I bought a Powerspec G529 from Micro Center in March and it had worked perfectly for months. Yesterday I installed Starfield, played for a while, and experienced a crash. After launching it again and playing longer, the computer crashed to a black screen and stopped responding, so I powered it off with the case button.
Since then, the entire system has been performing badly. Wallpaper Engine stutters, and even much less demanding games such as Farming Simulator and SWTOR are nearly unusable. Some games stutter during loading, and menus can take more than a minute to respond. I have already uninstalled Starfield and several other large games, installed Windows updates, restarted the computer repeatedly, and defragmented the drive before realizing that may not have been necessary.
The AMD software reported that a driver update was needed, but the update failed with an error saying AMD detected a hardware issue. Device Manager also shows an error involving the AMD driver. The fans do not become noticeably louder during the stuttering, and the computer does not seem to be under unusually heavy load—everything simply runs inefficiently. I also do not have a restore point available.
Could a game crash really cause this, or is it more likely a corrupted graphics driver or failing GPU? What troubleshooting steps should I try, and should I take the computer back to Micro Center for service or warranty support?
3 Answers
Use Display Driver Uninstaller in Windows Safe Mode to remove the AMD display driver completely, then restart normally and install a freshly downloaded driver. It is best to download the driver and DDU first, before entering Safe Mode. In DDU's options, prevent Windows Update from automatically installing a different graphics driver during the process.
A game usually cannot directly damage the hardware, so the crash may have exposed a graphics-driver problem or a GPU that was already starting to fail. Start by returning any GPU overclock to stock settings, including automatic overclocking features. Then completely remove and reinstall the AMD graphics driver. If a clean driver install does not help, a fresh Windows installation can help separate a software problem from a hardware failure. If the problem remains afterward, have Micro Center test the system under warranty.
The game may only have been the event that put sustained load on the system; the underlying issue could be software or hardware. Temperature is one possibility, but the lack of louder fans does not prove the system is cool, and it also does not rule out a driver crash or failing GPU. Check temperatures and clock speeds if possible, but given the black screen, ongoing severe stuttering, and AMD hardware warning, a clean driver reinstall followed by professional testing is the sensible path.
I do not have much reason to suspect overheating: the issue continues a day later, the fans never became loud, and the computer is not being placed under unusually high demand. I will check temperatures, but the driver error seems more directly related.
Device Manager is showing an AMD driver error, so I am troubleshooting that now. Farming Simulator also pushes CPU usage close to 100 percent—does that suggest the GPU is not functioning properly, or could that simply be the result of the driver problem?