Cold Boot/Wake from Sleep Graphics Card problems.

JohnKimble

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Since about a week ago, my computer has had an issue when starting from sleep or a shutdown state, the graphics card will not function properly.

At first it was just an issue where the first game i play that is remotely demanding, even the main menu of overwatch, would cause the Nvidia driver to stop responding and usually recover. After this initial crash the graphics driver would no longer give any more problems no matter how many more hours of usage there is.

As of yesterday though, it seems like the problem has gotten worse after the computer initially booted with no GPU signal after the bios splash screen, and after a restart took about 5-6 nvidia driver crashes over 5 minutes or so in a random game before it fully recovered and stopped having issues for the rest of the day.

I tried using DDU to uninstall existing drivers and reinstall the newest nvidia drivers with a clean installation but unfortunately it did not change the outcome.

The system is running a 6600k, GTX 1070, and a 500w Power Supply.
 
Solution
depending on the power supply it may be cheap power supply that not holding it output. try a test power supply or the gpu in another pc.

JohnKimble

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I figured that could be a possibility, somehow power supply unable to supply enough power until warmed up, going to test a couple things and report outcome, first will be turning on pc and letting it sit for 20+ minutes before running something, and second is if issues get worse i have a 750W power supply that i may be able to test it with.
 

JohnKimble

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The power supply iirc is a FSP 500W Gold+

Bit of an update, so i decided to let my computer idle on the desktop after starting it up and *warm up* for about 20 minutes. Did not get a driver crash or black screen starting a game after this period. Unsure if it is just chance or a fluke, will have to attempt this a few more times to be certain.
 

JohnKimble

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Some time since my last post but i've been testing out using EVGA precision to downclock my card by 5-10%, and so far out of 3 attempts it has prevented the driver from crashing on each one.
 

JohnKimble

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Motherboard is a MSI Z170I Pro AC. Bios version is 1.8
So far 5/5 on no driver crashing after the slight clock speed decrease.
 

JohnKimble

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After a couple good weeks of testing it just seems like for whatever reason the graphics card is just does not like the stock clock/power configs. Driver/bios updates have not changed it, but the ~5% reduction in clock speeds seems to prevent the issue. Cause of problem still unknown but it seems good for now.
 

JohnKimble

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Giving an update on this. A few months after my last post the GPU started to get worse and worse, requiring more and more down clocking to remain stable until i eventually just decided to RMA the card. Near that point the card was sitting at about -25% on the power target which for some reason seems to increase stability, as well as -150mhz on the core clock. With the replacement so far it's been able to run at stock clocks *technically higher clocks as it's a EVGA Superclocked rather than the previous founders edition* so far without any problems.