GTX 260 crashing on games

[Xuanah]

Hello, I have a NVidia GTX 260 for around an year, but a few months ago I started having serious issues while playing 3D games, like World of Warcraft, Crysis and Starcraft II. The graphics driver crashes constantly, I get graphics errors which can be temporarily fixed with and alt+tab, but sometimes the computer simply freezes or reboots. I was running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 when the problems first started, after googling a while I thought maybe the x86 version would help, but nothing changed. Both OS's are fully updated, and soare the drivers. Tried installing Asus SmartDoctor, but not only the temperature never gets high, also the application also claims the card is ok.

I've ran a few stress tests, took the card to the vendor and he tested it also, and it seems to be working perfectly. These are my computer specifications:


* Board: Asus P5Q3
* Processor - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @2.66GHz
* Memory - 4GB DDR3 RAM
* Video Card - Nvidia GTX 260 896MB GDDR3


Any ideas would be very welcome, since I'm running out of new ones... Thanks in advance.

 

[skolpo]

Is your power supply sufficient enough to run your system? If drivers are crashing, uninstall and clean sweep your graphics drivers and reinstall them. You can even trying earlier driver versions to see if the problem persists.

 

[swifty_morgan]

you can try 8 or 9 series graphics divers for that card.... but sounds more like a heat problem to me. Have you cleaned the dust out of all your heat sinks ? From the processor heat sink to taking the video card out and blowing through the exhaust end to blow dust out of the card..... and clean dust from the fan blades and out of the air intakes on the case. The lower front one is a good culprit for getting clogged. And don't forget to clean the heat sinks on the mother board. It only takes a little dust to heat up the SB and NB chipsets to make them over heat. And last but not least, the power supply. Try cleaning the intake if applicable and try blowing dust out of that.

 

[nico13]

The problem may come from the motherboard - you have to check if everything in bios is ok and try to reset the bios.

 

[Xuanah]

Hi guys, and thanks for your replies. The power supply is enough, I had a lower power one and switched it to make sure it wasn't a supply issue. Also, no heat whatsoever... the computer was cleaned by the vendor when they tested it, and I've been monitoring the temperature, which has never alarming values. Thus, the only thing I haven't done is checking the BIOS, but to be very honest I dunno what to look for...

 

[jsc]

The power supply is enough,

How do you know? What kind of power supply?

 

[wh3resmycar]

there are cards the become finicky as time goes by. i'm pretty sure thats covered by the warranty

 

[Xuanah]

How do you know? What kind of power supply?

I looked for the specs from the card and bought a new supply accordingly.

I know the card is still in warranty, but I can't "prove" it's faulty, since it passes every single test. But yes, at this moment I'm tempted to get an ATI instead...

 

[swifty_morgan]

Just exactly what power supply do you have and what are the amperage ratings on it ?

And don't trust your local vendor to clean your machine for you. They want to get machines in and out in the least amount of time possible and to make money with as little effort as possible.

And just because you monitor temps doesn't mean there aren't "hot" spots on occasion. If you crash and then go into the bios to check to temps the machine has already cooled down by the time you got there.

 

[Xuanah]

I'll have to get back to you about the supply. I trust this vendor because he's a friend and I was at his office while he was cleaning the computer. And when I say I monitor the temperatures, I mean I alt-tab when the game is starting to crash (when the computer doesn't go completely unresponsive) and the highest temperature I've been getting is around 52ºC. I'm using different applications for that, all have graphics that allow you to check for peeks, which don't seem to be the issue...

Only thing remaining is the supply then, I'll upload specs later on