nvidia problems on fermi

[chrcoluk]

Ok after a single driver recovered error from simply using VLC player (thankfully hasnt happened again) I did some research, and found out some worrying things on nvidias new cards.

First there is a long thread on evga's forums about black screens and driver recovery errors on desktop usage, from many 400 series owners and a few 500 series as well. It seems to be mostly 460 owners. A similiar story on the nvidia forums which again is mostly 460 owners. This has happened for over a year with no apparent fix from nvidia which leads me to suspect possible hardware flaw and might explain the seemingly cheapness of 460 versus weaker models. The fix that seems to most consistently work is disabling adaptive power management which suggests it has an issue under low voltage or C-STATES.

I also discovered that nvidia themselves are telling people using fumark may break their cards and not to use the app, especially on the high end cards like the GTX 580, people had parts of their card burning out from running it and power consumption above pci-e specs. I ran fumark myself before viewing the thread over there, and my card was ok but of course its a middle end card not top end and temps still reached 79C under fumark whilst in oblivion its barely above 50.

However here on hardforum I have not read a single post regarding desktop stability issues or cards blowing up

Interesting stories and I wont care as long as I have no further issues with the card.

 

[kirbyrj]

I have issues with driver recovery errors with my 460. No problems in games, but a couple times a day it will crap out on me when I'm browsing. I'm going to try the adaptive power fix now (if I can find it).

Edit: I just changed the settings for my browsers to "Max Performance" so let me see if that makes any difference.

 

[Naieve]

Furmark is throttled by Nvidia drivers, and i never run my cards on adaptive because its a straight gaming computer so I don't know about black screens.

As to PCI-E power, that was indeed a problem. If you use 2 or more 480/580 cards you really should have a mobo with a molex connector to feed additional power to the pci-e bus. This is where the interesting story comes in, you see I didn't know it exceeded the power the 24 pin ATX could supply to the PCI-E bus, and I was running tri-sli with a factory overclocked EVGA card in the lead, which pushed all the cards to 775, which seems to be the magic number for 480's to cause a meltdown. After a few months the 24 pin ATX melted the power supply and motherboard connection. Forcing me to RMA both motherboard and power supply.

Thankfully Gigabyte and Antec took good care of me, and I was up and running a week and a half later.

As to cards burning out, from what I understand they used crappier capacitors on the 500 series, especially the 570's, which caused cards to burn out. My 480's are still going strong though, as I think they went with good parts due to the fact the gf100 chips are power hogs. As long as your system is setup to supply the necessary power to the cards without over stressing any connections, they run just fine.

Kirbyrj

Just right click on desktop, open Nvidia Control Panel, go to manage 3d settings, and make sure you are on the global profile tab. Then look for power management and switch it to performance.

 

[kirbyrj]

Kirbyrj

Just right click on desktop, open Nvidia Control Panel, go to manage 3d settings, and make sure you are on the global profile tab. Then look for power management and switch it to performance.

Thanks...I did it on the global setting instead of just on the individual programs.

 

[NIVO]

I havent had a single issue with my card until Nvidia's release of the beta driver for beta of BF3. And with the next release(285.62 WHQL). Ive had kernel error(display driver has recovered from issue) just sitting idle on desktop. I have had a DirectX memory error Create buffer blah blah failed with E_OUTOFMEMORY error. Ive uninstalled, gone to safe mode, reinstalled. Tried countless fixes that would take over 4 pages to list. Still unstable as hell. But what can you do? You need the driver to run. My card is a Gigabyte GTX460 SOC, never gets above 63c and is whisper quiet thx to aftermarket cooling on it. But yes there is a definite issue that seems to be even more exposed now due to BF3 getting attention and pushing some hardware. Havent seen Nvidia release a statement at all, and it needs more attention to get to the bottom of the matter. Tons and tons of posts in Battlelog forums regarding the issues at hand on a huge range of cards with 460 and 560 Ti seeming to be the most widely affected. Perhaps [H] could use their Wondertwin powers to help us get some attention to the matter.

 

[chrcoluk]

I have issues with driver recovery errors with my 460. No problems in games, but a couple times a day it will crap out on me when I'm browsing. I'm going to try the adaptive power fix now (if I can find it).

Edit: I just changed the settings for my browsers to "Max Performance" so let me see if that makes any difference.

Let us know if works thanks.

I wont be happy if I have to do the same as then I will be using about 150 watts power just to browse and use desktop apps. But I guess it beats crashes.

Just done some more readong as well, in regards to BF3 and crashes, mostly from people with 500 series cards, again low voltages seems to be the common factor. I have a sneaky feeling nvidia slightly underestimated the required power to run these cards stable. I have had no issues in 3d apps/games myself just that desktop issue.

 

[DualOwn]

I havent had a single issue with my card until Nvidia's release of the beta driver for beta of BF3. And with the next release(285.62 WHQL). Ive had kernel error(display driver has recovered from issue) just sitting idle on desktop. I have had a DirectX memory error Create buffer blah blah failed with E_OUTOFMEMORY error. Ive uninstalled, gone to safe mode, reinstalled. Tried countless fixes that would take over 4 pages to list. Still unstable as hell. But what can you do? You need the driver to run. My card is a Gigabyte GTX460 SOC, never gets above 63c and is whisper quiet thx to aftermarket cooling on it. But yes there is a definite issue that seems to be even more exposed now due to BF3 getting attention and pushing some hardware. Havent seen Nvidia release a statement at all, and it needs more attention to get to the bottom of the matter. Tons and tons of posts in Battlelog forums regarding the issues at hand on a huge range of cards with 460 and 560 Ti seeming to be the most widely affected. Perhaps [H] could use their Wondertwin powers to help us get some attention to the matter.

your problem is not everyone's problem.

dont forget that there are people out there who think they can cheat with cheap hardware.

ive seen people buying 700-800w power supplies for $30-$40 dollars and think they can get away with it.

i bet most people here dont check all the power supplies that people buy.

click on this link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

look how many people think they can get away with it, some dumb noobs are commenting why they cant run 560/570/580 gpu's with them cheap ass power supplies.

thats's just one example, there software based errors that noobs make too.

just because few people r having problems out of millions doesnt mean the product is no good.

 

[bryanw1995]

Ok after a single driver recovered error from simply using VLC player (thankfully hasnt happened again) I did some research, and found out some worrying things on nvidias new cards.

First there is a long thread on evga's forums about black screens and driver recovery errors on desktop usage, from many 400 series owners and a few 500 series as well. It seems to be mostly 460 owners. A similiar story on the nvidia forums which again is mostly 460 owners. This has happened for over a year with no apparent fix from nvidia which leads me to suspect possible hardware flaw and might explain the seemingly cheapness of 460 versus weaker models. The fix that seems to most consistently work is disabling adaptive power management which suggests it has an issue under low voltage or C-STATES.

I also discovered that nvidia themselves are telling people using fumark may break their cards and not to use the app, especially on the high end cards like the GTX 580, people had parts of their card burning out from running it and power consumption above pci-e specs. I ran fumark myself before viewing the thread over there, and my card was ok but of course its a middle end card not top end and temps still reached 79C under fumark whilst in oblivion its barely above 50.

However here on hardforum I have not read a single post regarding desktop stability issues or cards blowing up

Interesting stories and I wont care as long as I have no further issues with the card.

This is very strange, I didn't notice this problem for over a year on my gtx 460 768, but in the past few weeks it has happened regularly (several times/day) when I'm just browsing the desktop. No issues at all in games, however, and I did just update my drivers, so I am almost certain that the issue is driver-related. Regardless, I don't care now since I just got a gtx 480 and the 460 is for sale.

 

[kirbyrj]

your problem is not everyone's problem.

dont forget that there are people out there who think they can cheat with cheap hardware.

ive seen people buying 700-800w power supplies for $30-$40 dollars and think they can get away with it.

i bet most people here dont check all the power supplies that people buy.

click on this link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

look how many people think they can get away with it, some dumb noobs are commenting why they cant run 560/570/580 gpu's with them cheap ass power supplies.

thats's just one example, there software based errors that noobs make too.

just because few people r having problems out of millions doesnt mean the product is no good.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=181

That's the power supply I have with a single 460 1GB and I have issues (Summary - Rated it an 8, rebranded Seasonic...I got it for $50 a year ago). I wouldn't say that everyone is just a dumb noob who has problems. I had issues and it wasn't even when there would be a load on the card.

 

[kirbyrj]

This is very strange, I didn't notice this problem for over a year on my gtx 460 768, but in the past few weeks it has happened regularly (several times/day) when I'm just browsing the desktop. No issues at all in games, however, and I did just update my drivers, so I am almost certain that the issue is driver-related. Regardless, I don't care now since I just got a gtx 480 and the 460 is for sale.

I bet Nvidia got more aggressive in their power management in later released drivers. I had the same card in my old X58/i7 970 setup and had no issues at all with it. When I moved to a Z68/2500k, I started having the issues. It might have been the fact that I downloaded the newest driver available when I switched.

 

[chrcoluk]

your problem is not everyone's problem.

dont forget that there are people out there who think they can cheat with cheap hardware.

ive seen people buying 700-800w power supplies for $30-$40 dollars and think they can get away with it.

i bet most people here dont check all the power supplies that people buy.

click on this link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

look how many people think they can get away with it, some dumb noobs are commenting why they cant run 560/570/580 gpu's with them cheap ass power supplies.

thats's just one example, there software based errors that noobs make too.

just because few people r having problems out of millions doesnt mean the product is no good.

Someone said the same to me on nvidia forums blaming my PSU until I reminded him my psu was £80 (140 usd). Plus a lot of complaints are from ex gtx 280 owners which if I am not mistaken had higher power demands than the gtx 460.

Also if a card is crashing in 2d (lower load/voltage) but stable in 3d, does that sound like a psu issue?

 

[chrcoluk]

This is very strange, I didn't notice this problem for over a year on my gtx 460 768, but in the past few weeks it has happened regularly (several times/day) when I'm just browsing the desktop. No issues at all in games, however, and I did just update my drivers, so I am almost certain that the issue is driver-related. Regardless, I don't care now since I just got a gtx 480 and the 460 is for sale.

ok so on older drivers the issue didntexist, newer drivers it appeared and then I assume the gtx 480 is fine on the newer drivers?

Come to think of it I dont recall reading a single gtx 480 complaint.

 

[bryanw1995]

I bet Nvidia got more aggressive in their power management in later released drivers. I had the same card in my old X58/i7 970 setup and had no issues at all with it. When I moved to a Z68/2500k, I started having the issues. It might have been the fact that I downloaded the newest driver available when I switched.

Yeah, this is clearly driver-related. And everybody claiming that it is a psu issues needs to question why it's only happening in 2d/desktop mode instead of during heavy gaming. They need to tweak their driver a bit apparently.

 

[samuelmorris]

There have always been hardware problems with GTX460s (and to a lesser extent with other Fermi cards) but they only manifest themselves in some systems. The recent changes made in the drivers to power control have shown up a fair few more of them, however. If you've never had any problems before and had a VPU recover in VLC though, that's probably just a failed video being 3D accelerated. There's usually no protection against programs crashing that run on the GPU, so if the program randomly crashes or you load something where the codecs aren't adequate to play it, you can quite easily VPU recover, or BSOD the system.