EVGA GTX 680 locked at 2D speeds

As the title says, I cannot get my GTX 680 to clock past 324 Mhz. This is on a brand new install of Windows 7 Ultimate so I know that old drivers are not a factor. I've witnessed this phenomenon in Skyrim, MW3 and Diablo 3 beta. I'm using EVGA's Precision X to monitor the cards activity and whenever a game loads up the GPU and Mem frequencies both stay at 324 Mhz and game performance is terrible(10 FPS in Skyrim, about 20-30 in MW3). I can see card utilization shoot up to 99 percent and stuff is definitely loading into memory as I can see that go up drastically as well. Idle temps are around 37 C and loaded they only go up to about 45 C.

Things I've tried so far:
Cleaned out old drivers and reinstalled.
Changed Power Management Mode in the Nvidia Control Panel to 'Prefer Maximum Performance'
Tried card with 2 different monitors - Samsung 204B and a 1440p Shimian

Anyone got any suggestions? Things to try? I'm at a total loss trying to figure out what could be up with this card. It FEELS like a driver issue but I don't know how that could be as this is a new install of Windows...

My rig specs are in my sig. This same box was running an ASUS GTX 580 without issue before.

i'd save bios with GPUz open with NiBiTor and check voltage and clock tables. Otherwise what's temps?

Originally Posted by ZoNe

i'd save bios with GPUz open with NiBiTor and check voltage and clock tables. Otherwise what's temps?

Just edited my original post to include that info. It idles aroun 37 C and goes up to aroun 45 C under load so things are staying pretty cool.

Have you tried putting the 580 back in if you still have it?

Try resetting the Nvidia control panel to defaults?

This happens to me once in a while on a failed overclock. The card drops to ~500core and idles at 324. Restarting sometimes will fix it, it almost seems like it has a hardware internal cooldown until it'll let me mess with it again.

Could it be a loose/bad 6 pin power connector? Although I'd assume it would inform you of insufficient power like previous cards...

Bad BIOS would be my 2nd guess...

Originally Posted by Boyiee

This happens to me once in a while on a failed overclock. The card drops to ~500core and idles at 324. Restarting sometimes will fix it, it almost seems like it has a hardware internal cooldown until it'll let me mess with it again.

Happened to me right after posting that. Just had to restart and bump back to 132% and it was back to normal.

Originally Posted by |-Goku-|

Have you tried putting the 580 back in if you still have it?

Try resetting the Nvidia control panel to defaults?

I will try putting the 580 back in later tonight and see what happens.
I've reset the drivers a couple of times with the same results.

Originally Posted by Astral Abyss

Could it be a loose/bad 6 pin power connector? Although I'd assume it would inform you of insufficient power like previous cards...

Bad BIOS would be my 2nd guess...

I don't think the PSU is an issue either where it was running a much hungrier 580 before. However, I am going to drop this card into a couple of other machines to see if it has issues there as well. As you mentioned, it could very well be a bad bios but before I go RMAing it, I'll try a couple of other things first.

Originally Posted by TYoda

As the title says, I cannot get my GTX 680 to clock past 324 Mhz. This is on a brand new install of Windows 7 Ultimate so I know that old drivers are not a factor. I've witnessed this phenomenon in Skyrim, MW3 and Diablo 3 beta. I'm using EVGA's Precision X to monitor the cards activity and whenever a game loads up the GPU and Mem frequencies both stay at 324 Mhz and game performance is terrible(10 FPS in Skyrim, about 20-30 in MW3). I can see card utilization shoot up to 99 percent and stuff is definitely loading into memory as I can see that go up drastically as well. Idle temps are around 37 C and loaded they only go up to about 45 C.

Things I've tried so far:
Cleaned out old drivers and reinstalled.
Changed Power Management Mode in the Nvidia Control Panel to 'Prefer Maximum Performance'
Tried card with 2 different monitors - Samsung 204B and a 1440p Shimian

Anyone got any suggestions? Things to try? I'm at a total loss trying to figure out what could be up with this card. It FEELS like a driver issue but I don't know how that could be as this is a new install of Windows...

My rig specs are in my sig. This same box was running an ASUS GTX 580 without issue before.

Sorry to rehash this old topic but i wonderd if you ever managed to fix this?
Im currently suffering with EXACTLY the same problem with my POV GTX 680 EXO edition .... it was 324mhz out of the box and nothing i have tried seems to have fixed it.

I am at my wits end and about ready to RMA it.
Thanks in advance if you read this.

Originally Posted by Lokiuz

Sorry to rehash this old topic but i wonderd if you ever managed to fix this?
Im currently suffering with EXACTLY the same problem with my POV GTX 680 EXO edition .... it was 324mhz out of the box and nothing i have tried seems to have fixed it.

I am at my wits end and about ready to RMA it.
Thanks in advance if you read this.

I read that people are having this issue with the 301.42 drivers. If you're using those, try the previous WHQL driver.

Originally Posted by Rylan

I read that people are having this issue with the 301.42 drivers. If you're using those, try the previous WHQL driver.

Tried 4 different sets to no avail
Tried changing all power saving modes in the nvidia panel, windows energy safer and in the bios.
Tried changing the voltage (voltage always automaticly resets no matter if i change it up or down)
Tried flashing my mobo bios.
Tried overclocking, downlocking (always resets to 324mhz)
Tried using NV inspector.
Tried using Afterburner, EVGA precision, and Asus Gpu Tweak.

I also noticed the card just sits there on PCIE 1.1 mode instead of going to PCIE 2.0x16 (i know it can do PCIE3 but a single gtx 680 doesnt even fully use the PCIE 2 slot.)
Was hoping this guy might have found a solution but so far it seems like im stuck having to RMA this card :/

side note my pc specs are:

I7 2600k @ 4.6ghz
ASrock Z68 Pro3
Cooller Master psu 750w (plenty of amps on the 12v rail)
8gb Corsair Vengeance.

I replied to your PM but to restate here I had to RMA it. EVGA basically confirmed to me that it was a bad bios, however, they would not provide me with a new one and I didn't want to try anything on my own where it was a 500 dollar card and still under warranty.

Best of luck to ya.