Gigabyte 970 G1 Problems

[James86]

Hi all,

I've been experiencing problems with my system since I upgraded my graphics card to a Gigabyte G1 GTX 970. The problems started with the 'Kernal mode driver version xxx has stopped responding. . .' error randomly blacking out the screen before coming back on, this crashed the program I was in (The Witcher 3) but left the machine usable again. This also occurred during general web browsing when no games were running in the background.

After a bit of reading online I uninstalled MSI afterburner and got nvidia inspector instead (for monitoring purposes, not over clocking). Now the problem has escalated into full system crashes requiring a reboot to fix. The crashing doesn't seem to follow any pattern, for example last night I managed 5hrs continuous with no issues, this morning I lasted an hour before the first crash, 3 more for a second crash. Additionally, it doesn't always occur at graphically intensive times, sometimes just during the pause screen or loading screens.

I've searched extensively for solutions, tried many but keep getting the same problems. Could anyone suggest any other solutions? For avoidance of doubt I've tried the following:

- Removed any over clocking (tbh I'd done very little and only low increments)
- Slowly upping voltage to card
- Clean install of drivers
- Checked all physical connections
- Cleaned out inside of computer

From the monitoring software I could see that my card has never been over 63 celsius whilst running and never had a power drop (have nvidia inspector running on a second monitor to track this) leading me to believe that neither of these is the problem.

My system is as follows:

MSI MPower z87 m'board
i7 4770k (overclocked to 4ghz using the OC Genie feature)
2 x 8gb G. Skill Ripjaws
GTX 970
EVGA G2 750W power supply
1tb and 2tb HDDs
256gb Samsung SSD (houses OS and The Witcher 3)
Windows 8.1

Apologies for the wall of text but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Try underclocking the card by 100/100 below stock, if that helps, you should send it back for not running the advertised clock speeds.

 

[James86]

Thanks for the response Sergeant.

Tried this last night and it seemed to work. However, as previously stated, the problems are hit and miss. I'll continue under clocking for a few days and see how it goes.

 

[kwa-e]

Try underclocking the card by 100/100 below stock, if that helps, you should send it back for not running the advertised clock speeds.

Agreed, Talk with Giga tech support and arrange for an RMA.

(Heck, Submit a review on Newegg that states that the card isn't stable at stock and they should respond much faster. Their reputation is on the line.)

 

[James86]

Hi all,

I think I may have this solved now. At time of writing I have 5 days crash free with many hours spent running.

Basically I got in contact with Gigabyte through their contact form (which was a chore to fill out btw!). They recommended a few fixes but only a couple that I hadn't tried yet.

These were updating the cards Bios and downgrading to Gigabytes recommended driver number. I won't post the bios flashing links here as I don't want to be responsible for someone bricking their card by doing it wrong, but their recommended driver is as follows:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5209&kw=GV-N970G1%20GAMING-4GD1.0/1.1#dl

If anyone else out there is having similar to problems, I'd recommend you get in contact with Gigabytes support. The form is awful (wanting bios version numbers, driver numbers, serial numbers and more!) but worth persevering with. A reply took them around 36 hours.

Now I can start trying some little overclocks!

Finally, thanks again to sergeant and kwa-e for your replies!

 

[kwa-e]

Glad to be of assistance