• 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.

KFA2 470 GTX troubleshooting advice...

dcsarge

dcsarge

dcsarge

Soldato
Joined
19 Dec 2008
Posts
2,544
Location
Nowhere
Hi all,

I have been getting occassional screen artifacts and corruption for a while and the most recent event, ac ouple of days ago, came hand in hand with a complete system freeze that required a hard reset. I took the pic below and as you can see it isn't a huge area effected. I have had worse but this is the first time I had to reset the system.



I have had the 'nvidia driver kernal has stopped responding' problem ever since I installed this card but previous research led me to believe that was a common issue with recent drivers and 4XX cards. This usually occurs when first booting into windows and then the system is fine until next reboot but it doesn't always occur.

I have had occassional issues in games and I have never managed to get completely smooth framerate in Black Ops, New Vegas or BFBC2 regardless of detail settings at 1680x1050, which has annoyed me.

My problem is trying to troubleshoot the exact problem as it isn't consistent. I have tried running the Heaven banchmark and Furmark but these never show any artifacts.

Is OCCT a reliable test routine, as a google search resulted in mixed opinions? I did run it and it showed significant errors, 8735 over 378.1 seconds :eek: with a constantly changing pattern of white dots. However, the memory test passed 10 runs wothout issue.

Any advice from the many gurus here would be gratefully received.
 
Last edited:
sounds like its on its way out, the overclock is not stable or its overheating try reducing the overclock manually a bit.
 
It is the factory clocked EX OC model but that is only set to 625. It generally gets to mid 80s under gaming load but OCCT reported it as hitting 91 during the test.

I might try underclocking it and see if the problems persist. I wouldn't hesitate RMAing it if I got more obvious problems in game but I don't want to send it off unless I am confident it is faulty in some way.

Quick update:

I ran it clocked down to 607, same as the the standard model, and OCCT gave out just over 1000 errors in a similar period to the first test. I then tried running it with the memory underclocked to 1500 (corrected from 1674 :)) and that resulted in no errors at all.

So it looks like the memory is the problem for whatever reason but I will contact KFA about it not running at spec without error. I find it odd that the OCCT GPU memory test passes but I'm not sure if the components are under the same heat load with that test.
 
Last edited:
Must admit when I bought my Msi 470 general consensus was to leave the memory at stock as OC'ing it was dicey. Certainly the core overclocks easily upwards of 850.:)
 
Just realised I said that I underclocked the memory to 1674 but I should have said 1500 :confused::D. 1674 appears to be standard for most 470s, both standard and factory OCed.

I have sent an RMA request with all my details through KFA2s website support page, so I will have to see what they say on Monday (hopefully).
 
I have had the RMA approved, just got take the card out, box it up and go back to my 8600GTS for now. Am I the only one who struggles to release the slot retaining tab on the motherboard with such large cards?
 
A positive update from KFA2 today. My card has tested as faulty and as soon as they can confirm model availability they will let me know what upgrade I am getting as a replacement :)

I can't complain about any aspect of dealing with them directly for a RMA so far.
 
I have accepted an offer of a 560Ti EX OC card from them today and they will get it sent out as soon as possible. I think it is a fair offer as it offers similar if not slightly better performance than my 470 (according to the Anandtech bench) and it will run cooler and quieter too.

It looks nicer too and has an Arctic Cooling fan with the flip open 'easy clean' design that KFA2 like to use.

large560exoc_image_2.jpg


I am very happy with the outcome and the speed at which it was resolved (can't help having a bank holiday slap in the middle of it) :).
 
Great to hear mate. I ahve the KFA 570 and I love hearing about such positive experiences as another chap on here got a good replacement out of them too!
 
Cheers, it is reassuring to know they live up to their mission statement when it comes to RMAs. It was great having a UK based returns centre to ship to, as I could just run to the Post Office and send it SD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom