Leadtek 6800gt Corruption/Freezes, HELP!

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MasterShake

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
392
Hi. I have been having problems ocing my Leadtek 6800gt. I'm currently using a bfg 6800 ultra oc bios on it and have used the leadtek gt bios with a .1 increase on the voltage to get higher overclocks. The problem is that sometimes it will freeze up and become corrupted and sometimes reboot. I can usually get it to run aquamark and sometimes 3dmark a few times and it shows a big increase in scores and games usually run fine for a while. But if I play for extended periods of time or loop a benchmark a few times it will usually freeze and show a corrupted screen. It looks like when you would not have an old nintendo game in all the way or if the connection was dirty. I have tried all sorts of drivers and read the forums about the 6800 problems, but I don't have problems with freezes every few seconds or anything like that, just hard locks when I overclock higher. I think it is either the power supply, possibly the card, or heat. The leadtek has a very nice large heatsink. The problem could be my case though. It's a Silverstone tejmin 6. It's one of the ones with the reverse motherboard tray and it keeps the cpu components separated in a windtunnel, but it uses the power supply fan for the exhaust and an 80mm fan for the intake to cool the pci and agp cards as well as the 3 hard drives I have running. I currently have a 400 watt sparkle/fortron supply. The motherboard monitor says the 12v is very very low, but I don't think I trust it. It does fluctate a little however. I'm looking at getting a seasonic s12-430 supply with a 120mm fan, but I can't really afford it right now and an nv silencer 5 would be more affordable. I don't want to buy it if that's not the problem and if it's the card or something else that's bad. Plus I would void the warranty and not be able to get a replacement. I have had this card running at 445/1200 before, and I really want it to be able to run stable that way. I hope you guys can help. Thanks. :)
 
First of all, you should really use paragraphs, makes it much more readable.

It seems that coolings your issue. What are your temps like with the bios that has a slightly higher voltage? Hard locking after a period of time indicates the system is running fine, until the heat builds up enough that it causes youre system to crash.

Also, if you keep it overclocked with higher voltage for long periods of time in high heat, you can damage the card through electro migration and just heat damage. In another words, if you've been running the card in high heat conditions overclocked for a long period time, it may just be your chip has degraded in quality and cna't operate at quite as high a frequency as before.


My recommendation is to invest in more case fans if you have the space for it. If not, definately look into getting a Silencer 5 since it exhausts the air out of the case instead of recirculating.

Also, if you're 12v is low, that can cause instability, and similarly, heat will cause the voltages to drop even lower and cause instability.

It seems you have a lot of holes to plug there.
 
I haven't been running it for very long with the increased voltages. I hope it isn't a problem since the 6800 ultra model is basically the same design and heatsink. I would stick some more case fans in it, but my case doesn't have anywhere to add any extra ones. The video card is idling at 55 degrees right now. I've seen it run in the upper 60's when I am playing games, I'm not sure what it hits when it crashes. The rest of the system is completely stable in Prime95 overnight, so I don't think that's it. I'll set a box fan beside the case and see if it still crashes...
 
Even with a huge fan blowing air through the case it still freezes. I don't think it's a heat problem, not with that huge heatsink on there....
 
I don't have alot of time, but all you need to know is that I just ran into and corrected the same/very similar problem with my system in signature while running SWAT4 which is a pretty detailed game... The problem was not heat, it was not drivers, it was not PCI latency, and it was not my power supply. Try lowering your FSB/DDR speed. That's what fixed mine. ( I couldn't stop freezing when it was at DDR440 (220 FSB), but I could play all day at DDR434 (217 FSB) 2-3-6-2-1Twrt-1Trwt-1T@ 3.1v without freezing
 
did you get the lock-ups and artifacts or texture corruption prior to oc'ing and the voltmod?

try setting your system back to default and run your 3d apps/games and see if you still have these problems.

it sounds like your powersupply isnt up to par. i had the same problem with my 9800pro/6800gt with my old vantec 520a but when running with low end videocards like the 4600 and 7500 no problems what so ever. when i got the psu replaced (pcp&c 510sli) no more problems. i do run into problems sometimes i really think the 6800gts stock coolers are total shit especially if you dont have good air flow in your case.

*i think it is a combo of heat and psu. as suggested above try getting more fans and see where you go from there.
 
I figured out it wasn't the heat. The leadtek has a MASSIVE cooler, and the same one is on the ultra as the gt.

I haven't ruled out the power supply (400w sparkle/fortron), I got it because of an anandtech recommendation after lots of research last year. The motherboard monitor says the voltages are low, which I don't really trust, but they do fluctuate when I'm even just listening to music and browsing the web.

I actually had a Seasonic s12-430 picked out, but I don't have the money at the moment.

I used to run my ram at 400 Mhz when I first got it and it still did the same thing. Now I run it at 480 @ 2.75v. I'm not sure it's that either.

It would still freeze on my girlfriend when she was playing halo (I got her into computer games, haha) or it would crash to the desktop when it had the stock bios and was at 400/1080, which is very conservative for this board considering it's heatsink and how well it is known to overclock.

Today I said screw it and got an rma from Leadtek. There was a bad batch of their 6800gt's a while back, I suppose I may have gotten one of those. I mine as well make sure that I have one of the newer ones and be sure it's not the card since I don't have the money to buy any new parts at the moment anyway. Their support was nothing sort of amazing by the way. I got a response from tech support within 15 minutes of filling out the form on their website, they asked if I tried a few things, I said yes and then they sent me the rma form. I filled it out and within 5 minutes (!!) I had my rma number. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LEADTEK!

To make things even more bizarre, when I came home my girlfriend said the computer wasn't working anymore. The computer would not boot, I just got a 31k on the monitor and a long beep. The card is now dead I think.... I'm sending it back tomorrow anyway. And thank god I still have my trusty Leadtek 5900xt to use in the meantime. I have used so many bioses on that thing and I oc the hell out of it. It is great. I almost got rid of it, thank god I didn't. I do wish the cooling was better on it though, but it still hits 456/930.

I really need to get a multimeter to check my power supply to see what the voltages are and possibly invest in an nv silencer 5 because of the way my silverstone tejmin 6 case is laid out. I'm really not looking forward to lapping it like it sounds like you really have to do get good contact. I will keep you updated to see how the new card works.

The card actually has a bfg bios on it right now. I was going to switch it back before I sent it back. I hope they don't notice. Will they test it, or just send me a new one? ;)

I really hope I can get this all worked out, I got this 6800gt specifically for it's potential and I have not been let down by nvidia or leadtek yet. I love the nf2 and nf3 and have had at least 5 of nvidia's mobos.

Sorry for the rambling, I just got home and am starting to get the buzz on. Thanks everyone for your input.
 
charles555 said:
I don't have alot of time, but all you need to know is that I just ran into and corrected the same/very similar problem with my system in signature while running SWAT4 which is a pretty detailed game... The problem was not heat, it was not drivers, it was not PCI latency, and it was not my power supply. Try lowering your FSB/DDR speed. That's what fixed mine. ( I couldn't stop freezing when it was at DDR440 (220 FSB), but I could play all day at DDR434 (217 FSB) 2-3-6-2-1Twrt-1Trwt-1T@ 3.1v without freezing
Click to expand...

Charles did you have stutters and freezing here and there or complete lockups and reboots? I am having the latter.
 
OK, I'm sure that I'm just not understanding the issue correctly.......why didn't you try flashing back to a leadtech GT bios to see if that would remedy your problems? It strikes me that the issue you're having is because you OCed too much. Why not identify whether or not the card itself is bad by slapping in a PCI videocard and then flashing your videocard to a leadtek bios? While I'm not a member of the camp claiming that you shouldn't necessarily RMA what you've modded (and you did increase voltage, so there was a mod) by why wouldn't you do a complete analysis of the problem prior to RMAing? Did you have problems with the card when it was running stock? Did you try dialing down your OC to the 350/1000 clocks that the card ships with?

As a note, RMAing because you can't OC the card hardcore...that's not really what an RMA is for; it's for defective products that don't run at their stock speeds. As far as I can tell, you haven't gone through the steps necessary to determine if you have, for sure, a fucked up card, and in abusing Leadtek's kickass RMA, there is always the risk that they revise their policy to something like gigabytes or XFX's.
 
It would do the same thing with the stock bios and at stock settings, although it would take longer to do it. If you played a game for an extended period of time or ran extended stress tests it would freeze or lockup with a corrupt screen. The corrupt screen would have led me to believe it was a heat problem, but there shouldn't be one at 350/1000. In some of the forums they said that switching to a different bios or using the volt mod (.1v) would make it more stable. I guess it didn't. And sometimes after rebooted from the corrupt screen the bios would even be extremely corrupted, all the way into windows (with the original bios). So I'm really not sure what the problem was. I really wish I didn't have that other bios on there when I'm going to rma it, I hope I didn't screw myself over. I just thought I should try to find the problem myself before going through the whole rma process and having to wait weeks for a card that might have the same issues. The same problems would occur with the stock bios at stock settings, even in other computers.

By the way, I don't think the bios is the reason the card isn't working now. It has been working for a while with it and I have used it before. I don't know what is wrong with the card now. I feel really terrible about the whole thing and I hope it is not my fault but who knows. Leadtek can be sure that I will be a customer for life and I will never buy any other card for my own personal computer and use only their cards in the ones I build for people. I hope that at least makes it a little better.
 
MasterShake said:
Charles did you have stutters and freezing here and there or complete lockups and reboots? I am having the latter.
Click to expand...

For me it would just be running perfectly smoothly, and than X. Lockup.

It would probably sit there on the same frame and same sound sample for ever if I let it, but I hit reboot so I could get back on.
 
hi all,sorry about my spelling lol but im gonna try and help you out if you r haveing problems with your leadtek 6800gt,right i got my leadtek about 5 days ago and ive only just got it to work about 30 minits ago,right what my card was doing was frezzing up and green blue red yeallow all over my screen as thow my card was ready for the bin,i tryed everything i thort like new power pack about 10 diffent drivers more case fans i even put a big fan on the top of the card and it was still the same,i then took the heatsink off the 6800gt and put new grease on the chips and guess what ?still the same.i formatted my pc 3 times too still no go anyway ill get on with it shall i.i did try even more things to fix the problem thow,right how i fixed the problem was i downloaded a programm called winfox for the leadtek 6800 gt,in the programm it lets you update the bios on the card useing windows xp,i mean you can do it in windowns xp,you do not need to make a boot floppy disk which was easy,i then done a search online for the leadtek 6800gt tdh bios update it took me some time to find the bios but keeping looking and you will find it ok,anyway i put the new bios on my card restarted my pc and bingo my card works fine and now im so happy cos i thort my card was fucked so go update your bios useing winfox and im sure that it should work for you to hopefully,hope this helps alot of good people laters all
 
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