Video card troubleshooting

J

jvlazzar

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
107
i7 970, GTX 670, eVGA x58 mobo, corsair 850hx,

Nothing has changed but over the past few months I've been getting random Nvidia driver crashes, system reboots, and unresponsive black screens. After trying 5 different Nvidia driver versions (using DDU after each attempt), I suspected a video card hardware issue so I swapped in a spare GTX 260 and all the issues went away.

I RMA'd the GTX 670 with Gigabyte however after "exhaustive testing" the card passed and showed no apparent issues. I re-installed the card after receiving it back from Gigabyte and the same issues arose immediately. Tried the video card in another system (i7 930, MSI X58M) and the issues definitely follows the video card.

Where do I go from here? Fight with Gigabyte, buy another card, etc? This card has plenty of horsepower for the games I play, so I really hate to unnecessarily upgrade.

Thanks in advanced.
 
Have you tried the hotfix drivers? Is the system overclocked? What are the temps? How old is the PSU?
 
Didn't know about the hotfix drivers, I'll give them a shot.

Stock clocks, system is cool; CPU is 20 idle / 60 max GPU is 40 idle / 70 max.

PSU is pretty old and from the original build, about 6 years ago. I thought about the extra draw from the 670 possibly giving it issues. My spare system testing with the i7 930 was using this same Corsair PSU, so it wasn't take out of the equation.

Appreciate the feedback.
 
PSU is a big suspect.
If you have another PSU that is powerful enough for the whole system try that.
If you have one that could power the CPU or GPU, you can use 2 PSUs to power the system to test it.
 
Nenu said:
PSU is a big suspect.
If you have another PSU that is powerful enough for the whole system try that.
If you have one that could power the CPU or GPU, you can use 2 PSUs to power the system to test it.
Click to expand...

I hate the thought of these high end supplys being an issue but its certainly possible. If he has a meter, maybe he can check the voltage rails before and during the crash
 
None of the available hotfix drivers addressed my specific issues...tried them anyways to no avail.

I have a few spare PSU's but none of them had enough pinouts for 2x PCIe power, and I don't have any LP4 to PCIe adapters.

Tbh I'm wary to blame the PSU. I can run furmark and game on this card for hours without issues. As soon as I stop the stress test or exit the game, Windows artifacts and goes to a black screen. Again this was tested against different CPUs, MBs, RAM, Windows 7 installs, etc...same behavior. No idea whats going on here...

If no one else has any bright ideas, I'm just going to replace it. Looking at a GTX 970 or that cheap XFX 290X on Newegg.
 
Also, from a specifications standpoint GTX 260 is just as power hungry, if not more than the GTX 670. The older cards were inefficient...
 
jvlazzar said:
None of the available hotfix drivers addressed my specific issues...tried them anyways to no avail.

I have a few spare PSU's but none of them had enough pinouts for 2x PCIe power, and I don't have any LP4 to PCIe adapters.

Tbh I'm wary to blame the PSU. I can run furmark and game on this card for hours without issues. As soon as I stop the stress test or exit the game, Windows artifacts and goes to a black screen. Again this was tested against different CPUs, MBs, RAM, Windows 7 installs, etc...same behavior. No idea whats going on here...

If no one else has any bright ideas, I'm just going to replace it. Looking at a GTX 970 or that cheap XFX 290X on Newegg.
Click to expand...

have you tried furmark AND a cpu stress test at the same time to just be on the safe side to rule out the power supply? it could be intel burn test or prime95....just to try an pull max wattage. If it does fine maxing both at same time then i have to agree with you that its not the power supply.
 
jvlazzar said:
i7 970, GTX 670, eVGA x58 mobo, corsair 850hx,

Nothing has changed but over the past few months I've been getting random Nvidia driver crashes, system reboots, and unresponsive black screens. After trying 5 different Nvidia driver versions (using DDU after each attempt), I suspected a video card hardware issue so I swapped in a spare GTX 260 and all the issues went away.

I RMA'd the GTX 670 with Gigabyte however after "exhaustive testing" the card passed and showed no apparent issues. I re-installed the card after receiving it back from Gigabyte and the same issues arose immediately. Tried the video card in another system (i7 930, MSI X58M) and the issues definitely follows the video card.

Where do I go from here? Fight with Gigabyte, buy another card, etc? This card has plenty of horsepower for the games I play, so I really hate to unnecessarily upgrade.

Thanks in advanced.
Click to expand...

If the card Gigabyte sent back still has issues, they should replace it. If not Gigabyte sucks.
 
Runt. said:
If the card Gigabyte sent back still has issues, they should replace it. If not Gigabyte sucks.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I've had the same situation happen with Gigabyte. For me, it was the card and I just RMA'd it again and the 2nd replacement was fine.
 
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