• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

graphics card crashing every 20 minutes in games

tom91x91

tom91x91

tom91x91

Associate
Joined
12 Oct 2010
Posts
1,825
Location
Guildford
This has only started happening since i put my q6600 in but i dont think thats the problem, at first i would be playing a game, then after 20 minutes the graphics card fan would go silent and the screen go black, then get a message saying display driver has stopped responding and has recovered or something along them lines. Now when it happens it doesnt even recover, and i have to restart.

Ive removed the drivers twice with driver sweeper (which itself kept crashing, it took a few goes, although i think i clicked chipset drivers too :eek:), then installed the drivers again (wouldnt let me do it in normal windows, only safe mode).

Its still happening and is very frustrating :mad:

Any suggestions as to what could be causing it? Ive tried resseting overclocks but still the same result.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Probable overheating, if the cpu is the only thing touched check the temps on it and/or try reseating it.
 
In bad company 2 (my most cpu intensive game) the cpu temps never go above 60. I would have thought this is a problem with the card or drivers rather than cpu?
 
Sorry for double post, but i resat my heatsink, everything in that department is fine, its still happening, 20 minutes into a game my gpu fans just go quiet and the game stops working. You dont think my power supply might be using a bit too much power when gaming maybe?
 
Your power requirements do seem ok for the card. Have you tried running the card at stock too see if that makes any difference?
 
Lowered the overclock from 830 to 780 (the default for this card) and just had a few smooth games of bad company, maybe an unstable OC? Seems odd though as its a msi hawk version.

Temps are 45c max in games.

Thanks for the help :)
 
Does this sound graphics card related:

Today it took 4-5 trys turning my PC on to get the display showing (the pc would turn on fine but nothing show on the monitor), plus two of the times i started it a weird sound was coming from the graphics card fan (i think).
 
Last edited:
You could have PSU issues. If you can, try a different PSU or disconnect all other non-essential hardware and do some more testing
 
looks remarkably like unstable overclock, probably on the memory. what divider are you running for your ram at that overclock? How many sticks of ram and also what volts?

In fact how does it run all stock? upgrading a cpu from a dual to a quad can affect the gfx maximum oc as well.
 
VinceB1 said:
looks remarkably like unstable overclock, probably on the memory. what divider are you running for your ram at that overclock? How many sticks of ram and also what volts?

In fact how does it run all stock? upgrading a cpu from a dual to a quad can affect the gfx maximum oc as well.
Click to expand...

This tbh. £ v p that your system would fail prime95. Seeing as 3D graphics is the only taxing activity that you do on your rig, it's feasible for you to assume that the gpu is the problem when it crashes.
 
been running it at 3.2 and 3.4 both are fine running prime, but yes maybe you're right as im running 4 sticks of ram which i think can make it unstable.

Its actually been ok today, seems random :confused:
 
Might not be the issue but have you run memtest on your memory to ensure there are no problems with it?

Only reason is that I had the same issue with my graphics card a few months ago and found it turned out to be one of my 2gb memory modules that was faulty.
 
tom91x91 said:
been running it at 3.2 and 3.4 both are fine running prime, but yes maybe you're right as im running 4 sticks of ram which i think can make it unstable.

Its actually been ok today, seems random :confused:
Click to expand...

Mmm, these things are seldom random m8, different usage circumstances might make things appear random. As mentioned earlier by Vince re: dividers and clock speeds/voltage of RAM, these are all crucial, especially when populating all RAM banks, and what Andy says shouldn't be discounted neither.

I've done loads of benchmarks with this Q6600 and can see huge gains going from 2.4 to 3Ghz, but nowt going from 3-3.3 Ghz (well, nothing fps-wise which I am ONLY interested in) and it appears prime95 stable at 3.3Ghz until after say 25 minutes then I get a core failing which would be enough to bork the machine.

I'm about 2 hours stable at 3.2Ghz and 800Mhz RAM sitting at 830Mhz, stock voltages so I have CPU at 3.16Ghz. I see no reason to ask any more of the chip as I get little to no more fps right across the board. Temps (on air with Zalman CNPS9500) are around 68° under stressing which is as high as I really want to go anyway so extra vcore to raise FSB is IMO out of the question.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom