How To Stress Test A GPU: A Step-By-Step Guide

Stress testing your graphics card is a great way of checking its stability, temperature, and overall performance under load. While running a regular GPU benchmark is enough to understand any improvement or loss in performance, a stress test is better for identifying potential stability issues. There are plenty of ways to generate load to test your GPU’s stability, but running a stress test is often recommended as a simple and safe way to perform the ultimate test for your GPU.

A stress test will help you find potential failures that may occur with your graphics card due to things like overclocking. It also serves as a troubleshooting method to understand existing problems and drill down to their root cause. The procedure is safe, as modern GPUs are designed to throttle down or even shut down when the power limits breach critical levels. Here’s how you can conduct your own GPU stress test.

Intel Core i9 14900K in a CPU socket in a motherboard

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How to stress test your GPU with FurMark

Testing the maximum power and heat output

If your main goal with conducting a stress test is to check thermals, then FurMark should be your go-to tool. There’s no shortage of benchmarking and stress-testing utilities out there, but most are focused on testing for pure performance and stability, usually after overclocking. In contrast, FurMark is a tool that attempts to draw the maximum power and heat output from a graphics card. It’s not the best test for stability, but it’s certainly the best for checking thermals.

FurMark is completely free to download and use on your computer. It is quite brutal in pushing the thermal and power limits of graphics cards, and it even displays a warning dialog noting that it is very GPU intensive and can lead to system crashes or other instabilities. Fortunately, you can set custom preset settings and things like high-temperature warnings to ensure you’re not pushing your GPU beyond critical limits.

With some graphics cards, FurMark will use resources that cause the card to limit its power before it reaches its maximum clock speed. As such, it’s a great representative of thermals, but not of overall stability or performance after overclocking. For testing those departments, switch to something like Superposition.

Here’s how you can use FurMark to check for GPU temperatures:

Head to the Geeks3D website and click the Download button to open a new tab.
Select the latest version of FurMark (v2.1.0.2 at the time of writing this tutorial).
Click the Download button to get the utility for free from the Geeks3D server.
Install and run the FurMark utility to see a small window with details about the detected GPUs and the options to set preset settings.
Set the Graphics Test to FurMark (GL)the Resolution to your native monitor resolution, and enable Display OSI to see all the testing metrics while running FurMark. Click Run to start the test.
Run the test for at least 10 minutes and keep a close eye on the temperature and GPU usage.
While running the test, your GPU usage should go up to 99%. This means that FurMark is properly pushing your card. Temperatures in the 60-85°C range are normal. If you’re seeing temperatures of 90+°C, your GPU is likely overheating. However, older cards with poor cooling can reach those temps in FurMark. Here’s a handy guide to normal GPU temperature to give you a sense of what to expect.

Your GPU temperature will now start to rise as it is stressed. The fans will get louder, and you’ll notice a spike in GPU usage and temperature. If you see weird artifacts, stutters, or visual glitches, close the app. You can exit the benchmark at any time by closing the benchmark window or by pressing the Escape key on your keyboard with the benchmark window selected.

How to stress test your GPU with Superposition

Testing GPU stability and performance

While FurMark is great for testing the maximum GPU temperature, it’s not the best for checking performance gains or stability. If you want to overclock your GPU, you must check the stability of your graphics card afterward. Benchmarks that push GPU clock speeds as high as possible are the best way to check GPU stability. Superposition is one of the best free tools out there for this purpose.

Download Superposition from Unigine’s website.
After downloading the app, launch the setup wizard to install Superposition.
Choose a Preset for the benchmark. Start with 1080p High to set a baseline. You can run tests with higher resolutions later on.
Click the Run button.
Wait for Superposition to complete the test. Make sure you’re not using any apps in the background, as they can mess with the results or cause crashes.
After the test is complete, take a close look at the data. You might want to save the results to compare them with subsequent tests. To do so, hit the Save button to store results on your computer.

If you experience any crashes, artifacts, or regular stuttering during the benchmark, this might mean that your GPU isn’t at its most stable. This could be the result of an aggressive overclock, high GPU temperatures, or failing components. Try repeating the benchmark a couple of times to see if these issues persist.

Try out 3DMark for a wider range of tests

One of the more comprehensive benchmarking tools

Image showing the different 3DMark benchmarks

The 3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark that a lot of people use to test and compare the performance of their PC against others online. However, 3DMark is an app that has a bunch more benchmarks for specific use cases. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for the full version of the app to unlock them all. Most people are better off sticking with the free tools above, but if you often test different graphics cards, it’s a good tool for making sure everything is alright.

The free version only includes benchmarks, not looping tests. If you do pay for the app, you’ll unlock stress tests and benchmarks that factor in ray tracing, DLSS, 4K, Vulkan, and more. You’ll even get some stress tests and benchmarks for ARM processors specifically. The app also allows you to configure benchmarks and tests to find the perfect fit for your system hardware.

Making sense of stress test data

Whether you’re using FurMark, Superposition, or any other stress testing/benchmarking tool, there’s a lot of data to go through. For the most part, make sure you focus on GPU usage, temperature, and framerate. If any of these metrics seem unusual, then there’s a good chance that your graphics card has some issues. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to troubleshoot problems with your GPU.