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Possible GFX Card Issues - GTS250

Dave_E30

Dave_E30

Dave_E30

Associate
Joined
23 Sep 2009
Posts
10
Hi all,

First time posting on here so hello to everyone.

I bought the below setup in April of last year:

Gigabyte MA790X-UD4
4GB Vitesta DDR2 800MHz Dual Kit
AMD Phenom 9650 Quad 2.3ghz
1TB Samsung HD103UJ
Palit GTS250 1GB
Housed in Thermaltake Shark Case
Samsung 2032BW 20" monitor as primary, and an old 17" dell monitor as secondary

I'm also running Norton Corporate and SPF.

I had a few problems to start with, which seemed to be gfx related, but after installing newer drivers for the GTS it seemed to be ok. I also had issues with VLC crashing the PC, so opted for SMplayer instead.

Recently, however, I have begun to experience problems. A friend has lent me Fallout3 and to start with I was loving it. After a while though it began to freeze and crash to the desktop. I Googled this and found it was a common problem so I downloaded a patch for the game.

After loading the patch everything seemed fine for a week or so, but then the problem came back. Now though I can't even play the game, as it crashes back to desktop after about 5 minutes. I counted three times within 10 minutes the other day.

I also purchased the original left 4 dead and this seemed to run fine. I must have played it for about 2 and a half hours over the space of a couple of days and then the same problem developed. It crashed only the once, but then when I tried to play it again within 5 minutes it crashed back to desktop and continued to do so whenever I tried to play.

I had read about issues with SP2 and Directx9, so updated to SP3 (something i'd be meaning to do for quite a while). I tried left 4 dead again this afternoon and a similar problem is still experienced, although this time the game froze, both my monitors went into standby and the last sound that came out my speakers just looped over and over. I then had to reboot the PC because I couldn't get my monitors to come back to life.

This was the same issue I use to experience when using VLC, hence the switch to SMplayer.

Any help would be much appreciated, as i've had the setup for a little while now and know it is more than capable of running games like Fallout3 at a good res - left 4 dead should be no problem at all.

Cheers,

Dave.
 
I got Fallout 3 too and I too am fimiliar with this problem. This particular problem is really more Fallout 3 related than hardware. It tends to happen to people who uses nvidia cards and updated their driver by installing the new one over the old one.

I too crash like every 5 minutes back then. I try googled for solution and then came across an advise of uninstall the exisiting display driver first, then using driver sweeper in windows safe mode to completely remove anything remained from the driver, then install the new driver.

Unfortunately driver sweeper wasn't able to clean out the remaining files from the old driver for me, and I had the same problem even after installing the new driver. So what I did was uninstall the display driver again, run driver sweep and make a note of the remaining driver related files (two in my case), then uses window's search to locate them and delete them, then I installed the new/most up-to-date display driver. After that, no more crashes in Fallout 3 for me.

So I'm guessing in order to keep Fallout 3 crash free, you must have a 'clean' driver install (as in removing all the files related to the existing/old driver first) everytime you update the driver.
 
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Thanks for the replyMarine. Do you think this could possibly be the same issue experienced with Left4Dead?

Are you aware of any known issues with the GTS250?

I'll give this a bash tonight and see how I get on.

Cheers,
 
No. What happened was when I run Driver Sweeper, it will have a list of files (you should be able to recognise the nvidia related files from the name), press remove/clean (something along those lines), rebooted my PC, run Driver Sweeper again, and the nvidia files are still in the list. It was then I wrote down the name of the two nvidia files, and used window search to find them and deleted them myself. After that I installed the most up-todate driver and then not more crashes.

Hope these information are going to help you ;)

GTS250 don't really have any problem as far as I know...it is in fact just a rebranded 9800GTX+ (which I'm using) with a GTS250 bios and different coolers/fans. I've read an article which people was playing around/experimenting, and updated the 9800GTX+ by flashing it with a GTS250 bios, and it became a GTS250 just like that! They even tested SLI and it worked perfectly fine as a ppair of GTS250 in SLI, even though one is a GTS250, and the other is a 9800GTX+ lol
 
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Fallout 3 has trouble with quad cores. I was getting CTDs whenever I went inside at a certain point in the story. Can you turn off any of your cores in the BIOS? Turning my i7 into a dual core sorted things out for me for that part of the game.
 
reflux said:
Fallout 3 has trouble with quad cores. I was getting CTDs whenever I went inside at a certain point in the story. Can you turn off any of your cores in the BIOS? Turning my i7 into a dual core sorted things out for me for that part of the game.
Click to expand...
His problem is the one that crashes every 5-10 minutes, not crashing at reaching certain point of the story...
 
Just got round to trying the uninstall+driver sweeper method (been very busy with work and not had chance until now) but im still having the same issues.

Just fired up fallout and after about 2-3mins max the graphics went all weird. Both my screens started getting lines running down horizontally and everything went pixelated. The little fallout childs face thing was flashing up on the pip-boy display as well.

Nothing appears in event viewer. The fan does start going ten-to-the-dozen when i play it, can hear it going spinning really fast. Could this be an overheating issue at all?

I'm tempted to get rid of the card tbh. I've had my setup for just under a year and all the issues I have seem to point to the gfx card.

Don't want to disable core. I have to agree with Marine, that just goes against my principles - shouldnt have to limit my PC to get things to work.

Cheers,
 
I've downloaded V-tune and the card is idling at abpit 44c and was at about 53c when the game crashed, so it doesn't seem to be overheating, i don't think. do these temps seem about normal? i really can't think of anything else it could be. all i know is in the year i've had the setup every problem seems to be graphics related. it's a good setup and should be able to cope with everything i've been throwing at it (not a lot).
 
reflux said:
Fallout 3 has trouble with quad cores. I was getting CTDs whenever I went inside at a certain point in the story. Can you turn off any of your cores in the BIOS? Turning my i7 into a dual core sorted things out for me for that part of the game.
Click to expand...

I have a Phenom11 X 4 940 and have played Fallout3 and all the add ons trouble free, never crashed. Still playing it, favourite game.:)
 
Just to let people know I think the problem has been resolved. It appears my PSU wasn't enough to provide the power the card required.

Looking at specs the 700W I had only produced 14amp on the 12V rail and the card required at least 23amp. I have bought a new 600w PSU with 4x 12V rails, with a total of 78amp running across them - no issues so far.

Thanks to anyone who's offered advice.

Cheers,

Dave.
 
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