GTX 260 Freezing / Crashing

[gary99]

I have the following setup:

Asus P5N73-AM mobo
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
GeForce GTX260
4GB DDR2-800 memory
700W power supply

When firing up a 3D game, or even a dxdiag 3D test, I see corruption in textures, weird colors, etc, and then usually a freeze or sometimes a blue screen. This happens pretty much immediately usually, and always within 30 seconds at the very most. Software is a fresh install of XP, directx 9.0c, GeForce/ION Driver Release 185 from 5/6/09. RivaTuner hardware monitoring indicates the core temp never gets above about 53 deg C, so I'm pretty sure it's not a heat issue. Just in case I've tried cranking up the fan speed but to no avail.

I also tried a fresh Vista install and updated DirectX 10. Same result, except Vista caught the error and gave me the little "your video driver crashed" bubble instead of the corruption.

I originally had an ATI card in here, which was also crashing, so I'm thinking maybe some other piece of hardware is defective. Does that sound like the case? What should I try replacing? New motherboard? Other ideas?

If I need a new motherboard, what should I get? I don't plan on doing SLI right now.

Thanks very much.
-Gary

 

[Zerk]

Are you PCi Power connectors hooked up?

 

[Rogue77777]

Since this is the second video card you've tried, I would look at your menory and then your bios. Make sure you're running the latest bios. Oh Yeah, are you over clocking?

 

[gary99]

Thanks zerk and rogue.

Are you PCi Power connectors hooked up?

Yep, did that.

Since this is the second video card you've tried, I would look at your menory and then your bios. Make sure you're running the latest bios. Oh Yeah, are you over clocking?

I do have the latest motherboard BIOS, and I'm not overclocking anything at all right now. In fact I used RivaTuner to underclock the video card to try to troubleshoot. That seems to make it last a little longer sometimes (like 5 seconds instead of 2 seconds).

So you'd suspect bad memory before a bad motherboard?

-Gary

 

[blackhawk1928]

Well, your hardware is good, however either your motherboard/cpu/ram is defective, try to elimate your powersupply by getting a multimeter and seeing how much watts it produces under the load of a videogame. If it makes a decent amount for you videocard then focus on other stuff. Overall try to elimate everything before the motherboard cause its the most expensive. Also try to run another application thats chews the same ram as the one you are using and see if it crashes or something. For CPU do same thing with ram, open something that chews same cpu power and see what happens.

 

[gary99]

Thanks, good advice.

I'm running MemTest+ now to check my memory. I'll run Prime95 next to try to stress the CPU. I'm somewhat confident the power supply is not at fault. I had a 450W unit originally, and I went ahead and replaced it with this 700W unit when the card was crashing in the same way with the original 450W. Who knows though. I do have a multimeter. Where would I want to measure voltage when testing?

Thanks again,
Gary

 

[blackhawk1928]

when testing, it depends, hmm, i am not sure, try putting it at the place where the power connecter connects tot he videocard. I am not sure about that though. find it on the internet it might have info about it.

 

[BiSHGoD]

Let me know what your results are. I'm having the same issue with 2 different nvidia cards. Asus mobo. Tried a reinstall twice with no luck. Thinking either Mobo/Ram

 

[gary99]

Turned out to be bad RAM. MemTest found a bunch of errors: http://www.memtest.org/

I've got everything running happily now with the one good memory stick.

Thanks everyone!

 

[blackhawk1928]

HAHA nice...see, now everything works good, anyway, if you want to have as much ram as u did, u can always buy a new stick so glad we helped have fun!

 

[gary99]

Ack! It worked fine last night for about 2 hours of 3D gaming (just World of Warcraft, nothing too difficult) then started crashing again. This is with just the one memory stick. I figured after 2 hours it must be heat, so I fired up RivaTuner, but the core temp was only 43 degrees or so.

I think I'll buy some more memory. :/

Better ideas?

 

[apache_lives]

Manually set everything in the bios - CPU, FSB, Multi, Memory Voltage (if DDR2) to 1.9v (unless your ram needs more), disable Spread Spectrum etc, then run Prime95, and ATiTool for a few hours and post back with results

Oh and What PSU do you have? (BRAND/MODEL)