GPU or monitor issue?

Last night, my screen suddenly went haywire—the left side flipped to the right, and the right side swapped to the left. After about five or six minutes of this madness, things seemed to snap back to normal for a minute, but then the whole screen just turned gray, forcing me to hard reboot the PC.
After the restart, everything looked fine, so I kept working for another hour or two. Then, the exact same thing happened again. This time, though, right before the screen went gray, my cursor icon ballooned in size by about three or four times.
I rebooted again, and sure enough, the same thing hit after about five minutes of use. I managed to kill the power the second the sides flipped, so I didn't get the gray screen this time.

Based on what I've been digging up online, am I looking at a dead GPU? I really doubt it's the monitor, because that weirdness with the cursor feels way too specific for a display issue.

My graphics card is an AMD Radeon HD 6850, and it’s about six years old now. I don't mind picking up a new one, but does anyone have any theories that it might be something else entirely?

If you really want to be 110% sure that the graphics card is the culprit—assuming you can—try popping that AMD Radeon HD 6850 into another PC. If the exact same issue pops up there, then you’ve got your answer. By the way, have you tried doing a clean reinstall of the drivers yet?

Larry Ortiz5 said:If you want to be 110% sure the GPU is the culprit, try popping that AMD Radeon HD 6850 into another PC. If the exact same thing happens, you've found your smoking gun. Also, have you tried doing a clean reinstall of your drivers?

I don't have another rig handy.
And a driver reinstall isn't really an option because the system isn't stable enough to stay up long enough to finish the job.

I think I'll just head over to Best Buy and grab the cheapest card they have. I'm not gaming or doing anything heavy, so I don't need anything fancy.

That sounds like a solid plan. If I were you, I’d definitely look into grabbing one with a passive heatsink—it'll keep your rig much quieter since you won't have to deal with a spinning fan 🙂
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Do you have integrated graphics? Try switching the monitor over to those instead of the dedicated card—if the issues persist, then you'll know for sure what we're dealing with...

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