GTX 660 Constantly Crashes

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Twiisstt

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Jan 16, 2014
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I decided to purchase the GTX 660 on Christmas day 2013, and for the first week it ran like a charm. However, during the past two weeks, I've starting having some issues with the graphics card.
Firstly, whilst playing The Witcher 2 for about three hours, the screen went black for around 10 seconds, and then acted if nothing had happened. All it said was something along the lines of "Display Driver has stopped working and recovered". Over the weeks, this issue has gotten more common, and I don't know why. This was a 1st hand graphics card, which was fitted completely fine (I did it myself with experience from other graphics cards) and I can't seem to find a solution that can resolve this. I have updated my drivers many times, I've done antivirus sweeps and that hasn't helped, I've checked the graphics card and took it out and back in and that hasn't helped. In fact, In the past two days I have received a game crashing with a new error message at random playtimes. It more recently began to say "GTX 660 has crashed" in white text with a blue background around the text, which means I have to restart my computer to get it to start performing well again.

This is a rather annoying issue since I don't want to end up getting the blame for possibly breaking this graphics card, even though I certainly don't think I've done anything wrong.

Here are my specs:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.20GHz
8GB ram

http://gyazo.com/91b47cda6e8d3b4e05c7e8d842b5b59b.png
(A bit more information about them in case you might need it): http://gyazo.com/819d6807b785edd121c7cb60c9257c07.png

Thanks if anyone can help, I would really appreciate it.
 
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MC_K7

MC_K7

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When you say you updated the drivers many time, was it the same driver you uninstalled and reinstalled? Because I would suggest you try a different version instead. Even if it's an older driver, it might be more stable.

I see your temps seem fine, 34C on idle is normal for this card. However, did you monitor your temps under load while gaming? Overheating could also cause the crash.

You only mention The Witcher 2, but did you try other games as well? It could be a bug in the game that causes your graphics driver to crash. Check if there are some patches for this game and make sure you installed them. But the best thing to do would be to try other games as well, try to play for many hours with another game and see if it still crashes.

 
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Twiisstt

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Jan 16, 2014
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Hi there,
After browsing solutions for this problem a bit more, I read that some people said reinstalling driver 314.22 would fix the issue. I have done this a couple of hours ago and will post in the next couple of days weather it has improved the crashes or not.

I originally began reinstalling older drivers, and that didn't seem to have any effect on the issue. Also, I don't believe the temperature is an issue, because one time after just turning on my computer, I went to play a game at it crashed around 2 minutes in.

It doesn't only happen on The Witcher 2, it tends to be a problem on games like Battlefield 4, GRID, Devil May Cry 4, and some others. The only game at the top of my head which doesn't receive any crashes is League of Legends.

Thanks for the reply.
 
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MC_K7

MC_K7

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This is probably not a temperature problem but I would still check just to make sure. By the way, 2 minutes under load is enough to make the temps rise to the max. This is why you should check temps under load and not under idle.

If it crashes in every games, yeah it could be a bad card as rolli59 said. If trying other drivers doesn't fix it either, you'll need to RMA it.

If you don't mind me asking, how long did you have the card? Because the GTX-660 is a card that was released more than a year ago so this is an old model. How much did you pay for it? I'm just saying because for only 50$ more you can get the GTX-760 instead which is almost twice as fast as the 660 so it's a better bang for the bucks.

I just checked on newegg.com and the 660 still sells for around 200$ and the 760 is around 250$. If you're still within the 30-day return policy or you can ask the store where you purchased it they'll probably let you trade. Especially if you have to return the 660 anyways because it's defective. It's a win-win situation because they sell you a more expensive card and you get more performance for your dollars.

 
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Twiisstt

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Jan 16, 2014
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The graphics card, after about 2 hours of use, has an average temperature of 57 degrees celsius, and it hasn't crashed yet. Do you think the best bet will be for me to get a refund now, rather than tampering with solutions? I only have around 5 days left until I'm definitely able to refund it; I don't want to risk thinking I've found a solution and then it starts occurring again.
 
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Twiisstt

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Jan 16, 2014
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I don't believe a solution has been found yet. I haven't had the crash in a couple of hours but it happens at random times.

I've tried changing the power settings by following this: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Fix-the-Nvlddmkm-Error/step1/Solution-1-Power-Supply/

If the problem occurs again after I've done this, then I'll definitely get a refund. In fact, even if it doesn't, I'll try to get a trade for the 760 because of it's always worth a shot.
 
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rolli59

rolli59

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Well on a new card you should not have to mess with power settings so I would replace it. Apart from my current card that had the issue before RMA last year I have not had any issue's with GPU's for 7 years, or since a 18 month old X1900GT started failing on me and that is with 4 desktops in the household all with reasonably good cards and regular upgrades.
 
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Twiisstt

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Jan 16, 2014
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Hi guys,
So I decided to replace the graphics card with another GTX 660, and it arrived a couple of days ago.
Everything was fine until (just like last time) a game I was playing froze and the same error message popped up.
I'm completely stuck on what to do now. Last time this occured I tried calling up GIGABYTE and they just told me to "visit the website" and that was it. What would you guys suggest I do now? Surely I haven't got a bad card again? Perhaps I should just get the GTX 760 and be on my way...
 
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MC_K7

MC_K7

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Did you try to reinstall Windows from scratch (clean install)? Just to make sure we exclude software issues.

It would also be a good idea to flash your BIOS to latest version and get latest driver versions for all your hardware after reinstall.
 
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