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Suddenly getting driver crashes

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,589
Ok this is weird.

Not had a single problem with my EVGA GTX 670 FTW since I got it, until the last two days.

In the last day or two, I've been getting quite a few driver crashes. You know the drill, the whole screen suddenly goes black then, after a few seconds, the desktop comes back and it says the driver has crashed and recovered.

This was originally with the latest WHQL drivers but I've since updated to the latest Beta just to check and it's happened again just now.

This last time, I noticed that the fan on the card was spinning quite fast just before it crashed, despite just sitting at the desktop. After the driver recovered, the fan was silent again.

Weirdly, it seems fine in games. I've been playing a few hours of Borderlands 2 today and not a single problem whilst in game, but back at the desktop I've had a few of these crashes.

Anyone got any ideas?
 
The new Betas are shocking and I was getting some random crashes on Desktop/Internet/games and rolled back to 306.23 and been great since.

Sounds like it could be a faulty card if this doesn't sort it. Normaly a small volt increase sorts the problem but sadly with the 670/80's you can't add volts :(
 
Do they bench good though???

Nah :( After pulling my hair out with trying to get my CPU clocked, I gave up and decided to do some benching. I went through drivers from 304.78 and ran stock to compare and the best that came out was 310.33 but going for max overclock, they didn't get any higher than my best (around 100 points less on 3DMark11).
 
Just done it again. Left machine while I had dinner and, when I came back to it, all the monitors had gone into power saving mode. Waggled the mouse to wake it up and the screens flashed on, then black again and sure enough the driver had crashed. Interestingly, I'd left HWMonitor running beforehand and the cards were idling at around 58C, yet after the crash recovered, the Max was showing as 84C, when there was no reason for the card to have been working that hard. It's now idling at 58C again.

Regards drivers, when I updated from the WHQL to Betas, I opted for a clean install. When it said it was uninstalling the old drivers, the screen again went black but stayed black and the machine beeped about every 10-15 seconds, the kind of beep you get just before POST when booting. Don't know whether it was trying to reboot but it wouldn't respond so had to reach for the power button. Does that suggest hardware?
 
Yeah latest betas, 310.61.

Think I'm gonna roll the whole OS partition back to a couple of days ago, before the problems started. If the problem is solved then great, if not then it's got to be hardware, does that sound like a reasonable conclusion?
 
Well it was driving me nuts last night, crashing about every 20 minutes or so!

I've now restored my OS from last Friday's backup and so far, fingers crossed, I've not had a problem. Of course this could be coincidence and only time will tell. Pray for me! :)
 
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-11-12-12-/

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ay-driver-feedback-thread-released-11-20-12-/

Those two threads show how others are having the same issues/problems with these new Betas. Stay away from them if you are having probs and stick with either:

306.23 or 306.97

When I was using the latest betas, I had nothing but problems and it didn't take me long to get them off. They are rubbish bud and hopefully they will get them sorted soon.
 
Well, post restore I'm now back to 306.97, but then I was on those when the problems started, I only upgraded to the Betas to see if they'd help at all.
 
Well, post restore I'm now back to 306.97, but then I was on those when the problems started, I only upgraded to the Betas to see if they'd help at all.

Ahhh got ya. I misread and thought the problem only started when you went to the new Beta's.

If it still happens, it is a faulty card and will need returning.
 
Well I'm praying it's not hardware as, apart from the hassle of returning a card generally, intermittent problems like this are always a nightmare and, knowing my luck, the card will be returned as not having any problems.
 
Nothing worse than having to RMA a card, even if it only takes a week to get back. The good thing is, it is EVGA and they have a very good RMA service and are active on these forums.
 
Its too early to say its definately faulty if it happens with the older drivers.

You could have a corrupt driver installation. Or possibly the card is overheating if you have poor case cooling, perhaps your overclock is unstable. Make sure you rule everything else out before returning youre card.
 
I had this with a gigabyte 670 , luckily i had two to test , one was faulty, rma'd it, if you havent got a spare card, it does drive you cuckoo trying different drivers etc.

Mine seemed fine in games, but on the desktop, would get the driver crashing. tried upping the voltage, still same.
 
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