GPU Artifacting: What It Looks Like and What to Do

Short answer: Artifacting is visual corruption caused by errors in the calculations your graphics card is performing. It shows up as random lines, scattered dots, stray symbols, wrongly drawn textures or models, or parts of the image appearing in the wrong place. Updating your graphics drivers is the one fix worth trying. If clean drivers do not resolve it, the card itself is likely failing.

Artifacting is one of the few PC symptoms that genuinely points at hardware most of the time. Knowing what it looks like, and what it does not, saves you from replacing a perfectly good graphics card over a bad cable.

What artifacting looks like

Artifacting takes a lot of forms, and none of them are subtle once you know what you are looking at. Common patterns include:

• Random lines across the screen, often coloured, often flickering
• Stray symbols, sometimes described as "space invaders" because of how they look scattered across the image
• Dots or speckles, sometimes described as looking like braille
• Random lighting effects appearing in games where they do not belong
• Improperly drawn models or textures, geometry stretching off into the distance, or surfaces rendering as the wrong material
• Parts of the screen in the wrong position, as though blocks of the image have been shuffled

It will not always match one of these neatly. When a GPU is producing bad output, almost anything can appear on screen. The unifying characteristic is that the corruption is being rendered, not transmitted.

How to tell artifacting from a display or cable problem

This distinction matters, because the fixes are completely different and one of them is much cheaper.

Taking a screenshot is the quickest test available. A screenshot captures the rendered frame before it reaches the cable. If the corruption is present in the saved image, the graphics card generated it. If the saved image is clean and the screen is not, look at your cable, your port and your monitor. Our guide to display and cable troubleshooting covers that path.

The fix worth trying: clean up your drivers

For a card that is genuinely artifacting there are not many fixes available, and updating your graphics drivers is the one we recommend attempting.

Do it properly rather than installing on top of what is already there:

1. Download the latest driver for your card directly from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel.
2. Remove the existing driver first. Both NVIDIA and AMD installers offer a clean install option that does this.
3. Install the new driver and restart.
4. Test with the same game or workload that showed the problem.

A corrupted driver installation can produce visual glitches that look convincingly like hardware failure, which is exactly why this step comes first even though hardware is the more likely cause.

Things worth checking before you write the card off

None of these are guaranteed fixes, but they are quick and they occasionally change the picture:

• Undo any overclock. If you have raised core or memory clocks on the card, return them to stock. An unstable memory overclock is a very common cause of artifacting, and it is fully reversible.
• Check temperatures under load. A card running hot because of dust, a failed fan or poor case airflow can produce artifacts that disappear once it cools down.
• Reseat the card and its power cables. Worth doing while you have the side panel off, and it costs nothing.
• Test in a different application. If the corruption only appears in one game, you are probably looking at a game or driver bug rather than a dying GPU.

When it is time to contact support

If clean drivers, stock clocks and normal temperatures still leave you with corruption, the card is very likely failing. There is no software fix for a GPU producing bad calculations.

Get in touch with NZXT Support with a photo or video of what you are seeing, and details of what you have already tried. If you have an NZXT prebuilt PC, our team can confirm your warranty status and take it from there. All NZXT prebuilt PCs carry a standard two-year limited warranty.

Frequently asked questions

Can artifacting fix itself?

If the cause was a driver problem, an overclock or overheating, then yes, removing the cause resolves it. If the GPU hardware itself is degrading, it will not improve and generally gets worse.

Does artifacting mean my GPU is dying?

Often, but not always. Rule out drivers, overclocks and temperatures first. If corruption appears in the BIOS before Windows has loaded any drivers, that is a strong indication of a hardware fault.

Can overheating cause artifacting?

Yes. A card running beyond its thermal limits can produce visual errors. Check temperatures under load, clear dust from the card and case filters, and confirm the card's fans are spinning.

Will a new cable fix artifacting?

Not if it is genuinely artifacting, because the corruption is created before the signal reaches the cable. A new cable fixes flickering, dropouts and signal noise, which are different symptoms. The screenshot test tells you which one you have.

Can a failing power supply cause artifacting?

A power supply that cannot deliver stable power to the graphics card under load can cause instability, though this more commonly shows up as crashes, driver timeouts or sudden shutdowns. If you are seeing those alongside the visual corruption, our guide to random shutdowns covers how to test for it.

Is artifacting in one game only still a GPU problem?

Usually not. Corruption confined to a single title points to that game or its interaction with your driver version. Try a different driver version and check whether the game has known issues with your card.

Not sure what you are looking at?

Send us a photo. Our team can usually tell the difference between artifacting and a display fault straight away. Reach them at NZXT Support.