• 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.

Palit Sonic OC GTX 580 issues

DragonRR

DragonRR

DragonRR

Associate
Joined
25 Jun 2008
Posts
74
I suppose it should be of no surprise to me personally that I have bought yet another factory OC card that doesn't really work at factory OC levels.... I am, however, surprised at my own stupidity!

Initially (tonight) the card worked perfectly at 835/2100. I tried Kombustor which worked with no issues. Then the Heaven benchmark... no problems. Then I loaded up Just Cause 2 and ran the benchmarks:

Dark Tower (worked fine)
The desert one (worked fine)

Finally I ran "Concrete Jungle".

System locked up completely. I thought it might be a fluke but after rebooting about 5 times because Concete Jungle had locked at another random point I decided to downclock to reference settings and haven't had a lock in concrete jungle since.

I guess I'm just pleased I spotted this now rather than later. Over the years I've had numerous factory "OC" cards and sooner or later some game or other has caused them to lock up. I've also seen many forum posts from people with OC cards complaining that only "this" game crashes the graphics card... and therefore it's the game pushing the card too much... No it's just a bog standard card with an "OC" sticker and a higher clock setting in the BIOS!

I guess I should have learned my lesson before now!

I might return the card to Overclockers but it wasn't much more expensive than the standard card and just might be a bit more reliable at stock speeds... I very much doubt any replacement will be any better without a huge amount of luck!

I might have a try at upping the voltage a bit... It's set at stock which is a bit of a surprise.

I do like the 580 though. Very, very quiet and seems to run a lot cooler than the 480.
 
Im betting if you increase the voltage a bit you will be fine,but you shouldnt have to do this so i understand where your coming from.

Ive nearly ordered the same 580 today but have resisted as of now.

I would have also thought the voltage on the Palit OC would be a little higher than the standard reference clocks
 
Last edited:
kmufc77 said:
Im betting if you increase the voltage a bit you will be fine,but you shouldnt have to do this so i understand where your coming from.

Ive nearly ordered the same 580 today but have resisted as of now.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree. Pretty ambitious of Palit to leave to leave the voltage at stock and do a significant OC.

I might have a go at some point but just haven't got the time at the moment to do all the testing that needs to be done to prove stability.
 
i would tend to agree, but its weird that its locking in the same part all the time. If a slight bump in voltage fixes it, i'd be inclined to keep it, but thats not the point as already stated.
 
Olly said:
i would tend to agree, but its weird that its locking in the same part all the time. If a slight bump in voltage fixes it, i'd be inclined to keep it, but thats not the point as already stated.
Click to expand...

Currently I'm leaning towards keeping it. I suspect I won't get anything better without a huge amount of luck. The concrete jungle benchmark is currently the only thing I've noticed that actually kills the card. Kombustor which should in theory kill a poorly OC'd card seems to run quite happily.

One can't help thinking that if the cards OC reliably without any voltage adjustment... Why didn't Nvidia do it at least half way by default?
 
RavenXXX2 said:
When the card hits 300 watts juice pulled it throttles the clocks to reduce the load, I guess that's what is happening with kombuster so it and other stability tests like furmark are useless. As said try a bit more voltage.
Click to expand...

You might be correct Raven but it isn't just Kombuster that works fine for fairly long periods. Heaven benchmark seems ok too and so does all the other JC2 benchmarks. The concrete jungle benchmark pushes the card, and I'm guessing, pushes the card in the wrong places.

As I mentioned I've had this type of thing happen with OC cards many times before. The most obvious recent one was an 8800gT OC2 from BFG that worked fine with everything on one of my kids' systems. He installed Trials 2... crashed constantly but everything else was still fine. Downclocked card to stock and Trials 2 ran fine. Like I said I shouldn't be surprised!

When I get chance I might up the voltage. The problem is is that it might seem to work but without intensive testing you are just relying on being lucky!
 
I would RMA it on principal tbh, make vendors think twice in future about slapping overclocked BIOS's on reference cards without thorough testing.

The only consolation I suppose is that it cost the same as most other reference brands?
 
RMA takes to long, plus you get charged if they find no fault. Sending it back under DSR is a option though.

Seems strange it runs ok but falls over with concrete jungle level.
 
jigger said:
RMA takes to long, plus you get charged if they find no fault. Sending it back under DSR is a option though.

Seems strange it runs ok but falls over with concrete jungle level.
Click to expand...

Bito said:
What is the default votage on the Sonic's ?
Click to expand...

Well yes and no jigger. This is the type of issue I've always come across. Many things work... but one game/app doesn't or crashes a lot... So you downclock and it works. Once you downclock you tend to find that those "odd" crashes you got in other games/apps vanish too. Downclocking fixed concrete jungle so it is some combination of that level, my system and the palit Sonic card being overclocked that's caused it. It could be power... but I have a pretty large cap PSU.. So probably not that.


I think the card's default on mine was 1024 -1031mv or thereabouts. Once I got the first crash I used Afterburner to check things and the voltage reading seems to have a mind of it's own! For example if I set 1031 and then apply.. It drops to 1024mv! odd.
 
Last edited:
Hmm I dont like the sound of this, I have changed my order from the Palit Sonic to the MSI version, I cant justify purchasing a card that might not work out of the box. I know you can lower the clocks in afterburner but it is not what you payed for...
 
ah, missed that. It's good they've offered a recall. TBH, if it was still me, if the card was stable with very little extra voltage increase, I would just set this in MSI Afterburner (does it even support the 5xx series yet?) and apply the overclock on startup. Or even flash the BIOS with the small voltage increase directly.

Again, not the point, but saves the hassle of RMA and being without a rig if you havent got a spare GFX....just make sure you don't buy palit again !

I've got 2 standard ones coming, I really hope I don't have any problems !!
 
OcUK stock
gtx1.jpg


Probably that top palit is yours:D:D:D

Imagine how many times did it fall.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom