Display Driver Error, please help

[Furious911]

Hey fellas I have been experiencing my screen either flickering and going black, or just going black for a second and then coming back, then when I alt-tab I see this error:

I have tried different drivers and it dosen't seem to work, this seems to happen in SLI and mostly in World of Warcraft, in fact I was having this issue with the new beta drivers in WoW and COD4 and I switched to the 169 drivers and COD4 was fine but I keep getting this is WoW, and when I turn SLI off I'm good in WoW. When it does happen the games seem to recover but its really annoying, and I did get 1 hard crash in COD4.

Anyway I read that someone fixed it by setting their 680i board to sync and link or something like that, I suck at BIOS so I don't know what that means exactly. I overclock my system (very mildly) with nvidias software. I guess what I read was that the 680i was having memory issues, and it kinda seems like my motherboard doesn't have my RAM setup right, heres my RAM:

So its 4-4-4-12 which is supposed to be fast and why I picked it but in the BIOS and also in nvidias software it looks like its setup wrong, see:

I didn't want to mess with it because I have no idea what all those other options are or how they fit together. I figured I might screw it up worse, if I could get some guidance that would be really awesome, again I suck at BIOS and thats why I'm doing it this way, plus I looked in the Phoenix BIOS and it seems really limited or maybe I just don't understand it.

Anyway here are my basic system specs:
CPU: E6750 2.66Ghz
Mobo: EVGA 680i SLI
Mem: Crucial Ballistic Tracer 2x1gig and 2x512mb 3gigs total
GPU: 2 EVGA 8800GTs 600Mhz clock default
PSU: Corsair 750W

Here are also the rest of my system specs the way I have them overclocked:

CPU:

Motherboard: I haven't changed anything because I don't know what it means, maybe I need to.

Video: I changed the clock, mem and shader to reflect the highest EVGA card w/ same cooling.

Thanks for any advice or guidance and I think I really need some. You guys are always helpful and knowledgeable and I appreciate it.

 

[thrawn86]

finally a help post with some effort. I would have preferred cpu-z (so we could see ratios/multis/etc) and temps, but A+ nonetheless.

1)maybe I missed this, but uhm... have you tried going back to bone stock?
2)run the torture and artifact tests in ATItool. I'm curious to see if the problems repeat and how fast you start getting artifacts. note what kind of artifacts they are (shape tearing or snow/noise)

also: what interface/program is that? I've never seen it before, what are we looking at?

 

[Furious911]

that software was a new version of ntune, not sure its called that anymore but basically its the nvidia software that overclocks in windows. I turned it off to see if I could so it all in the BIOS and here where I'm at I wanna see if I did this right:

Again I have a E6750 Core 2 Duo, its stock is 2.66 its FSB is 1333 and x8 multiplier

This is my CPUz after I changed some stuff in the BIOS which Ill show what I did below:

This first one is my system clock, I left it alone, at x8 multiplier, I don't know if this is right or if I should make this lower and make something else higher...

This second one is my FSB and memory config, I switched it to Linked and Sync Mode from the auto that it was at. I heard this can fix the drivers failed issue I was getting, and also this is where I overclocked the CPU in the FSB (QRD) Mhz area, because it was the only place I could figure out how to do it. I don't know if raising this was the right thing to do but it did get my CPU to 3Ghz, I think this is how you do it, not 100% sure tho, would like some advice:

This third pic is where I messed with my memory timing, it was set to 5-5-5-18 or something and my memory as shown on the first post is 4-4-4-12 and so I think I set it right, again let me know if I did something wrong:

The fourth screen is more CPU stuff I didn't touch because I don't know what it means:

This screen is voltages, I guess this is important but I don't know what I can and cant do as far as what my CPU can take, its set to auto so I assume its correct but again I don't know for sure:

Last is a pic of my temps, they seem ok I think, but I don't know my exact thresholds, I think I read no higher then 65-75 on CPU and 80-90 on GPU?

Also I don't see any artifacts in games, tearing etc, just goes black and then I get that error above in the first post and the game plays again, very weird.

Thanks fellas!

 

[thrawn86]

I can't imagine its a cpu stability issue, seeing as how you're only at 375x8@1.4v. note: why not run 400x7.5 ? either way, you can run the prime95 tests on your own and verify cpu/memory/gpu stability. the absolute quickest way to see whether its a hardware issue would be to reload optimal even failsafe bios defaults and try it out. (btw if you have any sort of issues with your ram in prime95, it probably wants more voltage. 1.85 isn't a lot)

I know you might not experience tearing in games, but ati tool will tell you for sure. if I clock my video card up too high cod4 will do the exact same thing as yours is doing after a few minutes, but will fail ati tool almost instantly.

again, thanks for posting all your info/pics/etc. You have no idea how helpful that is.

 

[Furious911]

Cool man thanks, Ill run ati too tonight and check that out. Is there a reason I should be running with a lower multiplier and upping my FSB instead of that way I'm doing it now? Would it be cooler? I know after a 3DMark score last night it seemed to hit 60 at one point which seems high, I ran Crysis after that for about 30 min and I think it was in the high 40s to low 50s.

 

[Syribo]

I was just having the same exact problems and exact same error messages on my new build... Try each video card separately... take one out and disable SLI, then do the same for the other. See if it messes up for each one.

Mine has been stable for about a week now after doing this and having one of my 8800GTS cards fail right away, and the other fine... RMAd the 'bad card' to NewEgg and should be getting the replacement tomorrow. I also reinstalled Vista and didn't install the Nforce Network drivers.

 

[Furious911]

well I messed with this all weekend, and I'm still getting these display errors, I guess I'm gonna put everything back to non overclocked status and see what happens (I dont think this will actually help tho), which is a damn shame, especially considering my rig was out performing my 2 buddies that they built, but they aren't getting any driver failing errors in any games. F!

 

[Furious911]

Do you guys think this is power related? I have a Corsair 750W.