GPU not getting enough power? Something else broken?

[Anni]

So I'm having some really weird problems. Basically I got a new GPU (GTX 660 ti) because my old one (gtx 470) died in a storm of artefacts.

Now, when I play games sometimes the monitor turns off or just shows a single faint color, like dark green or brown and I basically have to reset. No bluescreen though. I had it even with the old card that the screen turned off and the PC was basically in limbo until you restarted it by switch-off but it was rare.

Now since I have the new card it has gotten more frequent. When I check the event viewer it only says Kernel Power 41, which apparently just means the PC shutdown improperly.

At first, I was trying out GTA 4 on the new card. It ran for around 5 minutes, then the screen turned off and the PC was frozen. I tried Planetside 2. That crashed as soon as I took a few steps.

Then I read online it could be a sounddriver problem and to disable one sound device if it shows several. Okay I thought, lets try that. Tried Planetside 2 again, and it seemed to work. Then I tried Battlefield 3. Worked fine for 30 minutes. Then I tried Far Cry 3, and while that worked for around 15 minutes or so, I got the SAME THING again.

So then I did a clean gpu driver install. Got rid of the drivers with driversweeper in savemode. Restarted, reinstalled, tried Bioshock Infinite in Benchmark mode. Screen turned off after 30 seconds. Then I tried playing it, which worked fine for 5 minutes or so but then the screen turned off. So here is why I was thinking it might be a power problem: In this case, the screen turned off and you could hear the voices still but in a jumbled electric distortion that got deeper and then a bit higher again and then the game crashed and the screen turned back on, which led me to believe it caught itself at the last moment.

I tried Guild Wars 2, and when visiting the city I had a similar experience: Screen flickering and sound getting weirdly distorted, then catching itself again and running normally again.
Also, no crashes when not gaming.

Here are my specs:

- Windows 7 64 bit
- AMD Phenom x4 BE 965 @ 3.4ghz
- 16 GB DDR 3 Ram at 1333 Mhz
- GTX 660 ti
- Intel SSD
- 600 watt coolermaster PSU


I would really appreciate some help here.

 

[Onus]

Same HDDs and same Windows? On a different mobo? Your drivers could be COMPLETELY hosed. Although it is sometimes possible to move a Windows installation from one mobo to another [similar] one, it usually fails outright, and when it doesn't, in general it will never be "right."

 

[Anni]

Yeah I just hooked up the same hdds to the other mobo, it didn't install anything besides the GPU drivers. (The other mobo is an older version of my main-mobo so that might be why it works so well).

I have now several times uninstalled both audio and graphics drivers on the computer where it fails, deleted the stuff left from the drivers via driver sweeper in safe mode, and reinstalled them again. I did all windows updates, tried it with having windows updates disabled and installing manually after having uninstalled cleanly, checked and monitored temps, tried it with the onboard sound disabled in the BIOS, loaded opimized defaults in BIOS, loaded fail save defaults in BIOS, tested the RAM, switched the card to the second PCI slot on the mobo, changed the PSU, tried it with only the main hdd, did an sfc/scannow just for good measure, ran virus and malware scans in safe mode which both found nothing, disabled/enabled nvidia HD audio drivers, set the system to "Maximum performance" in the power saver settings, nothing works.

When the first card broke and I used an old ATI 4200 card for 2 weeks I had no problem of this sort with the computer on which it now doesn't work. These problems occurred the exact same time when I put this card in. (No ATI drivers are left on the system either, uninstalled those in safe mode and driver sweeper'd those as well)

So I would think the card was at fault, if it wouldn't work in the other computer/mainboard just fine.


Can this still be the fault of the card? Or is that not possible, since it seems to work on the other (old) mainboard?

 

[scout_03]

i would rma that graphic and if you still have issue with the new card i would carefully check the the motherboard and the pci-e slot on this board,what exactly happens to the ati card and did you use memtest for your memory test one stick at the time ?

 

[Anni]

Yes i tested the memory one stick at a time. Nothing happens to that Ati card, it works fine without any crashes. The new one however crashes in both pci-e slots, so I don't think the slot is faulty. I also have not found anything on the mainboard that looks like something is wrong with it, no damaged capacitors or blisters or anything that looks suspicious.

 

[scout_03]

Nothing happens to that Ati card, this means you use a ati card remove the driver from ati then put hte new gtx card in install the driver there is could be conflict with the ati driver and the gtx card.

 

[Anni]

As I said above, I used the ATI card before I got this one and had no problems with it. I already did a complete driver uninstall and went over it with driver sweeper in save mode.

I just now got a new card back from the shop and it is still the same problem. Power supply I already changed as well. I also just installed the nvidia beta drivers 320.00. Didn't help .

 

[Onus]

One thing you might try is re-installing DirectX. Many games include an installer for it, and I think you can get it from Microsoft's web site.
Try a complete re-install of Windows and a sample game or two (use a spare HDD if you want to just test this; if no improvement you can just put your old disk back in). You're using a different motherboard, so there will be differences.

 

[Anni]

It turns out it's neither the GPU nor the power supply. The issue persists. I switched out the PSU for a new one, switched out the card for a new one, sent my processor in for warranty and reinstalled windows fresh to make sure it is not messed up drivers acting up. The only thing I haven't switched out yet is the motherboard.

Now I was thinking I should probably buy a new one. Can someone help me with that? I'd like to get a not too expensive one for this Phenom x4 965 Black Edition. If possible I'd also like to overclock it so I get some more performance out of it until I upgrade to Haswell. But I guess that clashes with the "not too expensive" part.

I'd appreciate if someone could help me once again. Thanks for all the advice so far.