Hi all,
I’m hoping somebody can help me.
I recently upgraded from 2x nVidia 7900gt running in SLI, to a single Palit GeForce GTX260 216. I now have a situation where every game I run crashes very soon after boot-up. Precise symptoms as follows:
• Game loads as normal, and I get a few minutes of play before any problem. For example, TF2 about 10 minutes, and CODMW2 about 5. In the case of both of these games and many others, the 260 clearly has plenty of grunt, as it runs them all smoothly at max settings at 60fps.
• After this time, I experience one of 2 problems:
1. The screen will freeze completely on a single frame, stuck in an audio loop. The only option is to re-boot the machine from the re-set button.
2. More dramatically, I sometimes get a brief freeze and a complete crash to desktop. When this happen, re-starting the game simply results in a lot of screen-flashing and audio distortion. Windows shows a lot of artifacting and colour distortion, which only a re-boot will resolve.
• One of these 2 is happening EVERY time I’m in gameplay. It’s driving me nuts.
I’ve done a lot of research, and clearly a lot of people have had similar issues, although there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the cause of the problem or any reliable fix. However, taking various people’s opinions and suggestions, I have tried all of the following:
• Drivers – I’ve tried the most up to date drivers, up to the 195.81 beta. I’ve also tried going backwards, all the way to the 170s. No change.
• Clock settings – This card is overclocked in the box, with settings of: core 625, shader 1348, memory 1100. I’ve underclocked back to the basic settings of the GPU. No change.
• OS – I’ve set up a clean install of both XP and W7 on a separate HDD, both with minimal clutter. Exactly the same happens in both cases.
• Temperature – I can’t even make the card break into a sweat – it barely reaches 60 degrees. All other sensors look fine too.
I’m coming to the conclusion that I may have a power problem, which is something a number of posters suggest. I don’t know a lot about PSUs, but the label looks like this:
DC output +3.3v +5v +12v1 +12v2 +12v3 -12v +5Vsb
Peak 30 30 18 20 10 - 2.5
Continuity 20 25 12 12 6 1.0 2.0
Max power 191w 360w 12w 10w
550w
Does anyone have a view? Other specs are below.
Thanks in advance.
MB: nVidia M2N4-SLI
CPU: Athlon 64 x2 6400+
RAM: 4x 1Gb DDR2 333MHz
GPU: Palit GeForce GTX260 216 55nm
HDD: WDC 1TB
PSU: Coolermaster RealPower 550w
Windows XP
I’m hoping somebody can help me.
I recently upgraded from 2x nVidia 7900gt running in SLI, to a single Palit GeForce GTX260 216. I now have a situation where every game I run crashes very soon after boot-up. Precise symptoms as follows:
• Game loads as normal, and I get a few minutes of play before any problem. For example, TF2 about 10 minutes, and CODMW2 about 5. In the case of both of these games and many others, the 260 clearly has plenty of grunt, as it runs them all smoothly at max settings at 60fps.
• After this time, I experience one of 2 problems:
1. The screen will freeze completely on a single frame, stuck in an audio loop. The only option is to re-boot the machine from the re-set button.
2. More dramatically, I sometimes get a brief freeze and a complete crash to desktop. When this happen, re-starting the game simply results in a lot of screen-flashing and audio distortion. Windows shows a lot of artifacting and colour distortion, which only a re-boot will resolve.
• One of these 2 is happening EVERY time I’m in gameplay. It’s driving me nuts.
I’ve done a lot of research, and clearly a lot of people have had similar issues, although there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the cause of the problem or any reliable fix. However, taking various people’s opinions and suggestions, I have tried all of the following:
• Drivers – I’ve tried the most up to date drivers, up to the 195.81 beta. I’ve also tried going backwards, all the way to the 170s. No change.
• Clock settings – This card is overclocked in the box, with settings of: core 625, shader 1348, memory 1100. I’ve underclocked back to the basic settings of the GPU. No change.
• OS – I’ve set up a clean install of both XP and W7 on a separate HDD, both with minimal clutter. Exactly the same happens in both cases.
• Temperature – I can’t even make the card break into a sweat – it barely reaches 60 degrees. All other sensors look fine too.
I’m coming to the conclusion that I may have a power problem, which is something a number of posters suggest. I don’t know a lot about PSUs, but the label looks like this:
DC output +3.3v +5v +12v1 +12v2 +12v3 -12v +5Vsb
Peak 30 30 18 20 10 - 2.5
Continuity 20 25 12 12 6 1.0 2.0
Max power 191w 360w 12w 10w
550w
Does anyone have a view? Other specs are below.
Thanks in advance.
MB: nVidia M2N4-SLI
CPU: Athlon 64 x2 6400+
RAM: 4x 1Gb DDR2 333MHz
GPU: Palit GeForce GTX260 216 55nm
HDD: WDC 1TB
PSU: Coolermaster RealPower 550w
Windows XP
