Is my GPU failing?

Hello,

I have a Clevo W870cu, it is a little over 2 years old. It has an i7 processor, Nvidia 285M 1GB, 4 GB of RAM and runs Windows 7. Lately i have been having an issue while gaming (it is rapidly becoming more than just an issue). The screen will randomly flash to desktop and then back to the game, sometimes once, sometimes 2 or 3 times in rapid succession, sometimes with it crashing the game. It has occurred while playing several different games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Torchlight, Dragon Age 2 and most recently Borderlands (Torchlight and Borderlands are from steam). Most games I play at the highest settings, except for games like DA2, the card doesnt support Directx 11 so i had to play in the directx 9 mode. The issue can be slightly diffferent depending on the game as well. With SWTOR it would sometimes recover, sometimes crash with ta message saying the driver has crashed and recovered. Torchlight usually just crashes with the same message. Borderlands 99% of the time will just flash to desktop then back into the game, only one time has it fully crashed. I have ensured dust is not a problem, i have reseated my heatsinks (with fresh compound), i have updated drivers (even tryed beta ones) and my laptop sits on a cooler with 4 extra fans blowing underneath it.

Is the GPU dying? and if so what would be best replacement (for under$200).

All help is greatly appreciated.

I have not tried that, and I could not find a 285M for that much on ebay (maybe because i am ebay iliterate, ill ask my wife to look). I was thinking (if replacing it is necessary) of doing so with a 5870M.

While I am not completely against doing a reinstall of windows (only thing that gives me hesitation on that is just the time involved to do so), i do not understand how that would help. Could it be something i installed is causing the issue? I keep very little on my computer, games and an antivirus basically.

Good Point, a few hours spent reinstalling stuff and redownloading updates is definately worth $200. I think i will start that when i get home tonight.

I am 95% sure that using the 5870m is possible, i have seen the same model laptops with them. One thing i was curious about though, most of the ones (5870m's) i saw for sale on ebay mention the M17 alienware laptop. I do not think alienware has different size slots for the gpu, but being the amateur that i am with laptop hardware, would they be the same?

ok, Thanks for your help :)

Ok, so i completed the windows reinstall, and within 20 mins of borderlands the screen flash occurred again. So, after considering a few things, and realizing that it would only cost me $40 bucks to double my RAM, i decided to go after 2 other rabbit trails before i make the GPU leap. The RAM should be in later this week, as i am to cheap to pay for faster shipping. I don't really know if the other trail is even a posibility. I realized that all the games i have had issues with are in some way connected to the internet, either directly as with the MMO, or through steam. Even DA2 has its own connection to update your profile. I noticed that other things (i.e. amazon movie streaming) were choppy from internet lag, and I have been forced to power cycle my router quite often lately to get the internet back up. So i disabled my internet connection, put steam into offline mode, and played Borderlands for a good 4 hours.. then the screen flash happened again, but still going 4 hours was quite a record.

So i am wondering if there is a connection here, maybe it has a bit to do with both?

I plan on changing my router out, and with the memory upgrade I am hoping to have this issue licked..

Then again i might just be, as i said before, off on a rabbit trail trying to avoid the $200 hit for GPU... If any of this is remotely possible, please let me know your thoughts on it :)

Thanks again for all your help.

Yes, after i finished reinstalling windows I ran CCleaner, windows disk cleaner, and defragged. I think it was AS5 i put on there about two months ago when I did some maintenance (was after I started having this issue, so shouldnt be the cause). I will test the memory first when it gets here, then try the reseating if doubling the memory doesnt fix it :) Made sure I got the updated drivers after reinstall too.

Kind of funny, I am an E-6 in the army.. and I gave my troops a class on troubleshooting this morning. I should have used my cpu as an example.