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Nvidia drivers causing GPU to stop responding?

Kaiju

Kaiju

Kaiju

Soldato
Joined
27 Jan 2005
Posts
3,655
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Expat in HK
Since an install of the latest official WHQL drivers from Nvidia, I keep getting numerous black screens and then notifications that my GPU has stopped responding but has recovered.

I've tried pretty much every official WHQL driver from 181.xx to 258.xx. The results are the same.

The weird thing is if I uninstall the driver and just use the stock Microsoft drivers, I get no problems whatsoever.

Any ideas? I'm stumped.

I have a 9800GTX+ on Windows 7.

My CPU and memory are all on stock settings.

I have updated all drivers and Windows updates.

I have ran Memtest+ numerous times, my RAM is fine.

I have Rivatuner testing the card under-clocked to no avail.
 
It could be a number of things but the fact that every single official driver does it indicates it's not a driver problem, the Microsft drivers are farely basic.

Try loosening your memory timings, memtest is only really any good for finding actual faults rather than instabilities.

It's easy to blame the PSU in situations like this but that could be to blame as well, or just a faulty card.
 
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Thanks for the quick responses.

I will loosen those memory timings tomorrow as it's 2AM and i'm on the laptop in bed.

Graphics temps are around 60C, so no problems there.

The PSU is a Corsair HX520W, so it's fairly reliable. Not that i'm counting it out though.

Will get back to you.

Night fellas.
 
Right, so I tried setting all the memory timings to the highest possible value in the BIOS, but I was still getting errors.

I then opened the case and took a closer look at the graphics card and there was quite a bit of dust around.

I took it out and there was a bit of hair which looked like it was sitting between the slot and card itself.

Shocking!

I resat the card and the problem has, so far, disappeared.

Thanks for the support. :D

----------------------

Oops, spoke too soon. Got the error opening a video on youtube. The video just came up as a blank green screen and then I got the dreaded message stating the GPU recovered.

Back to the drawing board.
 
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I have been getting similar problems over the last month but I have an ATi card. I think my problem was down to hardware acceleration of flash- once I disable that the problem has stopped. If it only happens when you are online but not when you are gaming then maybe you/nvidia have similar problems.
 
kylew said:
Are you sure you don't have an ATi card? You're talking about problems exclusive to ATi.
Click to expand...
I'm sure. LOL

I've read people will all cards with this problem. I think I will buy a cheap card by ATi in the meantime and see what happens.
 
Does it happen during games or just when in Windows? ATI cards have been having loads of Powerplay problems (when the drivers tell the GPU to clock down and reduce voltage causing crashes) and this sounds like it could be a similar issue, if it happens during games too then I'm not sure it could be any number of things.
 
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It happens during video streaming, flash related web pages, basically anything which taxes the GPU.

Thanks for that Owenb, I turned hardware acceleration off for flash but alas i'm still getting the same problem.
 
mmj_uk said:
So games too?
Click to expand...
I have never tried.

I am running Microsoft drivers at the moment as it's impossible to do anything with the error happening every 2-3 minutes before eventually freezing.

I will install the driver tomorrow (almost half twelve now) and let ya know.

Thanks!
 
What I'm getting at is that during games the GPU is given full voltage, whereas in windows and running flash etc it switches to lower power states and one of those could be causing the card to become unstable and crash.

Next time you install the official NVidia drivers do this... go into the control panel and click on 'Manage 3D settings', then under 'Global Settings' scroll down until you find 'Power Management Mode' and change it from adaptive to 'Prefer Maximum Performance', click apply and then see how that goes.

If it fixes it you have a duff card.
 
kylew said:
Are you sure you don't have an ATi card? You're talking about problems exclusive to ATi.
Click to expand...

LMAO

i used to get this problem all the time when having 2 7800s in sli and after that 2 8800 ultras in sli. Different drivers had different effects as in some made it do it more some slightly less but always had the same problem untill i upgraded my cards to a 4870x2.

To the op: The only thing that ever seemed to help is putting extra cooling in my case and then upgrading to a much bigger case so i could only assume mine was being caused by heat

Funny that isnt it i always had these problems on my nvidia gpu`s but i have never seen them on a ati gpu and my brother has a 5970 also.

Also before im jumped on i am not a fanboy i actually loved my 8800ultras in sli and the only reason i went to the 4870x2 is because it was a freebie from my bro when he upgraded.

So your comment about how it only being exclusive to ati cards is a complete and utter pile of crap.
 
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When I had Nvidia cards in SLI I used to get the driver has stopped responding message a lot. Manually turning the fans to 100% on my 8800ultra's helped a lot. Have never had THIS problem with my ATI (yet). That isn't to say I haven't had problems with ATI drivers 'coz I have, just mainly game glitches and Steam version of Dirt 2 crashing.
 
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kylew said:
Are you sure you don't have an ATi card? You're talking about problems exclusive to ATi.
Click to expand...
I got this constantly when i ran gtx 8800s in sli its why i changed to ATI.
When i played Supreme Commander i had to constantly keep saving the game because with Nvidia cards it did it every 5 or 10 minutes and id lose all the building id done on my base.

It did it so often ill never buy Nvidia again.
 
This type of thread is so rare that the ATI trolls are quick to pounce, it's just a shame they're nowhere to be seen when their fellow ATI users need help with Catalysts.

I should have just taken a note out of Kyle's book and blamed user error. ;)
 
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