GPU Stress Test

Load your graphics card straight from the browser and watch what it does: the frame rate against your screen's refresh rate, and the artifacts, flicker and driver resets that a failing GPU shows under load. Nothing to install.

The stress scene appears here once you start.

What a GPU Stress Test Can and Cannot Tell You

This page loads your graphics chip and shows you what happens. Here is how to read the result — and where the honest limits of a browser are.

Frames per second versus hertz

Your screen decides how many pictures a second you can possibly see. On a 60 Hz screen a healthy graphics card sits at exactly 60 and stays there however hard you push it, because it is waiting for the screen rather than struggling. That is why the chart draws your refresh rate as a line: the useful reading is not the number, it is the level at which the line finally falls away from it.

Your eyes are the artifact detector

No script can see corrupted pixels the way you can. Artifact watch holds a steady load and mixes in high-contrast patterns, because snow, blocks, wrong colors and flashes stand out against them. Watch the picture rather than the numbers for a minute or two, and take a photo if you see something — it is the evidence a repair shop will ask for.

A lost context is a real failure

If the graphics driver crashes and restarts mid-run, the browser tells the page that it has lost its device. This test catches that and says so, instead of leaving a blank rectangle behind. A driver reset under load is one of the strongest signals there is that something is genuinely wrong — with the drivers, an overclock, the cooling, or the memory on the card.

Heat shows up as a slow slide

Hold one fixed level for several minutes and watch the line. A frame rate that stays flat is a chip living within its thermal limits. One that starts high and slides down while nothing else changed is throttling: the chip slowing itself to stay cool. Dust, dried thermal paste and blocked vents are the usual causes.

Integrated or discrete

Laptops carry two graphics chips: a low-power one inside the processor and, sometimes, a faster separate card. The browser asks for the fast one, but the operating system has the final say, and on battery it often says no. The renderer name at the top of this page tells you which one actually answered — that alone explains a lot of surprisingly low results.

What to try when the results look wrong

Update your graphics drivers, check that hardware acceleration is switched on in your browser's settings, plug the laptop in and take it off any battery-saving profile, close other tabs and apps that use the GPU, and on Windows point your browser at the high-performance GPU under Settings → System → Display → Graphics.

Is it the graphics card or the processor?
Slow, stuttering performance is often the processor, not the graphics card. Load the CPU the same way and compare.
Run the CPU test
Low frame rate, or a slow screen?
A 144 Hz monitor still set to 60 looks exactly like a graphics card that cannot keep up. Measure what your screen is really running at.
Measure refresh rate

Frequently asked questions

Pick a mode, press start and watch. Ramp up steps the load higher every few seconds until the frame rate can no longer keep up with your screen; artifact watch holds a steady load and shows high-contrast patterns for you to inspect. Nothing is installed and nothing leaves your device.
Because your screen only shows 60 pictures a second and your graphics card is waiting for it. That is a healthy result, not a limit of the card. What matters is the complexity level at which it finally drops below 60 — or below 144, or whatever your screen runs at.
No, and neither can any other web page. Browsers deliberately give no access to sensors, clock speeds, fan speeds or power draw, because that would identify your machine far too precisely. For temperatures you need a desktop tool such as your card vendor's own software, HWiNFO or GPU-Z.
Colored snow or speckles, checkerboard blocks, textures that smear or repeat wrongly, flashing and black frames, and geometry stretching off into nothing. On a good GPU the scene stays clean at every level. Anything that appears only under load and goes away when the test stops is worth taking seriously.
A lost graphics context under load is a genuine failure signal. Update your graphics drivers, remove any overclock or undervolt, make sure fans and vents are clean, and check that the power supply is up to the card. If it happens again quickly at low levels, the card itself may be failing.
No. The levels are settings of this one scene, and your result depends on your screen's refresh rate, the size of the window, your browser and your operating system's power settings. It answers “is my GPU behaving?”, not “is it faster than yours?”
A healthy, adequately cooled GPU is built to run at full load and will slow itself down long before it comes to harm. It will get hot and the fans will get loud. Stop the run if the device is uncomfortably hot or its vents are blocked, and do not run long tests on a laptop sitting on a duvet.
The browser asks for the high-performance GPU, but the operating system decides. On battery, or under a power-saving profile, it usually hands over the integrated chip instead. Look at the renderer name at the top of this page to see which one answered, then plug in or point the browser at the high-performance GPU in your system settings.
Yes, though phones throttle quickly and deliberately — a frame rate sliding after a minute is normal behavior on a phone, not a fault. Artifact watch is the more useful mode on mobile: keep the run short and stop it if the phone gets hot.