Very strange, Nvidia..

[olivierhacking]

Hi,

I currently own a Palit GTX 260 216p (896mb). It was working properly for a year, but then I started having the following problems. In almost all of my games (ex. Crysis, Halo, Elder Scrolls IV, Just Cause 2 etc,) after I play for five minutes or so, the game crashes for five seconds and then recovers, but the fps are much lower, making the games unplayable. Just Cause 2 goes from +-45 fps to +-19 fps. In Crysis, the game sometimes recovers from a crash but other times it does not. It used to say a message something like 'kernel mode driver has stopped responding and has recovered' but now the message is not shown. This is very frustrating because only after I restart my system do the frames return to normal. The driver of motherboard, graphics card are all updated. What do you suggest?
Thank you for your help,
Olivier

 

[zergesys]

That's not very good.

It may be worth re-installing the whole thing.
1. Reboot in safe mode
2. Uninstall the graphics drivers and run Driver Sweeper
3. Turn off the PC and unplug it
4. Take out the graphics card
5. Put it back in again
6. Reinstall the graphics drivers.

If that doesn't work, try the uninstall/driver sweep again and install older drivers. If that also doesn't work, it may indeed be a sign of a bad card, or something else.

 

[hunter315]

What are the rest of the specs of your system? In particular your power supply. Bad power can make things unstable and provide strange error messages.

 

[olivierhacking]

What are the rest of the specs of your system? In particular your power supply. Bad power can make things unstable and provide strange error messages.

Coolermaster 500W

 

[olivierhacking]

What are the rest of the specs of your system? In particular your power supply. Bad power can make things unstable and provide strange error messages.

should i post my dxdiag??

 

[olivierhacking]

That's not very good.

It may be worth re-installing the whole thing.
1. Reboot in safe mode
2. Uninstall the graphics drivers and run Driver Sweeper
3. Turn off the PC and unplug it
4. Take out the graphics card
5. Put it back in again
6. Reinstall the graphics drivers.

If that doesn't work, try the uninstall/driver sweep again and install older drivers. If that also doesn't work, it may indeed be a sign of a bad card, or something else.

aw man im not a pro at hardware uninstalling etc. :/ but ill try a driver sweep. can u give a download link? thanks!

 

[zergesys]

It's fairly straight forward. First, go the the programs and applications section (Add/Remove programs) of your control panel. Find the NVidia drivers and un-install.
After this is done, use the Driver Sweeper here.

When you want to start doing this you can use MSconfig (simply type MSConfig into windows run or the start menu search bar, depending on OS) and go to boot options and select "safe boot". As long as this is enabled your computer will boot in safe-mode. Go back to MSConfig and disable safe-mode to get back to your normal mode.

Also, that cooler master supply, what model is it specifically? If it's an older extreme power model PSU, it may have started to fail on you. They aren't super reliable, especially the fans.

 

[olivierhacking]

It's fairly straight forward. First, go the the programs and applications section (Add/Remove programs) of your control panel. Find the NVidia drivers and un-install.
After this is done, use the Driver Sweeper here.

When you want to start doing this you can use MSconfig (simply type MSConfig into windows run or the start menu search bar, depending on OS) and go to boot options and select "safe boot". As long as this is enabled your computer will boot in safe-mode. Go back to MSConfig and disable safe-mode to get back to your normal mode.

Also, that cooler master supply, what model is it specifically? If it's an older extreme power model PSU, it may have started to fail on you. They aren't super reliable, especially the fans.

its a cooler master 500W Extreme Power

 

[nforce4max]

This is not a driver problem, this crash is common to an issue with the hardware and ATI cards behave the same way. Usually the gpu stops responding to the driver thus resulting in a crash and after a short period of time it recovers. So check the thermals and clean the card as for the psu it is good enough for one GTX260 and maybe at the most with a dedicated card.

 

[olivierhacking]

This is not a driver problem, this crash is common to an issue with the hardware and ATI cards behave the same way. Usually the gpu stops responding to the driver thus resulting in a crash and after a short period of time it recovers. So check the thermals and clean the card as for the psu it is good enough for one GTX260 and maybe at the most with a dedicated card.

how do i get dust off of the card?

 

[nforce4max]

Lol :lol:

At the very very very least is to get a can of compressed air and blast out the cooler.

 

[olivierhacking]

Thanks everyone for your help, but I think the problem is my power supply. I have overclocked my i7 860 to 3.6 GHz and I added 2 cold cathodes and 2 case fans. I will have to buy a new power supply soon! Right now, I am planning to upgrade my GTX 260 to hd 6870 crossfire. I would need to upgrade my motherboard also to a dual PCI-E. In total, motherboard, grapphics cards and power supply will cost me $770. But if I am lucky, I can earn up to $320 from my old parts. I live in Belgium, so I used a converter for these prices. But I am purchasing the two graphic cards from Amazon. ANy tips/ advice or anything is wanted!

 

[servarus]

You should've mention your whole spec before.

 

[olivierhacking]

You should've mention your whole spec before.

XD true.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Coolermaster Extreme series of PSUs are not very good.