New 8600, Is this normal??

[Lagerlout]

I've got an 8600 GTS (256MB) with a passive heat sink.

Started using it at the weekend and it's crashing playing games.

Doesn't even have to be very intense games (CIV4) but display has a fit, system locks and if it ever gets to a BSOD its a 0x000000EA basically saying it's a hardware fault.

I can replicate the problem using ATI TOOL and doing the check for artefacts.
As soon as I start the process there are hundreds of them, CPU temp can be anywhere from 40 - 75 and it still gets loads so temp isn't a problem, but it will crash the system within a few minutes EVERY time without fail.

Reloaded OS (XP 32 bit) and same.
Re-installed every single driver I can find and same.
3 version of the GFX drivers, all MOBO drivers (2 versions) and same.
Stuck a 120mm Delta fan under the GFX heat sink and still crashes (ears are bleeding a bit though!!)

After tearing my hair out and getting an RMA to send it back I found a random post somewhere else saying drop the stock memory frequency from 1008mhz to 950mhz.

Thought what the hell so I tried it and this works fine!!!

After further testing system is stable anywhere up to 975Mhz, still some artefacts every so often but system doesn't crash anymore.

I noticed a few similar posts all over the Web for issues like this that just don't go away, and most people say
"I've dropped it to stock speeds and it's still happening"
which I agree is a perfectly reasonable argument.

I shouldn't have to drop the stock speeds to get the thing to work should I??

 

[goujon945]

Well no not really. Seems quite odd really, you would maybe expect that on heavily oc'd cards but shudn't happen on stock speeds

 

[Monkeynut]

RMA time!

 

[Lagerlout]

I've got the RMA sorted for it to be collected this week.

The only problem was that running the nTune program that came with the card didn't have any issues.

After I'd switched between nTune and ATI Tool a few times, I noticed that the temps were hardly above idle (55-60c) when nTune was running while ATI Tool was hitting 75c.
It's not a temperature related issue but I take the higher temp as an indication that the card is being made to do some serious work so nTune looks like it was hardly doing anything, while the card was screaming when ATI Tool was running!!

What I was worried about is that if they test it with something like nTune they won't find a problem.
Would they try and replicate what I did or will they just say there isn't anything wrong with it?

I would just like to add this card wasn't bought from OcUK by the way.