GTX 470 Overclocked and Now Problems

Hey all,

So I am a video editor and realized I could get some extra oomph out of my GTX 470 if I overclocked a bit to help out with the mercury playback engine. So using EVGA's precision tool I did just that. I wasn't sure what I was doing so I did some research and ended up using some settings found on the review of the card on Amazon of someone saying they were able to run at those settings on air cooling no problem.

So I did it and things were running fine, and I decided to do a restart. That's when the trouble started. I began to get a black screen where I could use the mouse to move around and that was it. The only thing I remember doing before this happened was clicking the "apply to startup" button in Precision. So I then wanted to undo this in safe mode but the program would not run.

After a few attempts at just restarting and getting nowhere I ended up on uninstalling Precision and the videocard drivers, which got me back to desktop. Windows 7 installed its own drivers, and I reinstalled precision.

I then uninstalled drivers, attempted to install the latest ones I downloaded, but for some reason it could not install and so I rebooted only to be met with a black screen again. Hit the reset button and met it again but decided to leave it for a while and hit ctrl alt del.

After a while, the prompt for task manager showed up and everything loaded. I installed the new driver and attempted to get back to editing but a box popped up saying it could not do Mercury Playback anymore, and when I tried to re-enable it, it was greyed out. I restarted the PC, and was met with a slower loading machine.

TL;DR - Overclocked GPU a bit, got black screen, uninstalled precision and drivers, set it back to default but still getting a period of black with a movable cursor before the desktop shows, and it takes a while for the PC to be fully responsive even though I put settings back to where it should be. I also ran CCleaner to clear out registry and restart.


As it is startup is noticably longer with the black screen before desktop loads. WHAT DO?

I need to know what clocks and fan settings you left the card at when you decided to shut down? Do you have a second comp to test the card? Being an honest person I will say that you should have gotten a second card just for mercury playback engine if you had a second slot and the psu was able to handle the load. Beyond that I think the problem is software to blame for your troubles right now.

Oh and I agree, it's software for sure. If I could get a little extra out of my card that would be great since I think I got a noticeable difference when I overclocked. The problem came when I hit the "apply at startup" button and restarted.

I am wondering if I could just adjust the settings manually when the computer is already started, edit with those settings, then go back to default when I am done?

It's a HAF 932 case and yes there are a few fans in there, and the CPU cooler is a coolermaster, not stock.

It may not be a proper "idle" since I would have had premiere running but not doing any encoding or anything, therefore nothing intensive happening and CPU would be running at nothing more or less. I now just have chrome open with some tabs.

Here's where I'm at

The default for the fan in Precision is at 40 set on Auto - maybe I should make it manual and bump that up?

one thing that can really help you out is re-installation of windows

80% fan is safe even 100% is also safe, but are loud

i use my fan at 100% when gaming (too noisy) and thats why i use head phones during gaming

have you tried system restore

I have feeling your card overheated. DId you test for stability when you OC'ed?