GPU issues: Hardware or software problem?

So, I'm dealing with an NVIDIA RTX 3D 7770 1GB GDDR5 card here. After just a little bit of playtime, these weird little square artifacts start popping up on certain parts of the screen, and that specific area just stops refreshing... it either stays pitch black or gets stuck showing whatever texture was there the exact moment the glitch hit. I've attached some screenshots from Grand Theft Auto V below to show you what I mean. It’s happening in DiRT Rally too, though I haven't really tested much else besides a quick session of Just Cause 2, which actually didn't seem to trigger it.

The card comes factory overclocked, but even when I try dropping the memory clock by 50 MHz, nothing changes—though if I crank that down by 100+ MHz, the glitches happen less frequently.

or not at all.

it depends.

nah, sometimes it can get pretty bad and take over the whole screen... hitting alt-tab fixes it for about 3 seconds before it comes back...

honestly, it smells like a memory issue, so my only real move seems to be downclocking it.

I should mention that everything usually runs at a steady 60fps and the settings depend on the game; I've got it tuned to run smoothly, and since I'm running at 1368x768, the resolution looks decent enough...

I'm on Windows 10 x64 Pro using the latest Crimson drivers.

here are the pics
View on imgur

That usually means the VRAM on your GPU is starting to flake out... You still got a warranty?

darkowl72 said:That usually points to the VRAM on the card just giving up the ghost... Any chance you've still got a warranty?

Nah, man, this thing is used. I actually just swapped out the thermal paste like a month ago... if you check my old threads, you'll see what I'm talking about...

First off—you absolutely have to cycle through different drivers. This is especially true if you're playing any recent AAA releases. I’ve personally run into several new titles where the screen starts throwing artifacts like the GPU is dying, when in reality, it was just a faulty driver. Also, watch out because certain AMD drivers have had this specific bug where they lock fan speeds at 20%, causing some users to overheat their cards—some even ended up frying them entirely. link

Once you've swapped to a different driver, monitor the performance and run a stress test, something like MSI Kombustor, to see if the issue persists.

Man, I can't believe this, but I've started seeing these crazy vertical lines streaking all over my screen whenever I'm running Windows...
I ended up having to swap back to my old graphics card just to get things working again... RIP my main GPU.