GTX285... not uplocking?

[Vycka]

Sometimes, when playing a game(any game, really), the screen goes dark for a couple of seconds. After it goes back to normal, there is a pretty sharp drop in FPS. The reason for this? The GPU starts to run at 2D clock speeds. The only fix I found is to restart the PC.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, i7 920, 4GB of RAM, and a GTX285. I'm currently running the latest drivers(258.96), even though this has been happening for quite a while now(probably for several months now) with many different driver releases. I have tried a clean driver install using Driver Sweeper, but I swear it only increased the frequency of this... bug, glitch, whatever. It now happens twice a day or so.

Can anyone tell me what the hell is going on here and how do I fix this for good? I just hope it's not a problem with the GPU itself.

-Thanks for your help in advance.

EDIT: I have ruled out overheating. I have custom fan controls set up and the temps don't go beyond 75C or 76C. Sometimes it happens right at the start of the game: before the GPU had any real chance to even warm up.

 

[Plumber4life]

Actually some games will not like quake 2 unless you change from adaptive power management to performance in the nvcpl or the profiles, actually depends on the game. I play alot of quake 2 and the only way it will clock up for me is to change it in Power section of nvcpl. Some games that are old are just not that demanding enough on the card is all. Just change it in the profile of the game and all will be fine but you will get a little higher temps then.

 

[Vycka]

Actually some games will not like quake 2 unless you change from adaptive power management to performance in the nvcpl or the profiles, actually depends on the game. I play alot of quake 2 and the only way it will clock up for me is to change it in Power section of nvcpl. Some games that are old are just not that demanding enough on the card is all. Just change it in the profile of the game and all will be fine but you will get a little higher temps then.

Thanks, but this happens while playing modern and demanding games.

EDIT: I set "Prefer maximum performance" in NVIDIA Control Panel, but it didn't help: the card is still running at 2D clocks even when playing Crysis and such.

 

[dinlee23]

why dont you just RMA it, sounds defective to me

 

[Vycka]

I am almost convinced that this is a software issue after this latest development. I just had one of those "black-outs", but this time I minimized the game immediately after it happened and there was a warning message by my taskbar saying "Display Driver Stopped Responding and Has Recovered." There was more, but I couldn't get it in time.

EDIT: Now another thing I noticed is that it happens just after loading screens or just before starting a level or a cinematic; never in the middle of actual gameplay.