New Geforce GTX 970 repeatedly crashing

Fazzar

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 22, 2004
Messages
290
I just got rid of my Crossfire cards and installed a new GTX 970 and it cannot get through 5-10 minutes of Company of Heroes without crashing.

- I have the most recent GPU drivers
- Game is updated
- Previous cards did not crash
- Uninstalled and cleaned out old video drivers
- Ran all virus and malware programs
- I've run Furmark and it does fine, peaks at 66 C under full stress

Any thoughts?
 
What kind of crash? Does the game crash with or without an error? Does it result in a BSOD?

Check the Event Log and see if you get an error that says "the driver stopped responding and has recovered." This is indicative of a Timeout Detection Recovery and has been a common issue in GeForce drivers since 352.86. If you're still on Windows 7 as your sig indicates then try the 347.88 or 350.12 driver. You'll have to DDU the newer driver first to do a complete rollback.

If you do not see the above error in the Event Log then try reinstalling the driver with a custom installation. Usually when people are having issues it is recommended to DDU your current driver installation and uninstall GeForce Experience. Then reinstall using a custom installation while only choosing the graphic driver and the PhysX software to install. If you have no issues with the driver then you can run the installer again without uninstalling first to install optional components you want, such as GFE or the HD Audio driver.

For what it's worth, the 353.62 driver has been working really well for me so far on Windows 8.1.
 
Thank you. It's just a black-screen, no errors, then the computer reboots.

My event log shows Event 41, Kernel-Power. I've tried playing 5 times and it looks like the same event for every crash.

I am using the most current driver.
 
Ah, the power issue... I've been fighting this for awhile in my system, as well. Funnily enough I was able to run SLI GTX 780s in this system with no issues. As soon as I installed a single Titan X, which has the same TDP as one 780, my system would reboot while playing certain games (The Witcher, Titan Quest, Path of Exile... all DX9 games that are not GPU-intensive).

What I think is happening is aggressive timings in the power table that NVIDIA implemented in Maxwell for power saving purposes. In the cases of the games I point out, there are times when the core clock and power usage would drop through the floor a couple of minutes before the system reset. The only way that I seem to have gotten a handle on it was to flash a custom BIOS that effectively disables Boost by keeping the clock and voltage the same in 3D applications no matter the load.

The latest driver should have a supposed fix with more lax timings that were added in a previous driver, but the issue is still there while playing Path of Exile.

This issue might be more pronounced on your system, going from a power hungry Crossfire setup to a single low-power card. Power supplies are less efficient at low power demands compared to their max output.
 
Set power management mode to maximum instead of adaptive in the NVidia 3d settings and see if that helps. If it does use NVidia inspector to create a custom profile for your games where max power management is needed.
 
Ugh. Well, I can run Furmark and stress the card out for 10 minutes and no crash. But if I play Company of Heroes for 5 minutes it crashes.

If it is the power issue, are there any other solutions or do I need to return the card for something different? Perhaps different BIOS settings?

Thanks.
 
Ugh. Well, I can run Furmark and stress the card out for 10 minutes and no crash. But if I play Company of Heroes for 5 minutes it crashes.

If it is the power issue, are there any other solutions or do I need to return the card for something different? Perhaps different BIOS settings?

Thanks.
You can try changing the Power Management setting in the control panel. It might work for you. In my case it just delayed how long I could play before my system would reset.

Who is the AIB manufacturer of your card? Is it factory overclocked?
 
I tried DDU and then reinstall minimal components; driver and Physix only.

It's an ASUS card and it is factory overclocked. It's strange that a Furmark stress test won't reveal the power issue, but this CoH game can't run for more than 5 minutes.

I'm trying the power management suggestion next. Thanks guys.
 
I have a Gigabyte 970 GTX (shortie) in my NCase box and I just had to RMA it myself. It was running along then bloop ... crashed. Worked perfectly fine since I bought it last December ... ran it at stock speeds and had a fan blowing in addition to the oem cooler. Waiting to see what they say. If nothing else, I'm going to be switching (for my SFF PC) to the R9 Nano when that comes out.
 
Have you tried reinstalling Company of Heroes? Do you have a spare hard drive lying around that you could reinstall Windows?
 
It's not just Company Heroes, it's any game. CoH lasts about 5-10 minutes until crash, other, more intensive games crash faster.

Taking Power Management off of Maximum didn't help either. :(
 
If you install MSI AB and downclock the gpu+vram, does it all stop crashing?
 
I've got MSI AB installed. I've looked around, but I can't find how to downclock. Please let me know, thanks.
 
ASUS is telling me I need I PCI 3.0 and I only have PCI 2.0. Does that make any sense?
 
I would bet money it is the low gpu utilization issue some of the 970's had.

A modded bios will fix this issue.
 
How do I find a modded bios? I have an ASUS P8P67 Deluxe (rev. 3.0) motherboard. I just flashed it all the way up to the most recent firmware and it's still crashing.
 
How do I find a modded bios? I have an ASUS P8P67 Deluxe (rev. 3.0) motherboard. I just flashed it all the way up to the most recent firmware and it's still crashing.

The gpu bios. You need to set a constant voltage in the bios for 3D load. Whatever voltage you get in-game for your highest gpu boost bin that is stable. This varies from card to card. Then when gpu boost becomes too aggressive in low gpu util situations the voltage will stay constant even during bin changes.

Many people at OCN had this issue when maxwell released.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...k-gathering-low-gpu-load-and-other-issues-/1/

https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-off...0-and-gtx-980-graphics-card?just_created=true
 
OK, thank you. I'm not sophisticated enough with this hardware to jump right in and change a setting like that. Could you dumb it down just a little on how to do this? Would I do this through MSI AB? I do see a Force Constant Voltage setting there.Otherwise, I don't see a way to access the voltage settings.

Thanks.
 
OK, thank you. I'm not sophisticated enough with this hardware to jump right in and change a setting like that. Could you dumb it down just a little on how to do this? Would I do this through MSI AB? I do see a Force Constant Voltage setting there.Otherwise, I don't see a way to access the voltage settings.

Thanks.

I am not sure about force constant through AB, but it may work. You can try using KBoost in PrecisionX while gaming; make sure to disable Kboost when you are done using 3D mode. If you don't get any crashes using KBoost then you likely have the GPU util bug.

The other way of doing this is flashing your vbios to use different voltages -- which is a bit more complicated.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/861062/kboost-to-fix-gtx-970-/?offset=1
 
OK thanks. So it seems like this may be a fairly common issue for this card, but not necessarily an issue with every single card. Perhaps I should just swap it for another 970 and hope the next one does not have this issue?
 
If you just got the card that would probably be the best route to take-- especially if you are having issues at stock clocks and voltages.

Yeah it is a pretty common bug.
 
Just FYI, but Essence Engine games (Company of Heroes 1/2, Dawn of War 2) are notoriously unstable on NVIDIA hardware.

On my 980 Ti I had to force maximum performance, disable G-Sync, and enable Windows 7 compatibility/admin rights to stop the crashes.
 
Thanks all.

No, still running Windows 7; I've been too afraid to upgrade to Windows 10. Is that recommended?

Just to clarify, is this power instability bug inherent to all GTX 970s? Or if I swap this card for another one do I stand a decent chance of getting a card with no issues?

Finally, if I need to get a different card altogether that has similar performance to the 970, what is recommended?

Thanks.
 
Thanks all.

No, still running Windows 7; I've been too afraid to upgrade to Windows 10. Is that recommended?

Just to clarify, is this power instability bug inherent to all GTX 970s? Or if I swap this card for another one do I stand a decent chance of getting a card with no issues?

Finally, if I need to get a different card altogether that has similar performance to the 970, what is recommended?

Thanks.

The recommendations you have are all good ones.

First, what is your PSU?
Second, have you looked at your system? Is the CPU overclocked?
Is your RAM all normal?
Third, it was suggested to downclock via MSI Afterburner....that's a really good suggestion.....you D/L Afterburner from Guru 3D.
you then make a profile to run the card at stock settings....it's easy, the instructions are all on Afterburner help file.
Fourth, I'd run Memtest on your RAM....I had a similar issue a while back, one of my Ram sticks had gone bad.

Last, if you have an ASUS GPU and it needs RMA....God be with you. If it's less than 30 days, you're lucky and can send the GPU back to the retailer and not deal with Asus customer service. They will put the blame squarely on you.:(
 
I won't have any issues returning the card. I bought it at MicroCenter in Mpls. MN and that place is awesome :) I'm just trying to figure out if it's a bug with my card and if I get another of the same type will I have the same issue.
 
I won't have any issues returning the card. I bought it at MicroCenter in Mpls. MN and that place is awesome :) I'm just trying to figure out if it's a bug with my card and if I get another of the same type will I have the same issue.
If it's within the window I would just return it for another. I wouldn't think that you'd have anything to lose.
 
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