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Potential GTX690 Problem

F1aw1ess

F1aw1ess

F1aw1ess

Associate
Joined
15 Oct 2009
Posts
560
just wanted your thoughts please guys.

I have a 690 which works fine at stock settings but if I overclock it even a bit I get what can only be described as squiggles on the desktop every second or two before finally crashing and recovering.

I understand this probably means the GPU or memory is on its way out which is fine, I got given the card so no biggie.

before I get onto my question, here's a little background;
My computer is turned on @ 9am every morning and goes off @ about 1am every single day. I went away for 3 nights over the weekend so it was off for an extended period.

When I got back and switched it on, I got the squiggle things described above when the card went from 2D clocks to 3D on the desktop but no crashes.

I thought it might be heat related so I fired up Unigine Valley and let both GPU's sit at 99% for about 30 mins. After the burn in time no problems at all now.

My question is; firstly do you think its the GPU or memory or something else that might have cause this and secondly, do you reckon taking the GPU heatsink/fan off cleaning up and reapplying some paste might breathe a bit more life into the old dog?

I want her to last until the 880 is released and im a bit worried I might have to make an interim buy which I really don't want to do!

Much appreciated as always.
Mike
 
If you ran Valley for 30 mins without issue, then that doesn't seem to be the hardware on its way out.

"I have a 690 which works fine at stock settings but if I overclock it even a bit I get what can only be described as squiggles on the desktop every second or two before finally crashing and recovering."

I would guess the stock voltage of the 690 is the bare minimal that's enough to keep the stock clock stable, so when you crash (and driver recover) when you try to overclock, it could simply mean you don't have enough voltage for the card to run stably at those higher clock.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
If you ran Valley for 30 mins without issue, then that doesn't seem to be the hardware on its way out.

"I have a 690 which works fine at stock settings but if I overclock it even a bit I get what can only be described as squiggles on the desktop every second or two before finally crashing and recovering."

I would guess the stock voltage of the 690 is the bare minimal that's enough to keep the stock clock stable, so when you crash (and driver recover) when you try to overclock, it could simply mean you don't have enough voltage for the card to run stably at those higher clock.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply but it used to overclock okay but degraded overtime to the point where I cant do it at all now.
 
F1aw1ess said:
Thanks for the reply but it used to overclock okay but degraded overtime to the point where I cant do it at all now.
Click to expand...

Something very wrong there, my two have done a lot of overclocking and they are exactly the same as they were over 2 years ago when I bought them. I have not even bothered to clean the coolers out.
 
Kaapstad said:
Something very wrong there, my two have done a lot of overclocking and they are exactly the same as they were over 2 years ago when I bought them. I have not even bothered to clean the coolers out.
Click to expand...
I guess may be OP should check the temp and see if there's a carpet built-up on the heatsink...especially if his case's fan intakes doesn't have dust filter...
 
Geeman1979 said:
It shouldn't of degraded. I owned a couple for about a year and when sold, they clocked just as well as the day I bought them.
Click to expand...

+1

It is hard for them to degrade as NVidia won't allow extra volts.


Marine-RX179 said:
I guess may be OP should check the temp and see if there's a carpet built-up on the heatsink...especially if his case's fan intakes doesn't have dust filter...
Click to expand...

+1

It is worth a go as I suspect the 690s can get quite clogged up.
 
Resa69 said:
So you're saying bios hacked Nvidia cards/ unlocked AMD cards can degrade over time when you push a little more voltage through them?
Click to expand...
No, what he meant was with the voltage restriction (may be lock-down would be the more appropriate term) that Nvidia forced onto the users, the Nvidia cards are harder to degrade as users cannot increase the voltage of the card (though people using work-around or cracks to enable voltage adjustment is a different matter).
 
As said, the cards should degrade extremely slowly as the voltage is locked.

Temperatures ok? - Check for dust and if needs be, the TIM.
PSU ok? Stress the CPU and see if that cuts out at all, or if you can, try another graphics card or 2.
Try a complete re-install of the card and drivers.

Otherwise, does it have warranty?
 
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