If you get blue screen or automatic restart while playing games, recording using CCTV or using any intensive graphics software such as AutoCAD/Photoshop, very likely you have a faulty graphics card. There can be other reasons as well but the first thing you should check is your graphics card. It is obvious that when playing game, your Nvidia, ATI or other brand of graphics card will be working extra harder to render images to the screen.
Here is a free and useful tool to stress test your video card’s memory for stability.
Video Memory stress Test allow you to completely test your video RAM (accessible to DirectX). The best way to check stability after overclocking.

Even if you don’t overclock your video card, you can still use it to test the stability of your graphics card. If your video card that is not overclock can’t survive one full cycle of memory stress test, you should have it changed. This free tool is programmed by Misha Cherkes, the same programmer of Check Flash (ChkFlsh) that is used to check and test USB flash drives.
I have a pretty old NVIDIA 256MB GeForce 6600 LE video card on my desktop. The video memory stress test tool estimated that the 254 full test will complete in a whopping 5 hours! However, the stress test only took 21 minutes on my laptop which uses ATI Mobility Radeon X700 with 64MB ram. Modern video cards with hundreds of megabytes can take up many hours just to do the full test. In this case, you can select either Small or Express test from the program.
Small test does not test memory with walking bits. As for Express, it performs test with all patterns, but process only random 15% of created surfaces. “Small” test set is good for quick check of overall memory integrity and “Express 15%” is better for quick stability test after overclocking.
There are 2 ways to run video memory stress test tool. You can run it in Windows, which in my opinion is not so good because there might third party programs running in background that can interfere with the stress test. The better way to run this tool is in clean environment which directly works with video ram without using any interfaces and drivers from Windows. An ISO file is provided in the archive for you to burn it onto any CD/DVD disc. If you can’t boot from CD/DVD, you can use the floppy disk version. Just download the floppy version, extract and run install.bat.
Simple, useful and free tool to stress test a video card for stability.
[ Download Video Memory Stress Test | Floppy version ]
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Hi guys plz any one help me !!!!
I bought yesterday only new xfx 5770 HD 577x-ZMF3
i install correct on my pc, also installed new catalyst 11.2 after registered from xfxforce.com
CPU Spec.
Core 2 duo 2.8 ghz E 7400, 520 GB H.D Seagate, XFX 630 m 775 Socket chipset nvidia 630 i series 7050, Zebronic crossfire & Sli ready 800 W PSU,
now the problem is that i installed nfs uc, it gives very low fps on 1024 x 868, with all setting to low, also in gta 4 it gives 11 fps on 1152 x 1024 ,
Damn dat thing what to do, i m getting depressed abt dis,
HELP HELP my 5770 is dying :(
Thank’s once again for some very helfull information and for also providing the link’s too. Cheer’s Raymond.
Everytime a turn on my computer it tests the ram and its quite annoying because ive to wait like 30 more seconds on my computer starting up, how do i stop it from doing that, i have a foxconn K8M890M2MB-RS2H motherboard with phoenix bios. I have looked through all the options but havent seen anything to turn the memory test off, so, is there a way of actually doing it ?
Thanks
This seems like a handy tool.
nice article. I have another problm where i get a strip of lines on monitor of my laptop when i update my windows it goes for 2 hours and comes back i did anti virus scan nothing shows what is the problem do u think
very good
thks
Hmmm….seems a test like the Prime95 torture test for overclockers. Worth a try.
Great tip!
time to change my video card
Now if only We could get a “fan stopped turning” warning. heh..
Thanks, Raymond this tool will come in handy.
Thanks for the share Raymond. One useful tool for my friend, going to suggest him ;).
Very helpful. Time to check my old nVidia card