage, the most common outcomes are: screen goes black and I’m forced to restart (most often), or the black screen persists while something else on my main display flickers alongside it. I can barely see the app title bar, but it seems to reset to a Windows 7 window pane, requiring a restart for recovery. Eventually, I encounter errors like "Graphics Driver Crashed!" or "Ran out of video memory," followed by a blue screen (VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR). Examining the Event Viewer revealed Event ID 4101, indicating the Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding. My logs on Event Viewer also show crashing activity from DREDGE. I’ve tried several fixes—updating graphics drivers on discrete GPU and IGPU, reinstalling them on both GPUs, fully resetting Windows, disabling GPU underclocking, using only the second monitor, and checking the Device Manager for warnings about "Unknown Device." My system specs are: Ideapad Gaming 3 15ARH05, Ryzen 5 4600H with 8GB RAM, GTX 1650 AOC 24GE monitor. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Check gaming performance using integrated graphics to identify any problems. Based on your laptop setup, the HDMI connection isn't linked directly to the dGPU, meaning the iGPU remains in the path, affecting RAM usage. With Optimus, both internal and external displays connect through the iGPU. When using the dGPU, it forwards frames via PCI-E to the iGPU for rendering. The iGPU relies on system memory for its framebuffer, so issues here can lead to performance issues.
I also tested running Dredge on the iGPU without dGPU enabled, and it worked without issues.