Hey all - just wanted to see if you could help me with input on this:

I've just bought a new Inno3D 8800 GTS 512 video card (G92) - not the best and most trusted brand, I know - but living in Hong Kong (Inno3D is a Hong Kong brand) I thought it safe enough to buy it. Partly because only 'no-name' brands were available in the shops here, partly because it was reasonably cheap (about USD 335) and partly because all 'vanilla cards' seem to be identical apart from the stickers that are attached to them.

The card was easy to install and I can see huge improvement from my last card - an Asus 7950GT - but it does tend to crash the computer from time to time during game play on highest setting with both COD 2 and 3 (at least occasionally), Far Cry and when running AquaMark3 and Futuremark. The only remedy from these crashes is to reboot the computer.

I'm using the new beta driver from Nvidia (169.21), which supposedly is only in beta because it has not yet been WHQL certified (Nvidia's site has not been working for 'normal' drivers for this card for the last couple of days).

The exhaust from my video card does not seem hot during game-play, my overclocked CPU is running at around 52 degrees Celsius and seems stable during stress.

What do you think? Are my crashes a driver problem? Or could the card be faulty?



E6600 @ 3GHz (using Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme)
2GB Corsair DDR-800
Inno3D 8800 GTS 512 MB (G92)
Dell 2407WFP UltraSharp @ 1920*1200
Asus P5B-E Plus
150 GB Raptor HDD
320 GB WD (storage)
500W Coolermaster PSU

hey...glad to see (well not glad but...) im not the only one having issues. COD2 plays fine for me but Half Life 2 has already crashed twice. I have the same card but EVGA. My temps are very normal and are not the problem. I noticed today there is a 169.25 drivers for vista 64. yesterday it was 169.21 like what you have. If these beta drivers dont work, Im gonna go back to the non-beta 163.75. Good luck!

Oh yeah - forgot to mention I'm running XP 32 bit.

Two things comes to mind, one, roll back to an older driver and see if it solves (or alleviates) the crashing issues, second check the GPU fan speed, it seems most 8800GT have a fan controller issue where they won't speed up the fan past 29% no matter what, so download riva tuner, search for a tutorial in this forums or in google and see if the issue is present in your card.

Best of Luck!

He's using a GTS, but it I suppose it could have the same fan controller issues.

Anyways - I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue since a faulty card would likely cause artifacts or have some other noticeable defect besides locking up.

Run Prime95 for a long time and check for errors.
Check the temperature of your video card under load.

I didnt think prime 95 stressed the vid card

I use rthdribl to stress the video card. Not sure if it stresses 100% but sure makes it heat up.

Yeah, pretty sure Prime 95 was for CPU.

You could try ATI tool as well. It tests for artifacts and stability - http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback. evongugg and rgeist554 - I took your advice and downloaded ATITool 0.26.

I ran the artifact for close to an hour with no errors. The card gets pretty hot though maxing out at around 84 degrees C. Hot - but from what I gather not unusual for the G92 8800 cards.

ATITool does say 0% for the fan speed, which is a bit unsettling. But if the card is not overheating I guess this is a bug in the program and not a sign that the card fan is defective... I hope....

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=246531

It is possible that the version of the pci-e port is 1,0 or 1,0a and this is responsible for the problems.. ASUS website gives you moro information about this but does not give garantees about working or not.

8800gts 512 is pci-e 2.0

It works just fine on my PCIe1.0 slot.