Had enough of GPU under-performance and decided to go to the top and just bought myself a ZOTAC GTX 295

Problem is now that pretty much all games are freezing up after a few seconds or few minutes of play. I've been trying for a week to fix it myself and not getting anywhere so I am asking for any help. Perhaps someone has had this happen to them or knows what I must do.

Here's the story as it unfolded.

• Bought and installed the card.
  
• LFS was working okay for a while (maybe 30 mins or so). Good frame rates over 300 etc. on highest settings.
  
• Decided to try out TDU to see if it would get good frame rates to. Was really nice, up near 100 fps, but after playing for a while (10 mins) the game froze and the PC had to be hard reset. This went on again and again.
  
• Installed GRID (which came with the card) to try that out, that was freezing up after less than one lap. Sometimes the display went black, sometimes white, sometimes just showed a single texture blown up to 1000% covering the whole screen, but game was frozen. Sometimes the computer completely froze, sometimes I could eventually get back to desktop and close the crashed app. Event log showed Hung App Grid.
  

Did some research and tried some things to fix it.

• Bios had been recently flashed a couple weeks ago, so no need to here.
  
• Initially was using only one PCI-E power cable from my PSU that had a splitter as part of the PCI-E power cable. One end of the PCI-E cable looks like this. So I decided to use BOTH sets of PCI-E power connector cables from the PSU, each one separately going to each power connector on the GPU. Now each PCI-E connector socket on the card has it's own dedicated cable directly from the PSU. ie, 2 PCI-E cables in use properly.
  
• Installed nvidia performance tools to get some control over the cooling fan. The temps were getting up around 59 degrees when the crash was happening. So I tried forced 100% fan speed while testing to keep it cool as possible. Very noisy :P but still crashing games. Temps were still hovering around the mid 50 degrees anyway.
  
• Disabled PhysX to try lowering power consumption and work done by the GPU
  
• Disabled multi GPU mode. Single GPU mode (I thought maybe the internal SLI was causing issues)
  
• Tried an older driver
  • (edit) 195.62 (newest)
    
  • (edit) 191.07
    
  • 182.50
    
• Tried another recently new Windows installed on another hard drive with nothing installed except for LFS and G25 drivers. So similar to a reformat of Windows.
  
• (edit) Tried resetting Card in main board PCI-E slot.
  
• (edit) Tried lowering clock speeds to half on all GPU clocks
  
• (edit) Tried disconnecting all unecessary hardware, HDDs, FDD, DVD
  
• (edit) Tried Swapping RAM around. Now just using 2GB.
  

But still no closer to fixing the problem. Seems to have become progresively worse. Now if I run LFS it will crash on the starting grid. The game will freeze up, sound looping, then sometimes after maybe 30-60 secs the game will continue, but the textures are messed up, the FFB is gone too stiff and sometime the PC freezes up completely. A total mess. 3DMark06 will start and crash after 1.90 seconds into the first 3D test



Some happy snaps...

At idle everything looks fine


ONCE or TWICE the game crashed and I saw this
wtf? Has one of my cores accidently....?

Game woke up a minute later after a crash, continued to freeze intermittently every 30 seconds or so.


After computer freezes completely and need a hard reset


Closer inspection....


Game was running for about 6 seconds on the start grid. Game started race at Purple vertical line indicator, game froze at blue vertical line indicator. BTW, the GPU Core clock does get to it's peak 576~ MHz when game is running.

System specs..
OS : Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit
CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo e8400 3.0 GHz
RAM : 2x 1GB Team Dark + 1x 2GB AMICRO (3GB visible to WinXP x86)GPU : Zotac GTX 295 1792MB
PSU : Vantec ION2 700W (1 week old)
MB : Gigiabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
SOUND : Onboard Audio
LCD : Samsung 40" 1920x1080 via HDMI cable


My thoughts at this point.... I can't imagine it's a driver issue because the card worked well at first, for about an hour The games ran okay, over time the problem has become worse. Temps seem quite low and using full speed on the cooling fan made no difference and games continue to crash the same. 700W PSU is enough, surely? I was assured when buying the PSU that it would be good enough for this application. I'm thinking the card is a dud from the start. OMG - Has this no Q.A. done on it? It's difficult to return to the store as I bought it while on holiday. I want to try everything I can before the 30 day runs out and before I must resort to a difficult process in returning it.

Thanks in advance for any input or ideas. Sorry for long post, but I've already spent a week trying to diagnose and fix this.

im not the crazy computer buff but i know that there are new nvidia drivers 195.62 WHQL http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_195.62_whql.html

If you wanted to go to the top, you need to buy a HD5970, not that thing.

I'm not too sure what's wrong myself but you should try turning down mem clocks. I always found those to be extremely unstable and there are no real warning signs except lots of crashing under heavy load. Core clocks usually give you some warning like "snow" artifacts if you pushed it past the limit before crashing so it really can't be the core clock's fault, but I can be wrong.

According to the site, the card needs 289W max and it recommends 680W in your system. That all depends on what components you have though so you might want to take a few things off of the system's power to see what happens.

Quote from Bose321 :

If you wanted to go to the top, you need to buy a HD5970, not that thing.

Was wondering how long it would take for that to be said...

Anyway, on topic it definitely sounds like a faulty card. When you say you bought it on holiday do you mean in another country or in a different part of Australia?

Quote from pinoykid13 :

im not the crazy computer buff but i know that there are new nvidia drivers 195.62 WHQL http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_195.62_whql.html

Yes you are correct. I was making this post at work and referred to the wrong files I had downloaded the other day, not the files I had downloaded at home. When I got home today I checked and I had indeed tried that driver first. Very sorry for the "typo" I will ammend my first post.

Thanks for some quick replies.

Quote from Bose321 :

If you wanted to go to the top, you need to buy a HD5970, not that thing.

Yes probably true, I should have said top of nVidia I bought a HD4890 about 5 weeks ago. Nothing but disaster with software incomaptibilties, driver issues with ATI and very annoyed with it. I tried my best, but gave up now, card is shelved. So very annoyed and frustrated. Don't want another trip down that route of pain so decided to give nVidia a go. I thought a gtx295 might be good enough to try out some newer games, it's been out for a while so I thought I might have less compatibilty problems.

Quote from Scatter :

...try turning down mem clocks. I always found those to be extremely unstable .......

I'm just using the stock clocks as I'm not really keen into overclocking. Is stock 576MHz too much? What should I clock it down to?
edit: I've just tried halving all clocks on both GPUs.
Graphics clock from 576 > 250 MHz
Memory clock from 999 > 500 MHz
Processor clock from 1242 > 600 MHz
Still crashes after less than 30 seconds of game play.

I'll also try removing all other devices and HDDs and see how that goes to. Thanks for the suggestion.
I unplugged everything but the main HDD, GPU, Mouse, KB, and G25. Removing power from 2 HDDs, FDD, DVD.
Still games crashing

Quote from amp88 :

Anyway, on topic it definitely sounds like a faulty card. When you say you bought it on holiday do you mean in another country or in a different part of Australia?

A different part of Australia. It means organising a return via post instead of just walking around to my local computer parts dealer. It's a long distance away to. Two days via immediate-express post But mainly want to try fix it myself in case I have missed something.

Quote from JasonJ :

A different part of Australia. It means organising a return via post instead of just walking around to my local computer parts dealer. It's a long distance away to. Two days via immediate-express post But mainly want to try fix it myself in case I have missed something.

Is the shop you bought it from part of a chain of shops? Could you return it to, for example, a branch in Victoria even though you bought it from the NT?

What did you do to remove ATi drivers from your system before moving to nVidia?

heh, you know your way around OZ land. Nah, they only have 5 stores in WA. I am in TAS.

I also forgot to mention in the first post that even 3DMark06 crashes after 1.90 seconds into the first 3D test.

Driver removal question:
I uninstalled ATI drivers and used Driver Cleaner Pro in Safe Mode to clean out the ATI drivers.

I will make another fresh Windows install tonight to be sure on this.

Quote from JasonJ :

heh, you know your way around OZ land. Nah, they only have 5 stores in WA. I am in TAS.

Been watching the V8 Supercars for a while now so I know a few of the places they go. You weren't in WA to watch the Barbagallo round, were you?

Quote from JasonJ :

Driver removal question:
I uninstalled ATI drivers and used Driver Cleaner Pro in Safe Mode to clean out the ATI drivers.

I will make another fresh Windows install tonight to be sure on this.

Sounds like that should have been a pretty safe move. Good luck with the clean installation.

Quote from amp88 :

Been watching the V8 Supercars for a while now so I know a few of the places they go. You weren't in WA to watch the Barbagallo round, were you?

I missed that weekend by two days, but went there to Barbagello later that week, suited up and drove a race spec'ed V8 Supercar Monaroe (manual 450HP) for 12 laps myself with FastTrackRacing.com Was pretty fun. I'll be writing up the experience after I get my DVD recording in a few weeks

Quote from JasonJ :

I missed that weekend by two days, but went there to Barbagello later that week, suited up and drove a race spec'ed V8 Supercar Monaroe (manual 450HP) for 12 laps myself with FastTrackRacing.com. Was pretty fun. I'll be writing up the experience after I get my DVD recording in a few weeks

Nice, looks like a lot of fun. Looking forward to reading about it.

Update.

Completed a fresh install of Windows XP Pro 32bit SP3. On another spare HDD. Also used latest mainboard chipset drivers available. Tested stock LFS and I just get the same software freeze after 4 seconds on the start grid.

No choice left, but to send it back now. Thanks very much to all for help. I will update when more news arrives.

Jason, it seems you're having problems with just about every video card out there. I think there's a bigger problem here than just the video cards themselves. Perhaps your RAM is causing crashes, or maybe even your motherboard. (I'm betting it's the motherboard though). Is there any way to test the card in another computer? I'm saying this because a brand new card is very unlikely to malfunction the way you describe. And having 2 brand new cards malfunction is close to impossible (4890 and now 295).

Thanks shiney.

Not every card is malfunctioning.

n9600GT
I put my n9600GT back in and it worked fine. I know it doesn't use as much power, but it's very stable in my system. Only have a small issue sometimes when I use that bloom mod with LFS since we got Z15, but other people have some problems with bloom to and all other games work really well.

HD4890
The HD4890 worked as far as hardware goes not malfunction and crashing games. I had problems with drivers mostly. This is what would happen:
I'd get it running just fine, seemed a little slower that what I first expected, but meh - my expectations were high. But it worked on the most part. If I switched Shift-F4 to windowed mode in LFS and then back to full screen, LFS would go back to AAxa AFx0. I used to have this the same problem years ago with other ATi cards. Some games couldn't get AA to work and some other games wouldn't respond to Vsync. Sometimes the games just ignored any driver settings I used. I tried ATi Tray Tools to and still didn't get any joy. It (the 4890) never locked up or crashed, just was buggy and I just got fed up with that.

gtx295
You know how they put the Gaphics card inside an antistatic bag inside the box? This one didn't have that and the box wasn't sealed with tape. It's possible someone returned it and they just thought - "Maybe the user's system wasn't compatible so we can try someone else, it might work for them."
I didn't think about it when I first opened the box. Now I have a problem it's making me wonder about that.


I'm going to send it back at my expense. They can try it out if they like at the shop. It crashes even with LFS and 3Dmark06 so I am confident if it's the card, they will pick it up in any testing they do. I don't have access to another computer with PCI-E so I'm kinda limited with my options.

You might be very well right that I may have a bigger problem. I can't really find out without buying a whole new MainBoard. If the card is tested as okay and I get the same gtx295 back, I'll take it to a local PC shop and pay them to test it or something.

it looks indeed like the graohics card is malfunctioning.
But i really don't have an explanation why you are struggling with ati-drivers. Just teh same as some people are claiming nvidia is shit.... something wrong about what or how you install in windows. Hard to tell.

Anyway, to increase performance:
RAM : 2x 1GB Team Dark + 1x 2GB AMICRO (3GB visible to WinXP x86)GPU : Zotac GTX 295 1792MB

Try to get your memory config balanced, most motherboards have dual channel memory configs so you need to place your memory in pairs. There is a remote change this memory is causing your troubles.
So this would mean adding another 1x2Gbyte AMICRO module which must be exaclty the same as you already have. And make sure the same type of memory is placed per channel. AND try keep memory modules the same over all channels. Different speed and timings means you always have to configure your bios to use the specifications of the slowest dimm. It is only ok to have different memory sizes although that is not optimal performance wise. Also some memory-modules require different voltage settings which will make it nearly impossible to get a stable config. Mixing memory brands is not so good idea even on different channels. It might work flawless... or it might not work...

btw: team dark?? Amicro? i don't know this memory manufactures?? What is their reputation?? How good is it? is it cheap?

The Amicro brand is cheaper. I had already removed that module and just tried the 2x 1 GB matched pair or Team dark Memory which is a better brand apparently. I thought the unmatched memory differences might have been causing it as well, but the results were the same. I'd added this to my first post

• (edit) Tried Swapping RAM around. Now just using 2GB.
  

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm waiting for the supplier to call me back after the weekend so we can talk about a replacement.

Yes finally - 3 months later (13 week wait and numerous reminder calls charged at national dialing rates) I have my replacement card mailed back to me.

Extremely slow return for a faulty item straight out of the box. Replacement card I received works fine and I have not made any changes to my system. Thanks to all that tried to help.

Needless to say I will never buy from this retailer (shop) again.

Quote from JasonJ :

Needless to say I will never buy from nVidia again.

You're smart.

Quote from Bose321 :

You're smart.

Don't be so pathetic. At least we get working drivers.

Quote from luke.s :

don't be so pathetic. At least we get working drivers.

+1

Quote from Luke.S :

Don't be so pathetic. At least we get working drivers.

Don't be so stupid. ATi drivers work fine.

Atleast we get working fans.

Take that.

so does nvidia.

and look at the sales figures

ati cards sound crap and geeky.
oh what video card you got?
oh i have a ati hd 8750

oh what card have you got
nvidian gtx 295

much better names