EVGA GTX 560 ti Problems, I think?

[Tom Roeder]

Hello all, thanks in advance for any advice.

First, a rundown of my specs before my upgrade - MSI 797xx mobo, AMD Phenom II 965 quad core, 8 gb of ram, EVGA GTX 560ti GPU, 500 watt psu.

I would come into my office, turn on the monitor - bam, nothing. move the mouse, press num lock, nothing would respond. Hit the reset button, would boot up, tell me that Windows had not shut down properly, yea yea....

I would then check the event viewer, and nothing...just missing time from when the system froze and when I rebooted it, with no mention of any real errors.

This happened many times and was happening more frequently, so I decided a hardware upgrade was in order - ASUS M5A97 mobo, AMD FX 8350 CPU, EVGA 750 watt psu, 16 gb of Corsair Dominator RAM, and a SSD, keeping my GTX 560ti.

Heartache - crashed again. This time, I think because I was in shock, it kept messing with the keyboard and mouse, and voila, the BSOD. Long story short, I got these error codes from the reliability monitor -

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA800CE574E0
BCP2: FFFFF880111A9E64
BCP3: FFFFFFFFC00000B5
BCP4: 000000000000000A
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

Also said Video Hardware Error

I have the latest Nvidia driver - 331.82, and I am running Windows 7 Ultimate with all the latest and greatest updates (problem happened on older driver and with less Windows updates).

I have started a help ticket on EVGA's website, but what do you guys think? Card dying?

 

[Rob Williams]

As much as it sucks, that sounds like the GPU for sure. If the problem persisted across an entire build, and the BSOD mentioned a video error, it sounds like that for sure.

Are temperatures getting too high on the card, possibly? You might want to download GPU-Z and enable the logging feature, and when the PC goes down again, boot back up and check the log.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

If heat's not the issue, then it's worth digging deeper. Happen to have a friend that has a spare GPU kicking around to test? Does the crash seem to happen at a specific spot?

Issues like these are painful.

 

[Optix]

You could try an older driver. I'm still using an AMD driver from March because the two versions after that resulted in BSoDs before the desktop even loaded. Rather than fight with uninstalling it, I just decided to stick with what works.

Aside from that, maybe run some a stress test on the card while keeping an eye on your temperatures.

If that checks out OK, and it seems to be more random than anything else, that ticket with EVGA is the way to go.

 

[Rob Williams]

You could try an older driver.

That's a good point. Brandon on the staff has been having major issues with recent drivers on his GTX 500 series as well... so maybe that is worth checking out (Brandon's issues are not BSODs though, but other finicky behavior).

 

[Tom Roeder]

Thanks for the replies! I talked to a friend of mine who has the same card, (different mobo and such) but he said that he was having BSODs with the latest drivers as well, so I uninstalled the 331.82 and went with 314.22 (the one he said he had the best luck with). So far, no crashes but it is too early to tell anything.

I did install the EVGA OC Scanner X and let it run for a bit, but it looked good. I will certainly install the GPU-Z and see what it logs, which will hopefully be nothing now that I have rolled back the driver.

Years ago I swore off ATI because their drivers were so riffed with problems, is NVIDIA headed down the same toilet? Although I hear ATI has gotten a lot better....next card might just be ATI....thoughts?

 

[Rob Williams]

First off, have the issues reappeared? If not, it seems like the driver for sure, and that's unfortunate given a LOT of people are using 500 series cards.

As for AMD and NVIDIA, on the hardware front I consider them about equal, although AMD's cards tend to get warmer (with the current-gen). Driver's wise, NVIDIA has been the superior.

Like most hardware, a lot of people are going to say they've been bit by AMD, and a lot of them will say they've been bit by NVIDIA. It's a luck of the draw, sometimes. When buying a GPU though, I always recommend going with one that has a nice cooler, because then heat shouldn't ever become an issue. But that of course relates not at all to your issue, which is driver-related. I was actually in contact with NVIDIA a couple of weeks ago about this, and the conversation kind of fell through. If the issue has kept at bay up to this point, you might want to try the latest 331.93 driver and see if the issue comes back or if it has been purged from the driver for good.

 

[Tom Roeder]

Update - Exactly one week since I rolled back my GTX 560ti driver to 314.22, and I have not had one single problem since. When I launch Battlefield 4 it throws up a box saying I need to update, that there may be issues because of my older driver, but it plays perfectly.

I was really surprised to see system lockups like the ones I was having, simply because of a driver. Oh well, just glad I got it sorted. Thanks for all the advice!