Driver Failure on EVGA GTX 950

[yehbruv]

I recently bought this EVGA GTX 950 ( 02G-P4-2951-KR is the part number since there is multiple versions of this card.) just a little over 3 weeks ago. What happens is I will play Arma 3 for about 15-30 minutes sometimes the driver will fail, the screen will go black for a second or two then I see the windows pop up saying Driver xxx has failed and recovered. The usual Nvidia crash message then other times it will not crash at all and I'm able to play for hours without problems, its completely random. It happens with CS:GO on the screen when I'm loading into a match, and for Diablo 3 it happens right after I load into town but those games don't completely crash like Arma 3 does. This issue all started when I updated drivers from 358.87 to 359.0. I've updated to 359.06 still occurs. The other thing I would like to say is when the crash occurs I notice on my MSI AfterBurner that my Power %, GPU Usage %, FB Usage %, VID Usage%, and Bus Usage %, all shoot up to a crazy high number then instantly go back to normal after the game crashes. I will post my PC specs below...

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
CPU: i5 2500k @ 3.3 Ghz
GPU: EVGA GTX 950
PSU: Antec 600w
RAM: 4096mb x 2 Kingston DDR3 RAM


Things I have done that haven't resolved my issue:

- DDU uninstalls and clean installs (in safe mode)
- Reverted to the driver I had no issues with (358.87) using the method above issues.
- Set core and memory clocks to factory default (removed the overclocking that game on the card)
- Changed 3D Settings (Nvidia support told me to try this)
- Changed PhysX Settings to from Auto-select to my GTX 950 (advice from a friend)
- Set my fan speed to 30% (to rule out over heating)
- Tried a different User account to check for OS corruption (Nvidia told me to test this)
- MalwareBytes scans along with adwcleaner, tdss killer, etc (Computer is clean according to all the scans I've done)

Any information or advice that can help me resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated. I'm getting frustrated because when I think the issue is finally resolved it happens again. I can't test my old card because I no longer have it. I might be able to find someone to let me test the card in their PC but not too many of my friends that live near me play computer games.

Thanks in advance

 

[rolli59]

If clean driver install does not fix it I would RMA the card. I have had this with two AMD cards and turned out to be failing Vram.

 

[maddogfargo]

Sometimes I get the same thing with my GTX 970. Some games are fine with the GPU core and vRAM OCd, others only work with it at stock.

Custom BIOS modded the voltage tables and it stabilized much better. But still, Fallout 4 hates everything I run it on right now, even at stock.

 

[yehbruv]

@maddogfargo how would I go about doing something like that? I got off of support sent in a RMA request someone i talked to as well said I should try using the card in a different slot and making sure my card is getting the power it needs, but I forgot to add in my OP that on my AI Suite the 12V doesn't change when the crash occurs. I guess I'll try and new slot and look into what you mentioned, if you have any advice on that would be greatly appreciated.