I'm done.

Been having this issue for a long time, longer than I can remember, and didn't give much into it, just figured my PC was shit. But lately, I've been getting more and more annoyed with each time it happened.
Guess I'll start off with explaining the issue.

At some point, I started getting this. It might've been like this since I got the PC, I honestly can't remember. Thing is, I play some games fine. I'm not using the best PC, it's a prebuilt Computer, which isn't specificed much into gaming, as far as I can see. Some games, work fine. It all depends on the game I play. Some games, like WaW, Bioshock Infinite, Skyrim and Fallout 4, don't. I can launch the game. I actually spawn in, and play for a while. But after a while, that'd be a small while, or a longer period, I get "pixelation", followed by a black screen, and a message saying "Going to sleep", most likely because my Screen isn't finding any graphical input to show.

Now, playing in fullscreen, or windowed can at times make the period before I get "pixelation" be longer, but it doesn't remove the issue. It forces me to save incredibly often, incase my PC screws itself in any second. Take Fallout 4. Graphics Intensive, I know. I run the game at lowest settings possible, windowed mode. 800X600, which doesn't work well with a 1920x1200 monitor.. The game window is incredibly small, but it lets me play the game the longest, without "pixelation" appearing.

Bioshock: Infinite. I play the game at lowest settings, windowed, but not incredibly tiny. around 1000x1000ish. (Yes I know that resolution isn't in the game, just a rough estimate of where I lie.)

Skyrim isn't too bad, play it windowed at low graphics for maybe a few hours, if I'm lucky.

WaW, a whole different story. Depends alot on the map it seems. Project C, Leviathan, Abandoned School. These maps, that have so much features and detailing, hates my PC. Maps that are plain, (Boxmaps, poorly detailed and/or fewer details) works better. It seems, the lower graphics settings I use, the longer I can play without this "pixelation" happening, but no matter how low I go, it always happens after a short amount of time.

Games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 & 2 seems to run better, which I take is because of optimization? I rarely encounter it in the games, playing on lowest graphics for the best frames, as usual. But it does sneak up on me a few times.

Now, I've been checking into this for a long time, but haven't given too much thought into it. I used a software, SpeedFan to monitor my PC's "health", or how it's temperatures are doing. I have noticed, that my GPU, can heat itself up incredibly high. It can go from anywhere to 100-200 CELSIUS, and anywhere in that frame it could give me "pixelation" on my PC. A few months back, I ran a stresstest on the GPU, reaching the same heights before it shut itself off, mostly likely a failsafe?

It's worth noting, that when this happens, It generally kicks me out of games, but VOIP, like TS and Skype tend to function for a short while.

So my question is, what is causing this. And, how can I fix it?

This is a general idea of what I mean with "pixelation"


And here are my PC-specs, unless I'm a dumbnut, and don't know what pc-components are.

---

Radeon Software Version - 15.12
Radeon Software Edition - Crimson
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
Memory Size - 2048 MB
Memory Type - DDR3
Core Clock - 780 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10
System Memory - 8 GB
CPU Type - AMD FX(tm)-8300 Eight-Core Processor

Did you make it through the whole post? Here, have a cookie. 


Any response is appreciated, thanks.

Sounds like your gpu is over clocked and unstable. Reduce core and memory clocks.

Sounds like your gpu is over clocked and unstable. Reduce core and memory clocks.

I can't recall ever overclocking it? Is this something PC-manufacturers do?

I can't recall ever overclocking it? Is this something PC-manufacturers do?

Usually no, they don't.

Even if they did, they usually test the clocks. Still, worth trying since you can change the them back.

Check your temps using speccy and report back what you see at idle and when you're gaming (or when it hits the pixelation thing).

So Scobalula mentioned to me in chat to try downloading MSI Afterburner, to check for overclocks. I downloaded it, and checked it out. Showed me some temperatures, etc. Lets me control fan-speed etc. I set the fanspeed to automatic, and played Project Contamination, which is one of the "heavier" maps, and managed to run fine for a longer period of time, up to round 16 or so. And this was with pauses inbetween, lasting a total of an hour, maybe. My GPU was stable at 70-75 celsius, where it normally was sitting at 50-55celsius, so I figured I wouldn't have much of an issue with this "pixelation", or whatever the term to use it by is. I was wrong. After some time, I got my infamous pixels, and the pc stopped sending images to my screen. It certainly lasted longer than usual, and fanspeed was 70ish celsius when it happened, so not sure if that's the cause.

Check your temps using speccy and report back what you see at idle and when you're gaming (or when it hits the pixelation thing).

I'll be doing this as soon as I can, and show results.

MSI Afterburner will only work if you have a dedicated GPU card. I however had the same problem as you but it happened in all games after about 5 minutes, problem was that the card was set to an unstable clock, I underclocked it then set it back to the base clock, no problems. Just weird like that.

Also update your drivers.