GTX 460 Performance Problems

[Andromeda1983]

I am sending back this card for an RMA but in the meantime I was wondering if I could rack your brains on what be happnening to it. Basically it runs like its not getting full power. After testing the connection of the 6-Pin connectors I ran some tests and the performance was way lower, like half of what the card was capable of. Then I tried reseating the connectors and the performance did go up but it was by a small margin. When under half load it makes a noise sounding like its straining.

It seems like the card is only getting 3/4 of the power from the 6-Pin connectors on the side of the card. I have put in an RMA explaining there could be a problem with the power going to the card and hopefully they will find the same problem and get me a replacement sent out.

If not, then the problem lays elsewhere in my system which is actually a blessing and a curse, blessing because my beloved card works properly, curse cause it means the last thing it could be the PSU but I have tested the graphics card with a 600W PSU by itself and it still exhibits the same behavior.

 

[Andromeda1983]

Update: Tested card with 2 PSU's and still the same problem

 

[topdog@OC]

Presumably the cooling fans appear to be running OK? You might want to fire up something like MSI Afterburner or HardwareMonitor to see what it's doing for temps and such, may be overheating which would also cause it to freak out into slow-mo mode. 600W is more than enough for that card too (as I'm sure you know/checked).

 

[Hazkirby]

As above.

What clock speed etc are you at?

And what sort temps do you get when running a program like 3dmark?

I have the same card (all be it factory OC'd with cyclone cooler) and have pushed it too its limits and performance significantly deteriorates after 90 degrees and will crash out at 100.

Monitors your GPU temps, it's unlikely to be a power issue because it just the likely hood is it wouldn't work at all if it wasn't getting enough power.

 

[Andromeda1983]

Both fans are working, and the temps are fine they didnt go over 50oc while testing the card itself. Playing WoW the graphics card seemed to be straining to run it, a low pitch whine was coming from the card itself which was definitely not present before ( I run a very quiet PC and I can pretty much hear what's going on in my case )

I have tried it with 3 different power supplies, all rated above 750W and the performance does not improve. This problem only started showing up when I put the card into the Z68 board that I bought so it is possible the board may have had a faulty PCI-E slot and has damaged my graphics card in some way.

What is wierd is the fact that when I reseated the 6 pin power connectors, the performance went down pretty bad, Windows useless WEI score went down to 5.5 and then when I reseated them again it went up to 6.7. This is still far off where it should be as before the z68 board, I was scoring 7.6 on this card and was getting milky smooth framerates in WoW.

Now when I run WoW which admittedly I know is not a taxing game, it ran abysmally with frame-rates barely able to stay at 55fps and going down everytime I moved. The motherboard I have today is brand new and is a P67-G45 and I doubt my luck is that bad that I would recieve another motherboard with a faulty pci-e slot so yeah.

I put the RMA under problems with the power to the card because that is the only thing I think it could be, but it doesnt matter anyway so long as the card is proved to be faulty when it gets tested which im 99.99% sure it will and thankfully I will have it replaced with a working card

 

[topdog@OC]

I reckon then there's likely some broken solder joints and components, maybe dry sockets for things like capacitors, not enough to outright kill the card but enough to cause it to have unstable and weak voltage.

 

[Andromeda1983]

Yeah probably, thankfully its still within warranty so it should be replaced as soon as OCUK can determine its faulty. This is why I continue to shop here, not only is ordering from here easy, but so are the RMA's when you have to send stuff back. By the way, your idea on what may be wrong with the card sounds very possible so I added it to an RMA post I have detailing all I have done to test the card myself, so it gives them an avenue to work with. Thanks ^.^ and lets hope !

 

[Dervious]

Yeah probably, thankfully its still within warranty so it should be replaced as soon as OCUK can determine its faulty. This is why I continue to shop here, not only is ordering from here easy, but so are the RMA's when you have to send stuff back. By the way, your idea on what may be wrong with the card sounds very possible so I added it to an RMA post I have detailing all I have done to test the card myself, so it gives them an avenue to work with. Thanks ^.^ and lets hope !

A word of warning.

Nvidia GTX4** have had (and probably still are having) issues with compatibility. My first one locked up under load as soon as I started testing it. It worked perfectly in 3 other systems. Must have been something to do with my power supply, motherboard, CPU etc ? No it wasn't. Had I sent it back to Overclockers, it would almost certainly have got sent back to me (possibly with a testing or carriage fee) "no fault found". In fact, that's sort of what happend when I decided to send my motherboard back to Gigabyte. The only common demominator was my Gigabyte motherboard. Changing every single other component (including the operating system/drivers) didn't solve the issue, I changed my motherboard and it worked perfectly. My motherboard was tested and sent back to me "no fault found". I had to send both motherboard and graphics card back to Gigabyte so that they could see the problem. They sent me a replacement GTX460 which didn't even boot up in the temporary motherboard that the old card did work with ! Luckily, the replacement graphics card does work with my original motherboard, but I know that the card is still "dodgy".

Switching to Nvidia was not a pleasant experience for me. It's AMD from now on.

 

[Andromeda1983]

Thanks for the words of warning but trust me when I say I know its not an issue with compatibility. I know for a fact this card ran fine under my P67-C45 and its only since it was put in the Z68 that it started exhibiting this problem

 

[Andromeda1983]

Here's something wierd ive noticed, putting the card under load, the current clock speed is 810 with memory at 1998Mhz and shader at 1620mhz. Now at default speeds it should be 815mhz Clock with 2000 Mhz Memory and 1630Mhz. It wouldnt cause such a performance drop as I am seeing with this change in the card but it could be an further indicator that the card is not able to run at its full speed for some reason.

Update: I tested a friends Twin Frozr GTX460 in my machine and the performance was restored, no whine at all. So we tried my card in his machine and his pc suffered from loss of graphics performance just like mine. Upon replacing his card back, his performance returned to normal. I am now 100% convinced its the card that's at fault here. I have been doing my best to test this card so I dont waste OCUK's time and my money.