Defective Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme

[Matthew-san]

Last July I upgraded from the Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming graphics card to a Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme. The 1080 Ti ran all of my games extremely well at first but occasionally my games would crash or freeze. I wasn't too worried about the crashes/freezes since they weren't super frequent. However, prior to buying the 1080 Ti I did not have any issues with my previous graphics card while running any of my games. Recently though the game crashes have become far more frequent, and not just with specific titles but with pretty much every game I play. Now before my games freeze/crash there are diagonal lines/blocks made up of different colors displayed on the screen. Also, more recently (past month or so), occasionally my computer powers down and restarts itself while I'm in the middle of playing a game.

I've tried a ton of different fixes for these crashes but nothing has worked so far. Originally I thought it might be a driver issue of some kind so I did a clean reinstall of my Nvidia drivers but the crashes persisted anyway. I also reset my pc and wiped the hard drives completely and then preceded to reinstall the latest drivers. That also yielded no results. I used MSI Afterburner to monitor my PC component's temperatures and power usage while in-game but everything is running seemingly how it's supposed to up until a game crashes. I should also mention that the crashes only happen while I am playing a game, I can use my computer for any other task without a problem.

At this point I am about 90% sure that my GPU is defective and has been since I purchased it. Four months have passed since I began using it and the performance has steadily worsened to the point that I can no longer play any of my games without them crashing/freezing within 20-30 minutes of playing. Also, the Firestorm software for my GTX 1080 Ti has never worked fully as it's supposed to since the day I installed the graphics card and software. The Spectra panel that allows you to customize the RGB lighting on my GPU is greyed out so I am unable to change the lighting or fans speeds. My plan is to RMA the graphics card and get a replacement from Zotac however I wanted to be 100% sure that it is the graphics card that is faulty. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to what else could possibly be causing the crashes or if anyone can confirm that this is a graphics card issue based on the information I've provided?

I apologize for the long message, I wanted to be as specific about the supposed GPU issue that I'm having. Here are my system requirements:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit Home Premium
MOBO: ASRock Z97 Extreme3
CPU: i7-4790k
GPU: Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz
Storage: Hitachi 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD & Seagate 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD
PSU: Corsair HX850i
(None of the components have ever been overclocked)

 

[Scott_56]

yes it sounds like your gpu is dying and i'd contact zotac about the issue as im sure the gpu is defective as the lines/multi coloured blocks are something called artifacts i had it when my gtx 8800 overheated btw what are your temps on the gpu when playing games?

 

[jankerson]

Yes, RMA the Graphics card.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to what else could possibly be causing the crashes or if anyone can confirm that this is a graphics card issue based on the information I've provided?

Your graphics card is factory pre-overclocked (to a significant degree).
Base: 1645 MHz/Boost: 1759 MHz

Nvidia reference GTX 1080 Ti boost clock is only 1582mhz.

Reduce overclock of your graphics card. It obviously can't handle factory OC settings.

 

[Matthew-san]

yes it sounds like your gpu is dying and i'd contact zotac about the issue as im sure the gpu is defective as the lines/multi coloured blocks are something called artifacts i had it when my gtx 8800 overheated btw what are your temps on the gpu when playing games?

My GPU temperatures range between 66-70 degrees Celsius on average while playing games. I haven't had any temperature issues with any of my components so far. I would reduce the factory overclock on my GPU however one of the main reasons I chose the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP extreme and spent a little extra money on it over the founders edition and other aftermarket variants is because the AMP Extreme was supposedly designed to handle the higher speed frequencies. If for whatever reason the card is not capable of sustaining the factory overclock speeds and then it's not running/performing as Zotac advertised. Thanks for all the feedback so far. I wanted to confirm that this was 100% for sure a GPU issue, and it definitely seems like it is especially because of the artifacts and crashing only occurring in-game when essentially the GPU is under the greatest amount of stress.. I will be submitting the RMA request today. I hope the RMA process and getting a fully working replacement for my GPU from Zotac will be a quick and easy process. Thanks again for all the help and advice.

 

[sundawang]

Hey bro, sorry for the late reply. This is exactly TDR issue and it is manufactory fault. You can check it on system 'Event Viewer' every time when game crashed(You can google for the detail processes). The way to solve it is to turn degrade the core speed a bit(whether use MSI afterburner or something else). Also, there is a easy way to make it stable is to use 'Debug mode' inside the NVIDIA control panel. It sets the core speed of GPU to official card's speed(decrease performance), Those are the explanation of issue and possible solutions.
Here's my case.
I've never heard of this until I owned Zotac 1080TI AMP! Extreme. It really hurts. I bought Zotac in June and it started crashing in July. I've been crazy during that period which I couldn't find any solution from both supports and retail stores. I love playing PUBG but it crashed 3-4 times in one single! match!!! The barrier of winning was my GPU rather than players. I've wasted one month on finding solutions and getting helps since I'm not native English speaker. I got solutions almost all by myself. There wasn't any correct solution online for that case even any explanation, which might be caused by insufficient users. I got a RMA after I found that issue. However, the brand new one had the exactly the same issue. This time I gonna request for credit.