D3D, Down clocking Nvidia Factory overclocked card's...

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OK

Before anybody Jumps down my throat, this seems to affect a small number of users and there are of course a million things that could also contribute to driver instability.

However......

I had an issue with Elite Dangerous where I would jump to hyperspace and the game would CTD with a D3D error. This started happening after a patch

In my testing I did the usual stuff and then started down clocking my card in increments and tetsing. When I got to below 1200 MHz base clock, the issue went away... fully away... If I overclocked/returned it to my Card's clock speeds 1233 MHz... it crashed... any sort of Overclock from my factory speeds and it would just crash....


I passed all this info onto support along with my testing results.. they eventually replied saying it was reported by other users and my work around was being past on.

Come GTA V

I have started getting the dreaded ERR_GFX_D3D_INIT CTD after the last patch

Again loads of messing around, raised a ticket with R* then found a steam discussion.

It would seem that again this issue might be resolved for some (me included) by down clocking their cards from Factory set clocks speeds to near reference clocks....

I have mine running at a base clock of 1199 and it has not crashed after 4 hours of game play.... put it back to stock clocks for my card and it crashes, overclock it and it crashes even quicker.....

As I said, not all are having this issue, not all people are getting it resolved....

My point.

Is this an issue with Nvidia, Direct 3D or our cards being factory overclocked?????

As I said, It's gone away for me and I can now play without crashing....

 

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I get this with gta of my titan X I thought it was because I was pushing the card to hard ?

There is Titan X user who has had it fixed by dropping the clocks.... so worth a try.

the card is faulty, it should run at it's advertised clocks and if it doesn't its faulty and should be replaced

it did run at stated clock speeds for 150 hours of game play on GTA V and 80 hours on Elite dangerous, Both were patched and both started having the issue.

I have run a 1500 clock on sky rim with out issue and all other games without issue... also I don't thing I would be able to RMA a card that is running fine... My bench marks are great on Heaven and Firestrike... really great

 

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If you don't want to go down the RMA route you could try running the fans at 100% ingame to see if the instability is heat related. If this helps you could create a more aggressive fan profile. If that has no effect try adding a touch more voltage to see if that makes the overclock more stable ingame.

My card runs at 60 C in GTA V, less when down clocked.

The voltage thing might be way forward, but my card does does not take voltage increases via AB as I think its locked in the bios.

There was some user analysis on the Elite forum that was along the lines of a sudden drop in voltage when the hyperspace cut scene/effects happened that could cause a problem. However that is way overmy head.

I will test in a min with GPU Z running and see what the results are.... I can make it crash pretty much at will online....

Also this was in the 350 patch note's

Improved stability and fixed several crashes and hangs while transitioning between Jobs in GTA Online.


That is where it mostly happens....

 

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TBH it was more the VRMs that I was thinking about than the GPU. Running the fans at 100% should provide sufficient additional air movement around the card to provide additional cooling to the rest of its components. I would give it a go just to fully rule temperatures out of the equation.

I will give it ago, but my Inno3d has a vram heat sync and a separate fan for PCB circulation LOL

It is not that pretty... more Dr Mephesto....




EDIT:

OK that did not help unfortunately... Kept the GPU at 52 c though. LOL

and if I ever want any sound effects of a RB211 spooling up... I am sorted...

Edit Edit:

From the latest Nvidia drivers release notes.... 352.86

known issues:

Grand Theft Auto V randomly crashes giving error: ERR_GFX_D3D_INIT

Whilst I am still on 350.12 I guess it is a driver issue.... Fair few on Reddit that have fixed via down clocking....

 

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This from the ED team relating to the issue of down locking to resolve the problem with ED

Currently have a load of stuff to try from R*


Please note, the following is by no means a statement of absolute fact, it is our current understanding of the situation.

The issue seems to be that these cards are optimised for constant high load. Elite however tends to cause phases of maximum load interspersed with lower usage. Especially events like exiting from hyperspace near a star for example cause the load to rise from very low to very high. This seems to cause the cards in question to fail to adjust power levels quickly enough, their processor in turn briefly suffers from low voltage and behaves undefined, causing a crash.

Down-clocking the card in question lowers its power draw and alleviates the problem. It would be conceivable that small variations in production quality make a percentage of the affected card models more resistant to the issue, that would explain why having a replacement solved the problem for some people while it did not for others.

I am afraid as of now lowering the clock rate is the only solution at this point, we will continue to look into fixing the problem of course. I am sorry that I cannot be of greater assistance in this matter.
i

 

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I have a load of stuff to test that R* have suggested.

As we examined your dxdiag which you have provided the drivers are not updated. If you already updated your drivers, please provide us an updated Dxdiag. (Please refer the link to update your drivers

Disable your firewall for some time and play the game.

Ensure you have administrator rights on your computer. Run the Social Club
Installation application as an administrator by right clicking the application and choosing "Run as Administrator."

Temporarily disable antivirus/security, then uninstall if disabling does not work as a test. Be sure to reinstall and re-enable your antivirus after the test.


However

Nothing has made a difference other than down clocking, which solves it completely.

 

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So if it's a power draw issue has anyone tried the above suggestion to see if it helps?

Yeah, tried all combinations.

It started with Elite (see above) and I was on the 347 drivers and it was fine, then they released a patch and that was that. Down clocking fixed it...

I was also running a 1500 MHz clock on GTA V before 350 patch, then it started on that as well. However I had shifted to online about that point in time.

I can still run a clock of 1475 MHz in single player but On-line, crashes at my stock clocks. 1266 Mhz Base. 1366 Boost.

I can see the voltage drop away when the scene changes (after a race or mission etc) so it probably is that, but my voltage increases via AB don't affect the lower voltage's when the card winds down.

I have also disabled streamer service, this was a help yesterday and I played 5 hours at stock clocks but then it crashed for the first time. Still working my way through the list of things so I can get back to R*

 

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This has been pretty common since maxwell launched it generally only affected people pushing high OC's but affected some cards at out the box clocks too.it becomes far more apprant if your using extra mV for an OC tho.

The best method to get rid of it is to flash a bios with a locked voltage at 3D clocks,so when gaming the load Voltage never drops in game even if load does(clocks still downclock related to usage tho)

I done this,not had this issue since.

Edit:Not sure what the this issue is related to AMD cards tho

I had thought about flashing with a new bios but I am not confident in performing it as if it goes wrong, it can brick the card.

If my card had a bios switch then I would but I don't.

 

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There's a "Force Constant Voltage" setting in Afterburner you could try.

Cheers

I did not realise that was an option.

Gas anybody got any experience of this?

 

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Force constant voltage didnt work for me,it seems to not work for most Nvidia cards from the searching i done.

You can use EVGA PrecisionX and enable Kboost,it does the exact same thing and it does work.

edit: Defiantly worth trying,i had forgotton about that workaround tbh lol

OK done that, Kboost did keep the clocks at full but it still crashed in the same place. Which is extremely annoying.

So only the last thing to do on the list now is install the latest drivers.... which are poop apparently...

*sigh*

 

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GRRRRRR

The 352 drivers are truly awful. The GPU is now stuck at 100% so it is a stutter fest.

I will be DDU'ing them in 5 mins....

so I will get back to R* and see that they have to say.

Edit update:

Reinstalled 350

Just played 3 hours and no crashes.... GTA V has never run so well, no stutters, 60 fps in all areas.....

So I don't know what is going on.

 

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OK

Well getting somewhere now.

I have played 3 hours this evening without a crash.

My card is clocked at 1366 Mhz - 1467 Boost (in game it is 1497)

Spoiler

I forgot the OC was on after I bench marked my driver reinstall (350)

The card however is idling at 1266 Mhz (stock clock) and such the voltage does not drop.....

Spoiler

The weird thing is..... it is shadowplay being enabled that fixes the clock.....

I will keep on playing to see if this helps, but GTA V runs soooooo well with the overclock So not really worried..

Will give it a go in Elite at some point.

Fingers crossed.

 

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OK

After quite a lot of testing I am happy that I have solved my issue.

My base clock has been locked at 1266 MHz since Sunday. .

As a result the card does not dip below 1 volt when the game is idling after load/general game play etc before it then loads up again. Hi-low-HI

I have not had a crash since this was implemented on GTA V (16 -17 hours) Before this I would crash every 30 mins +.

Down clocking the card resolved it for both GTA and Elite dangerous. I am not sure why, however it could be to do with the increase in power needed for the card to ramp up. This was causing GPU spikes and dips and as well as the Voltage.

I will test it on elite at some point.

Not sure why this causes driver instability however it does seem that way. Mostly with factory overclocked cards (going by the number of users on the Elite forum and GTA users on Reddit)

I hope this helps