GTX260 Freezing Issues

[Khrest]

I recently upgraded to a Gainward GS GTX260 and ran it under Win XP for 2-3 weeks without a problem.

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 and similarly had 2 days of gaming without issues.

As of today however the card keeps freezing. I first noticed it in Mass Effect; initially I was pleased as the sound faults that I had in that game under XP have gone away since the move to win7. However the game started freezing with a black screen for 20 secs and then continuing with a crippled frame rate.

A bit of checking with MSI Afterburner showed that the card was dropping to 2D speeds which was the cause of the frame rate drop.

Setting the Nvidia drivers to Prefer Max Performance seems to have prevented the drop in speeds, but I am still getting freezing whilst gaming, now in Mirror's Edge.

I dont see how it can be speeds because if anything the temps are lower than they were under XP. I am getting max temps of around 70c, although I do keep the fan at around 35% as I find it too noisy otherwise; but I dont see how it can be temp related when it was fine at higher temps (75c!) under XP.

Anybody got any other temps on this card for comparison or any other advice?

 

[Khrest]

I cant help thinking its Windows7 related though. There's no consistency to the temp at which the pauses happen, anywhere between 60 and 75c. Also I ran the card for 4 weeks under XP with some pretty heavy Dragon Age sessions and saw no problems at all.

It just seems a major coincidence that it happens 24 hours after the upgrade to 7.

 

[Khrest]

Finally it also appears that temps do not play any part. I have just run Fureal for 15 minutes and the temps hit the mid 80s, well above any that there have been when the freezes occur (usually around 65).

 

[Khrest]

Used both 191 and 195s.

I think its down to cooling on the memory side. I have raised the ran speeds a bit (maybe I was being a bit optimistic) and positioned a fan blowing air across the rear of the PCB. It seems to run fine now.