Unusual GPU behaviour?

Gregz777

Honorable
Dec 27, 2013
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10,690
This is Copied and pasted from my post from Linus tech tips, I hope to expland to as many places of expertise as possible, in order to increase chances of rectifying the problem.

I have a lot to say, be prepared. :p

I've been having computer issues for roughly two years, which specifically relates to my games crashing and freezing. Results over this time up to now have suggested a problem with the graphics card. My graphics card specifically is the "Geforce Gigabyte 780ti WINDFORCE EDITION OC." I am going to explain what occurs on an average crash / freezing session, and hopefully someone can identify what is wrong, and how to fix these problems.

It all began almost 2 year ago with my old computer. It was terrible, so I wanted to upgrade it. I bought a 780ti Gigabyte WINDFORCE graphics card, along with a CS750M PSU from Corsair. I installed both of these, having done intense research to do it correctly. After doing so, I immediately noticed extreme deterioration in my computer's performance. The BIOS could not be accessed, as there would sometimes be a screen from "American megatrends" and sometimes from "Advent." Attempts to enter the BIOS would result in a permanent black screen, which would not go away unless the computer was turned off. Playing games resulted in the crashes I've explained below, along with one occurrence of a blue screen of death. My computer's boot up time took 20 minutes. I came to the conclusion that my extremely high end parts were overpowering the other, in-superior parts. An old Foxxconn (unsure of the company name) motherboard, an i7 2500k proccessor, 8gb ram, and a 2tb HDD. It came to a point where I couldn't use the computer at all. Requesting windows media player to play some music would sometimes happen, but ultimately would stop working, indicating a problem with the motherboard communicating with the HDD. Games wouldn't make it a few seconds into gameplay before forcing me to watch noticeable FPS drops before a crash. Ultimately, I decided to build a new system at the beginning of the year 2014 in January. I transported over my newly bought PSU and 780ti WINDFORCE graphics card to my new system.

My "new system" statistics go as follows:

i7 4770k

Dark Rock 3 CPU cooler.

16gb Vengenace Corsair RAM.

Z87 G65 MSI GAMING motherboard.

AX 860 PSU

Gigabyte GTX 780ti WINDFORCE EDITION OC. <----- 90% certainty that this is the problem.

Windows 8.1

250gb SSD

1TB HDD

To my disgust, the crashing had remained. The other odd properties such as the BIOS being unresponsive and 20 minute startup times were gone completely, so I am able to use my computer normally, EXCEPT GAMING. As I have previously stated, I have listed and detailed the crashes I've experienced below, but read them when you get to them.

Beforehand, I thought the problem was the PSU, and I ended up RMA'ing TWO faulty PSU's in a row, firstly my CS750M I bought originally, and then another new CS750M entirely (the one they sent as a replacement), so eventually I bought an AX860 platinum PSU, to hopefully rule out issues relating the the power, yet the problem still persisted. Strangely enough, the first PSU's RMA report stated that it was apparently "causing the computer to shut down under heavy load" as I could barely play over 5-30 mins of any game. The second PSU ran fine for an entire day, and I had no problems. However, the next day, it crashed more often than the first. The RMA error report stated the same as the first, apparently it was shutting down under heavy load.

And now, even with the AX860, it is as if nothing has changed, so the power supply has been ruled out as NOT the problem, despite the crashing still existing. It would be beyond unlikely that the AX860 is faulty.

I then sent off my WINDFORCE 780ti, as it was the only other possible cause of this problem, yet the RMA returned NOT FAULTY! I asked them to test and test again, on Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4, and even with these extra tests, apparently, nothing was wrong. I once owned Crysis 3 on my older system, and it never crashed. This is an extreme anomaly, as every other modern day game did crash. Older, less demanding games never crashed however, such as Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2 and Star wars battlefront 2.

I do not believe these results are accurate, and I still think there's a problem with the card, but I am unable to RMA it as I bought it back at Christmas time, it is now 8 months ahead, and I have already contacted Scan computers (the retailers I bought the card off) and they have confirmed I cannot get a refund or replacement.

So, to try and discover what the cause could be, here are more details:



The games I've played the most with this seemingly broken graphics card are:

Battlefield 4 (crashes / freezes)

Assassins' creed: Black Flag (crashes / freezes, more often than all)

Counter Strike: Global Offensive (crashes / freezes)

Left 4 dead one and two (rarely crashes and freezes, but still capable)

Team Fortress 2. (never crashed or frozen)

and Farcry 3. (crashes / freezes)


I'll explain what happens in detail. The games stated above crash in slightly different ways, all of which I'll explain, this suggests that the behaviour of the results are HIGHLY UNPREDICTABLE. Sometimes I can play for hours at a time with very high performance and FPS, but sometimes I will have 40-55 fps and stuttering a lot of the time, REGARDLESS of graphical settings until eventually I experience a crash. Please note that.

Here are all of the different "crashes" I have experienced for all of this time.

1. (main crash/freeze) The screen will absolutely freeze, and the sound will totally stop, no more will be heard. I will be forced to stare at a frozen, unresponsive screen for around 3-5 seconds. The screen then turns black and apparently loses connection as the power button on my screen turns orange (standby) as my computer's fans make more noise, almost as if it has restarted. The screen will then regain signal, and I'll be returned to an unresponsive desktop. In place of my desktop itself will be a totally black screen of which nothing can be interacted with. The mouse icon will dissapear if it ventures anywhere near it, and I have to "ctrl, alt, del" to regain my mouse icon (only if it stays within the task manager box)
The only responsive part of the screen is the task bar below, but it is seemingly useless, as the only helpful thing to do in such a horrific state is to turn off the computer entirely. Task manager is accessible but the games will very rarely respond to my "end now" command, and the black screen will continue. Rarely I will still have my desktop background and icons in place instead of total blackness, but it will still be totally unreachable or accessible.

2. (rarer, yet similar crash/freeze) The screen will freeze for longer, but the sound will continue as if nothing has gone wrong. This happens mostly for Assassins' creed: Black Flag. The "main crash" happens less often with Black Flag, yet has still happened, therefore possible, but a LOT less likely. I have to "ctrl, alt del" and open the task manager, otherwise the screen will remain frozen until I otherwise shut down the computer / force restart it. The properties of the "main crash" desktop occur if I opened the task manager after this point.

3. (very rare, mini crash) Happens rarely for Battlefield 4 and Black Flag, mostly after changing graphical settings within the game. I have yet to experience this with any other game, but the stereotypical "Battlefield 4 has stopped working" or "Ac: Black Flag has stopped working" as a mini box with a loading bar appears. After cancelling this box away, I am returned to a fully functional desktop, the computer continues as if it had just been turned on, without any apparent issue. I am able to start up a game again, but I will hardly last 5 minutes before a "Main crash" or "Critical freeze" occurs.

4. (critical freeze) Exactly the same as the "main crash" except there's no escaping the frozen snapshot of what you were looking at last, and the sound completely stops. Occasionally, Black Flag's sound continues. The only escape is a force restart of the computer.

5. (getdeviceremovedhung) BATTLEFIELD 4 ONLY: It states there is something wrong with directx, and that the "device is hung" which suggests there's something wrong with the driver or "alternatively, the application." Battlefield 4 also crashes with the main crash, but not as often as "getdeviceremovedhung" I am unable to understand this error message at all other than thinking that the computer wants to get the "device" removed.

Now all the crashes have been explained, I'll try to explain what I've experienced these passed years, some other important details and attempts to try and fix this issue. But no matter what happens, one thing is always certain, and that is, there will always be a crash sooner or later.

I have used MSI Afterburner to lower both the Clock speed and the Memory clock to attempt to rule out the possibility of an unstable factory Overclock in the GPU. When playing a game after lowering the memory clock -140 / -260 and the Core clock -30, the game sometimes plays for longer. Last night I played Black Flag for 3 hours and 45 minutes without any issue. I ALSO noticed that I was able to turn up the graphics settings a lot more than usual, and performance was a lot better, I rarely dropped under 60 FPS. However, this morning, with the EXACT SAME SETTINGS, I was struggling to keep above 60 fps, as I noticed frame drops often, no matter how much I lowered the graphics settings. Eventually, I experienced a "Main crash" and my fears were confirmed. The behaviour of this card is unpredictable. I have also been able to play FOUR HOURS before even knowing about MSI afterburner. This also backs up the theory that Afterburner's influences do nothing for this issue. I have also tried "OC Guru" which is Gigabyte's version of afterburner, but the same results applied.

Furthermore, I have also ventured into the "Nvidia control panel" and adjusted some global settings. I turned on most things, such as ambient occlusion and triple buffering. But even if I am to apply these settings, as soon as I close off the Nvidia control panel, all of the changes will reverse to default. I thought this had something to do with messing with the graphics card, but apparently it is staying the way it is. This apparently has influenced nothing.


CONCLUSION: Evidently, I have come up against A LOT of different problems and experiences. I have given every amount of information I could possibly remember about this issue as I hope that my clarity will spark an answer to this atrocious mess that has haunted me for so long.

If you have made it this far, thank you. I hope you have a solution. Thank you for any helpful information / experiences you may be able to provide.
 
Solution
There's a newer bios for that gpu,is that on the card?
Look via gpu-z or the next,
http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html
open hwinfo32 and click run,close the top window= system summary,then look at info about the video adapter.

First do recheck if this next one is your gpu! Otherwise look for yourself.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4839#bios
for flashing is there this guide,i haven't done this so read carefully and think good about whether you want to try it.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1211151/flashing-nvidia-bios-within-windows
there are probably more guides and it might be good to google those too.

Cleaning the drivers with,
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html...

Vic 40

Titan
Ambassador
There's a newer bios for that gpu,is that on the card?
Look via gpu-z or the next,
http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html
open hwinfo32 and click run,close the top window= system summary,then look at info about the video adapter.

First do recheck if this next one is your gpu! Otherwise look for yourself.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4839#bios
for flashing is there this guide,i haven't done this so read carefully and think good about whether you want to try it.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1211151/flashing-nvidia-bios-within-windows
there are probably more guides and it might be good to google those too.

Cleaning the drivers with,
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html
or
http://treexy.com/products/driver-fusion
might help to and try even older drivers or just the ones linked via the gigabyte site.
 
Solution