Asus GTX 470 Issue - slow boot/performance

unaligned

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I just purchased an Asus GTX 470 board with which I had having a very strange issue. I honestly didn't think before this happened that a video card could cause this type of issue. But anyway, Asus techs have been unable to help me, and as a result want me to RMA the board... which I now have. But i still figured I would come here and see if anyone has ever seen anything like it before.

The issue is that when I install the gfx card, it causes my computer to run ridiculously slow. I'm talking 10-15 minutes to get past the Windows 7 logo at startup, and when it does eventually get to the login screen and subsequently the desktop, it takes incredible system resources to do anything whatsoever, causes choppy mouse movements and *extreme* slowdown. When I take the 470 out and put my GTX 275 back in, the problems go away. I did a full wipe of the hard drive after Asus techs thought it might be a software conflict, as did I, to no avail.

The reasons I originally didn't believe it was a failed board: I had access to Windows XP 32-bit installed on a separate hard drive, though wiping the Windows 7 hard drive destroyed my access to this install. The card worked fine (caused no slowdown) on XP, and I thought it worked fine, but then I installed and played the Starcraft 2 beta. At first I believed the game was rendering perfectly, but as the game went along I started to experience slowdown and general choppyness, as well as very few effects in the game (such as explosions). I attributed this to DX9, but I have fixed my access to XP and played it with my GTX 275 and it seems to look/play about the same as it did in W7.

Which brings me to this post. I have never experienced this type of issue before. I have been doing research online trying to find anyone that has, and have not. The fact that the card works in Windows XP 32-bit made me originally think it was fine and might just be a software issue, but after seeing its performance in Starcraft 2, I really do think it's a defective card and the RMA was justified. However, given that Asus uses XP (I was told this by their techs) I am wary that Asus might determine there is nothing wrong with it, and send it back to me with some explanation bascially telling me that I'm nuts. I wanted some input from other people out there. Basically, has anyone seen anything like this before?

Below is a list of system specs and attempted solutions. If there is some piece of info I've left out, let me know. Also, if anyone knows of anyone with a Foxconn Renaissance mobo that has happened to install one of the new Fermi boards without issue, that would help me rule out a mobo issue (which is my second idea for the cause of the issue behind the card actually being defective).

Specs:
Windows 7 Pro x64 installed on a WD3200AAJS (320GB WD SATA 3.0)
Windows XP installed on a partition of an old 80GB Maxtor from a Dell
Ubuntu installed on partition of a WD6400AAKS (640GB WD SATA 3.0)
Foxconn Renaissance Mobo
Intel core i7-920
6GB (3x2GB) OCZ triple channel memory kit (OCZ3X1333LV6GK)
Asus Xonar DX sound card
LG SATA DVD burner
an Asus GTX 470 & an EVGA GTX 275 896MB
OCZ 700W PSU

Attempted solutions:
*Re-isntalled GTX 275 -> no problems
*Booted to Windows XP -> experienced slowdown, choppyness and a lack of in-game effects
*Wiped Windows 7 and clean install -> installed slowly; when install was complete and all software was stock W7 (no drivers, etc) problem still exists
*Booted to safe mode, went to device manager and uninstalled video driver for the GTX 470 -> no change
*Un-OC'd CPU and memory -> no change
*Uninstalled/reinstalled drivers -> no change
*Mobo BIOS is updated -> no change
*Drivers on all hardware requiring drivers are updated -> no change
 
So it worked fine in Win 32-bit, but not 64-bit. My first guess would be a memory problem, but for what I'm thinking I would expect more random behavior. Anyway, try it with only two sticks. Alternate taking the sticks out to see if one of them is the problem. My other guess is a conflict with the sound card. Fermi Cards have integrated sound, like Radeon Cards, to support sound over HDMI. It could be that there is simply a driver conflict between that and your sound card. Take out your ASUS Xonar and disable your onboard sound to see if that fixes the problem. Finally, the issue may lie with your PSU. After all, a GTX 470 uses a bit more power than a GTX 275 and perhaps your PSU is simply not stable enough for the finicky 470 at idle. I don't suppose you have another one you can use to test it out?

If none of that helps, then I would say try the card in another computer, or a friends computer, to see if it still acts the same so that you can RMA it. Could just be the darn thing is defective :p
 

unaligned

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I would think that if it was memory, it would have issues w/ the 275 or on XP as well... but maybe not.

I considered that it might have been an issue w/ the Xonar, but after I did a clean install, it was still slow. There were no drivers installed (for anything) at that point, and I could even tell that the install itself was slow. I *should have* taken the Xonar out, just to see, too late now.

And as for the PSU, I would think that 700W would be enough, wouldn't you?

I also should've taken it to a friend's comp. That whole hindsight thing you know. :??:
 
Your basic post was about anyone having experienced or heard about anything similar.. To answer that, congrats..!! you are the first one with it.. In other words, NO.. Haven't heard on anything ( or similar ).. Though i can understand your frustration, its good to know that you've a theory.. I still think its a bad chip fault.. Like i mentioned before, do post back once your new card arrives and you are all set with it.. Good luck..
 
Yeah, hindsight, I know the feeling :D. Anyway, if it was the memory that doesn't mean you would also have issues in XP. The 64-bit version uses a little less memory so depending on the bad memory address it may not have shown up. As for the 32-bit version can only address 4GB, so minus the 2GB or so from the 470 and system devices means you would have been addressing just a little over 2GB of your system RAM in XP 32-bit.
 

darkguset

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I would bet my money on:
1) Faulty card
2) Faulty or incompatible PSU (although i am not sure on how much power the Fermi draws, all benchmarks so far seem to be pointing to a power hungry monster)

Hope your new card works fine though. Fingers crossed
 

unaligned

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My PSU is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341019

My question is, why would it run the card in XP, i.e., not cause slow-down, and yet fail to run it in W7?
 
I have seen poor PSUs cause very slow boots before.

Also, it is my understanding not to worry about the # of rails, as very few PSUs have true 'rails'. Most are fake (tied together), so just pay attention to the max combined wattage.
 

unaligned

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No, not the same drivers, but that doesn't explain why it would take years to boot past the logo in W7 and not in XP. And it also doesn't explain why it would seemingly render SC2 just fine in XP when I started playing it (though it did start to render less well as the game went along, as noted in the OP).
 

darkguset

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If the card is overheating because it is faulty, then yes it would explain why it rendered well in XP initially (it took longer to overheat) rather than in W7 which is already heating up from the desktop (Aero) even before you start a game or anything.
 

unaligned

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I never said it was overheating. I used GUP-Z on the desktop when I booted into W7 and it was safely in the 50-60C range. Even under full stress in XP it only got to 80 (normal for a 470).
 

darkguset

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I did not say that you said it was overheating. I am just giving you an example of many things that can go wrong with one of the components. And the temperatures that we can monitor are the GPU temperatures. While the GPU reports that it is in a safe 50C it does not mean that another component on the card is not overheating and therefor causing you trouble.

2 of the most bizarre things i have come across are:

1) SUMO VGA with Philips CD-ROM incompatibility (SUMO fixed it later with a VGA BIOS update) - the computer would boot with graphics corrupted and then it would halt right after drive detection

2) CPU missing one pin (this was not fixed, lol) - the computer would boot fine into Windows, but then all sorts of crazy problems would appear (random freezing, blue screens, slow copy files, etc)
 

unaligned

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Apparently the card really was defective... they are waiting to get another one to send me. I'm sure I'll be waiting awhile because of the low stock of the new Fermi cards.
 

joytech22

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To be honest i would suspect the PSU is the problem, only because most of the time when people buy new GPU's their current PSU is not up to the job or something is wrong.

This happened to me once when i tried running my Gtx285 And 9800GTX with the same PSU, which was only 550W, since i got my new PSU the boot problems/choppy computer went away.

I hope it was just a defective card, it's annoying when you buy something just to find out you need something else
 

rofl_my_waffle

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One major difference between windows 7 and windows xp is power management. Windows xp has no power management what so ever. Windows 7 on the other hand can dynamically control power to many components such as CPU, hard drives, and PCI-E lanes. Windows 7 wouldn't touch these main components unless you are on battery power or manually set to.

If you add faulty BIOS or bad windows 7 copy into the equation you might get some power issues.
 

unaligned

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Well we can rule out the battery as it's a desktop. I don't recall changing anything in terms of power other than "performance" in power options. I have updated my BIOS, so unless it has an unknown issue, I doubt that's the problem either. Unless it truly is the PSU, I can't see power options being the problem.

I guess you can never really rule out a faulty Windows copy, but I would think that would be a relatively rare problem. I downloaded it from MSDNAA so if it really is causing problems, other people would know it, as would Microsoft.

Now that those have been addressed, all of the proposed issues that I have seen here don't really take into consideration the fact that I highly doubt any of them would surface until W7 got at least to the login screen (and why would W7 load sloooooow while XP loads as normal?). I notice the problem at the Windows logo simply by the fact that it takes 10+ minutes to load (i.e., get past the logo; usually takes 30 seconds max). I wouldn't expect the video card would have anything to do with the actual loading of the Windows, except of course loading the video driver. And I addressed that by removing all drivers, as well as booting in safe mode (which strangely enough went smooth and fast), going to device manager, and removing the video driver there. At that point, there was nothing installed in regards to drivers to load on startup, yet the problem still existed. Strange indeed.
 

unaligned

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Update for those who are even remotely curious:

Just received a totally new card from Asus (which is strange, given that the problem seems to have been a system conflict all along). All issues exactly the same with the new card. This gives overwhelming evidence that the problem is a system conflict. However, as I just moved to strange land, miles away from anything I've ever known (OK, just 90 miles), I no longer have any friends whose computer I can use to test the board on.

Sigh. Looks like I'm a guinea pig trying to figure out which piece of my system is the culprit. But rest assured, if I find a conflict I'll let the world know who's to blame. I brought the PSU question up to an Asus tech, but he wasn't convinced or even a little curious that it might be the PSU.

Here is an added observation; when the computer boots up, I can hear it accessing the hard drive as usual. But about 30 sec - a minute in (about the time when it normally would get to the login screen) the hard drive stops making noise, and continues to be silent for about 10-15 minutes until it decides that it wants to do something, and finally spins up again and gets to the login screen.

I am curious what would make it stop accessing, then make it kick in again 10 mins later.

Another observation: I use a gadget that shows CPU usage, and once the computer gets to the desktop, it shows that all 8 threads of the i7 are working at pretty much full capacity, yet doing basically nothing. It's working hard and making no progress for its efforts.
 

unaligned

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Well, I believe can safely rule out PSU problems... I went to Best Buy and purchased the following PSU with a larger 12v rail amperage and there was no change in behavior.

new PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

I also removed the Xonar DX along with the wireless LAN card I had installed. At this point, there were no extra cards/devices installed besides what's absolutely required and there was no change in behavior. I am running out of options here... The only thing I can think of that is left is there is still some option in the BIOS that is conflicting, some other un-patched issue with the BIOS, or simply the motherboard itself is faulty.

Quite annoying.

Update: ran Furmark for several minutes on max display resolution (1920 X 1080) in XP, temps seemed fine (91C) no choppyness or artifacts. So the card seems to run just fine in XP. The problem is with W7... somehow. GAH!
 

soulgraph

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Im running an msi 480 on a psu very similar to your original without problem, also an i7-920\do @4ghz with a win7 os. On a side note win7 does prompt me to disable aero since 480 install but not having long boot times and such.
 

unaligned

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Yes, I've all but ruled out the PSU being my problem. There is something that tries to load during the W7 logo that fails to, and causes this problem. To fix it, I've deleted GFX drivers, but it hasn't changed anything.