GTX 260 Blank Screens

4809

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Feb 4, 2009
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When playing Crysis, has anyone else with a GTX 260 experienced the screen going blank when looking into thick smoke or steam.

I have downloaded many single player levels, and whenever there is a lot of smoke, or dust with explosions, the screen goes blank and the PC freezes. I then have to do a hard reset.

I have a factory overclocked card, but it still happens if I put it on stock settings. I noticed people with the GTX 260 complaining on other websites about getting blank or green screens, or lock ups, when stressing their card.

Is there a problem with the GTX 260? Could someone test their card by putting settings on max in Crysis and then find a downloaded level with lots of thick smoke, and see if your screen goes blank or freezes.
 

4809

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Feb 4, 2009
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Just to add... I have tried many drivers on 64 and 32 versions of vista.

The temps do get a bit high, about 79-80 C when under load.

I am going to underclock until it stops freezing. I think some of these factory overclocked cards are "too overclocked". Mine is the GTX 260 (192 core) BFG OC2, the fastest of the 4 they do. They set it at 655 Mhz core/ 1125 Mhz mem.

Download the recent single player level at crymod called Pacifica 3. Just after you blow up the submarines try walking into the thick smoke and see if your screen blanks or freezes.
 

4809

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Finally after a lot of tweaking and lock ups I think I have found a completely stable overclock.

I used the single player level called "Castaway" (from crymod.com), where there is an extremely smoke intensive tube with a laser beam. This is the most graphics intensive scene I have come across (the smoke in Crysis kills your framerate). Each time I left it immersed in the smoke for several minutes on very high settings until it crashed.

I found the stable settings to be: GPU 614 Mhz, Shader 1316 Mhz, Memory 1192 Mhz. I cannot get it to crash now in any games.

The stock speeds for this card are: GPU 576 Mhz, and Memory 1000 Mhz.

The card comes overclocked at GPU 655 Mhz (which is obviously too high for intensive graphics), and memory at 1125 Mhz.

I know some identical GPU's can be pushed further than others, but this is the limit for mine when it comes to intensive effects. Don't go by 3dmark06 or 07, as they're not as intensive as the smoke in Crysis. I can sail through 3dmark06 with a massive overclock and get a great score, but I can't run games at those settings.

The GTX 260 does get hot though, about 85 C under max load!

It looks like it's best to avoid factory overclocked cards, and instead just push a stock card as far as it goes. I still got a 20% overclock over the stock speed on the graphics memory, but only 7% on the GPU.

So the lesson is: Forget benchmarks, always test your overclock settings in a really intensive game, like some thick smoke in Crysis!