Gigabyte GTX560Ti Faulty?

[Rhics]

Hi Guys

Got a Gigabyte GTX560Ti 900Mhz last week. Card was running everything great and was really happy.
BF3 was delivered yesterday and i'm getting crashes to desktop. Could be 3 mins in could be 10.

There's a lot on the net about this issue seems its effecting a lot of people. I don't want to underclock a £180 card. (Tried it on Win7-32 and made no difference)
Could it just be a conflict between current drivers+BF3+gtx560? Potential voltage issues?... My VX550 is 3 years old but it should still easily power this rig, don't want to jump on the "blame the PSU" bandwagon.

Yesterday I updated the cards Bios to the latest, formatted and put Win 7 64-bit with a clean install of all latest drivers... Managed to play an hour with only 1 crash. So its better, but not resolved.

Main question is, would you RMA the card?... It works with every other game but I brought it for this one.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Socket AM3 3.2 GHz 8MB L3 Cache
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 870 Socket AM3 (Rev 2.1)
Ram: Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Memory Kit CL9(9-9-9-27) 1.7 - 1.9V
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA II 7200rpm 32MB cache (ST3500320AS)
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint EcoGreen F2 1TB SATA II 32MB cache (HD103SI)
Gfx Card: Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti 900Mhz OC (GV-N560OC-1GI)
PSU: Corsair PSU 550W VX550W ATX12V v2.25

Quiet happy to send the card back but if the replacement is the same then i'm back to square one. knew I should have gone for the stock Asus 830Mhz

Any advice appreciated.

 

[hell_storm2004]

Since the card is new, i assume that you are on the latest drivers. If so, then it could be the card s faulty. If you have a spare card or can loan one from a friend for a day, then try it out. If the problem does not occur then the card is surely faulty.

 

[Rhics]

Thanks for the response.

I'm using latest 285.62 drivers. After the Win7 64-bit reinstall and a move back to the dreaded IE9 from Firefox I haven't had a crash in 2 hours of BF3....

Might just stick with it, the card has a 3 year warrenty and if its a bad overclock i've got plenty of time to get a replacement.

Its just annoying you build a rig for a specific game and everything works fine apart from said game lol... It does seem there are many people having probs with BF3 though. Maybe due to the rushed launch to beat the release of another FPS out soon.

 

[gmcizzle]

I've seen so many threads about this exact issue with 560 ti running BF3. I doubt there is something wrong with the card since you said it runs everything else fine.

 

[hell_storm2004]

BF3... what a badly coded game this is turning out to be!

 

[gmcizzle]

BF3 seems to be coded decently, it just uses a huge amount of memory. I have a 1.5gb gtx 580 and 6gb ddr3 (trip), and I feel it's basically the minimum of each to run 1080p on Ultra. 1400+mb usage on the 580, and so much usage of my 6gb of RAM that win7 complains of low performance right after I exit the game.

 

[hell_storm2004]

That would mean tons of places where there are memory leaks and which weren't taken care of during the coding!

 

[kyle382]

I bought one of these about the same time you did. Works well with anything except bf3. All 560 ti's are having the problem you describe. My gigabyte started to make a terrible noise when fan speed reached 60%+. I read about both of these problems before I bought the card and posted a therad about it on here.

For the most part people told me that if there really were known issues with the card more people would know about it. Thats simply not the case. The bad reviews I read were completely true. Its really hard to get a 100% working version of this card it seems. I had the drivers issues (stopped working) a few times now and the fan is a piece of junk that I feel they never even tested. I dont think its a problem with bf3 coding at all...its just that when this card is pushed to the max for a while, it fails. Temperatures are always below 60C, no matter.

The good news is that nvidia is releasing an updated version of the 560 ti in the next month or 2. It will have more cores than the currrent 570...but less shaders I believe. I'm willing to bet nvidia is discreetly patching up the flaws of the previous 560 ti card.

I am returning my 560 ti in a few days...already put the RMA through with newegg. Will wait for the updated version. Until then im playing battlefield 3 underclocked at 850mhz and a mix of high/ultra settings at 1900x1200 and it works pretty well. If you max the game out and OC your card at all, you WILL crash, even if it says your getting 45-50 fps and temps are good. GL mate.

 

[gmcizzle]

BF3 may have memory leaks, but it may also legitimately need that much, especially in MP.

 

[hell_storm2004]

Could be... But do you think a game can use up so much of RAM? 1.5 Gigs is just too much!

 

[gmcizzle]

It's possible I guess, but only someone from the DICE dev team could say for sure.

 

[Onus]

I don't have anything that demanding, but I've noticed anomalous behavior from my Asus version of the 560Ti also. It isn't heat, and it has happened with any driver version. I'm well beyond the RMA period, and hate to have wasted my money, but I'm thinking of replacing it with a HD6870 or HD6950 instead.

 

[waxy_27]

Got an MSI 560TI FROZEN II myself and have no problems whatsoever. Also know a lot of people with the same card as myself and they also don't have a problem. Think it might be the Gigabyte versions of the card

buy the card from a good manufacturer

 

[cps1974]

can you try 1080p ultra but go to custom and (a) reduce AA or (b) try no AA as suggested in a different thread

if not, i will be doing some testing along these lines in 1 or 2 hours ill post back if intetested

chaz

 

[cps1974]

the results from my tests were stunning, i wont post the details as they were not exact replicas in terms of the tests, I played a series of games, 2 rounds on each map - 64 player server, full or as near to: operation metro, seine crossing and grand bazaar, huge fire fights as you'd expect - i switched every 5 mins between ultra preset / ultra with 2xMSAA and ultra with AA disabled

the ultra pre-set @ 1920x1080, 60Hz provided what on paper looked like acceptable fps but did feel laggy,+50 fps

the ultra settings, customised with AA disabled or 2xMSAA (rather than default 4xMSAA) were amazingly fluid and a significant improvement - I couldn't tell the difference between the eye candy as I was too focused on the firefights with zero lagg, came in at mid 80s and mid 70s fps respectively

I've found my settings and would encourage 460 and 560 / 560 Ti owners to play around with the AA settings in game whilst using the rest of the ultra settings @ 1920x1080

im off to frag some more!

chaz

 

[kyle382]

Got an MSI 560TI FROZEN II myself and have no problems whatsoever. Also know a lot of people with the same card as myself and they also don't have a problem. Think it might be the Gigabyte versions of the card

buy the card from a good manufacturer

I don't think the MSI is without problems either to be honest. Just read the 50/50 reviews on newegg. You get one that works or you don't... and since when is gigabyte not on par with msi lol.

CPS, yes that is a known work around...I mentioned it earlier. I had to underclock my card to get it to work also. I am able to get 40-50 fps on all ultra and aa- 4x af- 16x while overclocked, but the game crashes. I think this is a driver issue but just a guess.

 

[cps1974]

i agree kyle, while Im no expert on cards - i have played all the battlefield series, I hope and sincereley believe that driver updates and game patches will iron a lot of this stuff out - especially for the 560 Ti owners who are struggling at moment.


chaz

 

[Rhics]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

I was definitely going to RMA the card (While I still can) and probably get a different brand but after the clean install with Win7 64 BF3 hasent crashed in 2 days... So now i'm not so sure.
It 'was' crashing, which makes me think the card isn't great under full load. I'm hoping it is just software / drivers after all.

I will mess about with the AA and ultra settings later and see what ifference it makes. I play 1680x1024 maining on high btw.

 

[Cooldarkfusion]

Rhics,

I just recently went through buying new GPU's. I hate the experience because New hardware almost always means defects for me.

I got the cards that you have and on failed at 100% load while the other reached 85 degrees with fans on high WITHOUT sli. So yeah, I considered them both defective and returned them. I got two MSI Hawk 560 Ti's instead and I was impressed. Temps are great and they overclock well. All manufactures have defects but from the reviews I've been reading, MSI has been very good lately. I could have saved myself alot of trouble if I just got MSI instead of trying Asus, and gigabyte before it. The asus failed and crashed too. Although I have noticed that switching from my GTX 460's to my 560's has introduced stutter. strange, but isn't limited to MSI cards.

 

[Rhics]

Thanks Cooldarkfusio, you have confirmed what I was thinking... Will raise an RMA with dabs and see if I can swap it for the MSi Twin.