First off I have to say that this forum is amazing – such a wealth of knowledge!

Hopefully, someone will be able to help me with a frustrating problem. I should point out that I am not a newbie – I have been building my own PCs for a few years now but this is my first Intel system (I think my sig is up to date).

I have had a few problems with stuttering and slow HD access but I think (touch wood) I have sorted this out with a reinstall and newer raid drivers.

Everything seems to be running fine in Windows – Internet Explorer, Win Media Player, etc all running smooth. The problem comes when I play Crysis (the only game I have at the moment). I have been playing through the game all week and really enjoyed it, it seems to run pretty good at 1680 x 1050 4x AA with all other settings on high. I get the odd slow downduring intense battles but I attributed that to the screen being very busy at that time.
On Thursday night I reached the last level (I think! The one on the flight deck of the boat). During this level I get a complete failure at some random time but usually when there is a big explosion or something like that. The screen goes solid grey and the last second of sound is looped, at which point I can do nothing but hit the power button and reboot.

I have tried a few different things over the last 2 days. I have done a full chkdsk - takes a looong time on a 1TB drive! I have reinstalled the game and Nvidia driver (180.48) and I have done a full memtest but none of these things have made any difference.

The only other thing I can think to blame is my PSU. When I bought my components I checked the PSU amperage and it seemed to be OK so I thought I could save some money by keeping my previous unit. Nvidia recommend 36A for a GTX 260 and 40A for a GTX 280, and my PSU has 52A.

The PSU is a Seasonic S12 650w and I have just noticed that it has 4 12v rails at 18A each.
I assume the PCI-E connectors on the PSU would have a rail each which would give the GPU 36A, but I assume that as with most things Seasonic exaggerate their figures slightly so it would never quite achieve its maximum output. Also, as the 260 is heavily overclocked I am guessing it might have the same sort of power requirements as a 280.

So here is the real question: Do you guys think that the PSU cannot cope with the demand of Crysis + OC’d GTX 260 when the screen gets very busy with explosions and flying aliens? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

I would be really grateful for some advice as I don’t want to spend £100 on a PSU only to find it does the same thing.

How old is the PSU?

The Seasonic 650W will be fine if its working properly.

Try running Furmark for a couple of hours or overnight. This program really does push the card even more than Crysis. If there is an issue with load this should highlight the problem.

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

Sounds like game not psu related. The last section of crysis always killed my setup (both lag and crash to desktop) do you have the latest patch? Also take off 4xAA, this kills performance even for an o/c 260.
Try running a benchmark like furmark to confirm stability.

Edit: too slow
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Magic flight launch box

Thanks for your replies.

So you really don't think the PSU is borderline? I reckon it has to be at least 2 years old.

I have the latest patch and all my drivers are as new as I can find. I hope you are right but I'm not convinced.

The Furmark website says it is for XP and 32 bit Vista - no mention of 64 bit.
I could run the Futuremark test, is that as good?

duffbeer666 said:

Thanks for your replies.

So you really don't think the PSU is borderline? I reckon it has to be at least 2 years old.

I have the latest patch and all my drivers are as new as I can find. I hope you are right but I'm not convinced.

The Furmark website says it is for XP and 32 bit Vista - no mention of 64 bit.
I could run the Futuremark test, is that as good?

Click to expand...

I have the 600 Watt version of that supply and it ran the rig below with a overclocked Q9450. No problem.

Will Furmark not run at all?

I haven't tried to run Furmark yet due to the fact that Vista 64 bit was not mentioned. Do you think it is caoable of reproducing the power surge that is required when the game suddenly gets busy? Also, if the game was at fault surley it would just dump me back into windows rather than give me a complete failure?

Not trying to be argumentative - honest! I'm just trying to get my head around this one.

duffbeer666 said:

I haven't tried to run Furmark yet due to the fact that Vista 64 bit was not mentioned. Do you think it is caoable of reproducing the power surge that is required when the game suddenly gets busy? Also, if the game was at fault surley it would just dump me back into windows rather than give me a complete failure?

Not trying to be argumentative - honest! I'm just trying to get my head around this one.

Click to expand...

Furmark will push your card to it's load limits. More so than Crysis.

If you want to take the PSU out of the equation you need to load it. I'm not sure what load Furmark puts on the CPU but you could also run Prime95 at the same time.

Prime95 + Furmark should easily highlight a faulty PSU.

BSOD, Black screens can be caused by Memory issues, CPU issues ( heat, too high a overclock .... ), sound card IRQ/driver conflicts.

First take the PSU out of the equation. If thats fine looks at the memory and CPU. use Prime 95 for this. If everythings still fine try removing the sound card and playing the game.

Hope this helps.

Furmark does not work at all for me - the furry ring thing (or whatever you want to call it) does not move at all.

Any other suggestions?

What will really test my PSU?

I think its an issue with the latest nvidia drivers (180.xx)
You could try ATItool, 3Dmark06/vantage or rthdribl.
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Gl1000

I just got another game to try - Call of Duty 4.
It seems this game is doing exactly the same thing as Crysis, anybody got any suggestions as to what might be happening here?
It's driving me nuts - I cannot play games!

Give the CUDA zone 180.60 drivers a whirl - I had some weirdness with crysis and crashing in left 4 dead with the 180.4x drivers with my 260GTX.

On Thursday night I reached the last level (I think! The one on the flight deck of the boat). During this level I get a complete failure at some random time but usually when there is a big explosion or something like that. The screen goes solid grey and the last second of sound is looped, at which point I can do nothing but hit the power button and reboot.

Click to expand...

I have the Black Edition and a 600W Seasonic. I also happen(ed) to get the same freeze as you and I've attributed it to drivers. Since the last 180.48 it's not happened to me, although I have had crash to desktops (Farcry 2). Nvidia's drivers are really quite poor now compared to ATI's, I remember when it used to be the other way around

I doubt that your PSU is causing a problem. I'm running my XFX Black Edition on a 580W PSU with no issues.

Haven't tried Crysis yet, I'll give it a go later and see what happens. You could send me your save file if you like and I'll see if I get the same problem

using a 500w pc power and cooling psu with a single 35A +12v rail with no problems at all, card overclocks fine too and also with cpu at 3.4ghz

Hi all, I'm having a similar problem and hopefully can get some advice.

I recently built a whole new system and I get crashes in Crysis with the screen going black.

I've ran Furmark and noticed it crashes every time the gpu gets to 77 degrees C. The system hangs and all I can do is hold the power button down to reboot.

I've tried with 2 PSUs so I think it must be a faulty graphics card. It's the same one as the OP (XFX 260 Black Edition). I haven't OC'd it but it is Factory OC'd. Should I try to get a replacement? Surely it should be able to go above 77 degrees without crashing.

I've tried it with various drivers from 177.xx to 180.60 and even reinstalled Vista 64 so I don't think it's a software problem. Also, does Vista keep a log file when the system crashes and if so where would I view it?

Thanks.


Edit: Nevermind, I've just used EVGA tool to underclock it to 576mhz (the speed of the normal version) and it ran fine at 85 degrees in Furmark, didn't crash at all. Clearly it can't support its own overclocked speed!

Hey guys, and welcome to the forums Meche

The higher you clock a component, the lower the maximum temperature at which it will be stable. Sounds like that maximum point for Meche's OCed 260 is 77c. This is a pretty poor show as 77c is really nothing for a GPU - they can easily go over 100c when working properly. Personally I might try and replace it since if it doesn't work at the overclocked speed, it doesn't do what it's sold to do. It sounds like duffbeer might have the same problem.

After all this talk of amps and load on each rail, I have a question about my new build.

I have also just bought the XFX 260 Black and an Enermax modu+ 625W PSU. For PCI express, the PSU comes with 2 cables, each of which splits to 2 x 6+2P plugs. For the 260, which requires two plugs, can I use the two plugs from the one cable, thus reducing the amount of cables messing up my case; or do I have to use both cables, and only use one plug from each? Does all that make sense?

If you mean the one cable from your psu...I don't think that's a good idea 'cos that would be using the one rail. You would then be pushing twice the amps through that one cable on the psu.

Mattus said:

Personally I might try and replace it since if it doesn't work at the overclocked speed, it doesn't do what it's sold to do..

Click to expand...

I've had a Black Edition for 2 weeks now and I'm also not convinced it's 100% stable at the default overclocks. I'm getting the odd BSOD and Vantage just locked up on me when loading, something I never got in 18 months of running an 8800GTX.

Can anyone recommend another gpu intensive testing utility that I can leave running for hours at a time to really stress it? Firmark won't run on Vista64 (as far as I know) and you can only set Vantage to loop up to 3 times.

Cheers.