How To Reset Your GPU

Have you ever noticed your monitor screen is looking a bit duller than normal or maybe a game is beginning to stutter when you’ve been on a session for a long time with everything cranked to high or even ultra and you can’t for the life of you figure out what’s going on. You begin to panic thinking maybe my CPU is on the way out, I might have a faulty DP cable or maybe the worst has happened and your GPU needs replacing.

You have a choice between suffering through playing your newest game on low settings where textures won’t even render, Grand Theft Auto V becomes a stuttering mess, Call of Duty won’t render in other players until you’re already dead or GRID Legends crashes every time you’re in a race against more than 3 other AI players.

Alternatively you need to go and have a chat with your wife / husband where you start dropping subtle hints about a really good sale and how good of a spouse you’ve been lately offering up massages or to do more chores all in a bid to squeeze out the “what can I do to help you darling” we all look for in our partners when it’s time to shell out another £500-£2000 on that new GPU.

Well, hopefully and feel free to not share this information with your partner as I don’t care how much begging you do, it’s not coming out of my pocket so you do you for that 5090 or 7900 XTX, but there is a very simple way to reset your GPU clearing everything and essentially it’s there not to work alongside a DDU (display driver uninstaller) which involves you getting down and dirty with driver settings you may not be familiar with all in the hope that your MOBO has enough grunt to post before your GPU is reawakened like a Phoenix with a fresh install.

The method of resetting your GPU is so simple as well that you can basically do it on the fly with little to no consequence (please don’t reset your GPU whilst you’re rendering a video for example as this will shift it all to your CPU which can result in smoke, swearing, shouting and not good times). You simply need to be on your Desktop which you can do by pressing the Windows Key and D on your keyboard, don’t worry all of your tabs come back how they were when you press WIN+D again and then press the following keys on your keyboard at the same time:

Windows+LeftCTRL+LeftShift+B.

This will then perform a full reset of your GPU and more than likely fix any and all issues you were having with your display which is particular useful if you’re pushing 2+ monitors or an ultrawide through an older GPU which starts to struggle after a full day of forcing 120 fps at 180hz in COD / Black Myth Wukong on Ultra. You will hear a beep, each monitor will flash a black screen as it is all reset then everything will go back to normal providing you don’t have any hardware issues like frayed cables your new cat has decided to use as a chew toy when you’ve popped out to buy the 9th phial of flea treatment.