After about 10 minutes of playing GTA V, both monitors lose signal while audio continues briefly, then the computer restarts. The first crash was followed by repeated black screens and automatic reboots for the rest of the day, but the system returned to normal after a complete shutdown and has remained stable since avoiding GTA V. Other games appear to work normally.
The system has an RTX 5070, Ryzen 7 7700X, ASUS TUF Gaming B650E WiFi motherboard, ASUS 1000W Gold PSU, and Windows 11 Pro. I have clean-installed the NVIDIA driver, updated the BIOS, run SFC, tested one and two monitors, tried the integrated graphics for about 20 minutes without a crash, reseated the GPU, and checked the power cables.
OCCT's GPU test completed for 10 minutes with zero errors both during the unstable period and again the following day with one and two monitors. Event Viewer did show nvlddmkm driver errors and hardware-related events around the crashes. Does this sound more like a defective GPU, a driver or PCIe issue, a power-delivery problem, or something specific to GTA V?
2 Answers
The nvlddmkm entries only tell you that the NVIDIA driver stopped responding; they do not prove the card itself is defective. Since OCCT passes, the problem may be a transient power or clock-state issue that a steady synthetic load does not reproduce. Recheck that the GPU power connector is fully inserted and that no adapter or cable is under tension. If the problem returns, testing with another known-good PSU would be useful, and lowering the GPU power limit or clocks temporarily could help identify whether the card is unstable under a particular game workload.
Check whether Windows created crash dumps in C:WindowsMinidump. If there are files there, they can help identify whether this was a video-driver timeout, a kernel crash, or another component failing. Also check GPU temperatures and hotspot temperature while gaming, since an overheating card can black-screen even if a short stress test passes. Running the fans more aggressively as a temporary test may help rule that out.
The PSU is a 1000W ASUS Gold unit, and OCCT showed about 11.98V on the 12V rail without errors. I will reseat the GPU cable again and consider another PSU if the crashes come back. It is odd that Valorant and ARC Raiders work normally while the issue seems tied to GTA V.