Specs:
I haven't had similar problems with this rig and I am sure that these components work well together since I ran my games smoothly before, on the same graphics settings.
These freezes happen mostly in video games, but every once in a while they will also happen while browsing the internet and streaming music through it.
Sometimes the freezes occur once a second and last only for a fraction of a second, while at other times the freezes happen maybe 2 or 3 times a minute and then last about half a second. During those times the game doesn't accept any input from the keyboard or the controller. Pressing alt+enter or changing from windowed to fullscreen (or vice versa) fixes the problem for a few seconds, but then it comes back.
If I am unlucky, the screen freezes for longer, and after around 2 seconds goes black and the monitor reports "no signal". When this happens though, the sound doesn't start looping (like it usually does), i can use VoIP and other people online can hear me; it seems like everything but graphics is functioning well. After those 2 seconds the audio finally starts looping and this situation doesn't resolve so I restart the computer by holding the power button. The same happens through HDMI. It seems that those 2 seconds are the TDR delay. Recently I changed the delay to 10 seconds in the registry in the hopes of giving the GPU more time to reset but I haven't had time to notice any differences.
Because the screen goes black I don't get a BSoD but Windows does create a crash minidump. The minidump sometimes reports VIDEO_TDR_ERROR and sometimes VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED, but on my end the crashes seem identical. (bug checks 0x116 and 0x117 respectively).
This is what msi afterburner logged while the freezes were happening: https://imgur.com/a/7zR3Q
The first example is while browsing, the second while playing a video game.
Notice how the framebuffer usage drops to 0% precisely every 30 seconds, while at the same time my GPU's clock frequency rises, causing stuttering. In the second example when FB usage is low, GPU usage varies wildly.
Things I already did to troubleshoot:
Things i didn't do:
Some observations:
Hopefully someone can help me resolve this issue.
■ OS: Windows 7 64-bit ultimate
■ GPU: GTX 970
■ CPU: i5-2320 @ 3.30 GHz
■ Motherboard: Gigabyte P61-DS3-B3
■ PSU: XFX P1-600B-XTFR (600W)
■ RAM: 2 x 4GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
I haven't had similar problems with this rig and I am sure that these components work well together since I ran my games smoothly before, on the same graphics settings.
These freezes happen mostly in video games, but every once in a while they will also happen while browsing the internet and streaming music through it.
Sometimes the freezes occur once a second and last only for a fraction of a second, while at other times the freezes happen maybe 2 or 3 times a minute and then last about half a second. During those times the game doesn't accept any input from the keyboard or the controller. Pressing alt+enter or changing from windowed to fullscreen (or vice versa) fixes the problem for a few seconds, but then it comes back.
If I am unlucky, the screen freezes for longer, and after around 2 seconds goes black and the monitor reports "no signal". When this happens though, the sound doesn't start looping (like it usually does), i can use VoIP and other people online can hear me; it seems like everything but graphics is functioning well. After those 2 seconds the audio finally starts looping and this situation doesn't resolve so I restart the computer by holding the power button. The same happens through HDMI. It seems that those 2 seconds are the TDR delay. Recently I changed the delay to 10 seconds in the registry in the hopes of giving the GPU more time to reset but I haven't had time to notice any differences.
Because the screen goes black I don't get a BSoD but Windows does create a crash minidump. The minidump sometimes reports VIDEO_TDR_ERROR and sometimes VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED, but on my end the crashes seem identical. (bug checks 0x116 and 0x117 respectively).
This is what msi afterburner logged while the freezes were happening: https://imgur.com/a/7zR3Q
The first example is while browsing, the second while playing a video game.
Notice how the framebuffer usage drops to 0% precisely every 30 seconds, while at the same time my GPU's clock frequency rises, causing stuttering. In the second example when FB usage is low, GPU usage varies wildly.
Things I already did to troubleshoot:
■ Reinstalling drivers: using the DDU utility i uninstalled my nvidia drivers in safe mode and installed the newest ones, and later even some older version but it didn't help. NOTE: I didn't manually delete any folders and I didn't try eradicating all traces of nvidia from my pc so maybe the clean install of new drivers wasn't that clean.
■ Checking if I'm overheating: CPU temps always below 70, GPU temps always below 65
■ Ran furmark to test my GPU stability: it didn't crash but I didn't let it run for very long either.
■ Memtest to check my RAM: left overnight (10hrs), 0 errors found. I left both sticks in during the tests.
■ Since TDR errors pointed at maybe a faulty PSU i cleaned the fans of my PSU (they were very dusty and maybe it was overheating?). The freezes went away for a short time but came back, might have been a coincidence.
Things i didn't do:
■ Reinstalling windows (seems like overkill to me)
■ Reseating all my components
■ Touching the PSU to see if it's overheating since I can't see its tempereature through software (I'm afraid of touching it)
Some observations:
■ TDR failure usually happens when i alt+tab back into a game or when a new round begins in an online match (perhaps it happens when assets are loading?)
■ TDR failure and the whole system freezing into black srceen happened in more graphically demanding, recent games. These more demanding games, however, didn't suffer any temporary short video and audio freezes, only crashes to black screen. Less demanding, older games never crashed my computer outright, but they did suffer from freezing and stuttering. Even 2d games, although some games seem to be exempt.
■ Recording the screen with fraps didn't capture the audio stutter, and video doesn't freeze, the framerate just drops in the captured video. Why is there a discrepancy between what is recorded and what is displayed while it's actually happening? fraps example
■ Windows 7 updated my nvidia graphics drivers just before the problem started happening, this might only be a coincidence. I am unable to uninstall this update (perhaps because it's 3rd party software).
Hopefully someone can help me resolve this issue.