Trouble with my EVGA 560 Ti

[jon the cpa]

I'm in need of some expert advice. I've been having trouble with my new system I built a couple of months ago. Here's a link to my card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130604

I have two separate monitors, but only one of them runs off the card. I run the other off the motherboard's built-in graphics. At this point, neither my CPU nor my GPU are overclocked (until I resolve this issue).

I have been getting the "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message like so many others, but my issue goes beyond that, I think. I seem to only get this error when I am browsing the Internet or playing with stuff on my desktop. The screen running from the 560 Ti goes black for 5-10 seconds, and then comes back on. No harm, no foul, really (but it IS annoying).

However, when I am playing games like World of Warcraft or, like yesterday, Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta, I have a separate problem. My game is obviously running from the 560 Ti, and I play in Windowed mode so that I can keep Facebook or other Internet sites open on the other monitor while I play. However, during play, my system freezes, and the game screen just freezes. It doesn't go black, it doesn't get all fuzzy, it just freezes. My other monitor, however, reacts as shown in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLfuv7_yok0

At this point, I have to hard reset my system because it is unresponsive.

So my question: is this response while in games consistent with what other users are experiencing relating to the display driver error mentioned above, or do I have another issue I should be concerned about?

Thanks for your help!

 

[jitpublisher]

Uh, you are running the onboard and the discrete GPU at the same time? Don't you think there "might" be driver conflicts in this situation? What you should be doing is disabling and uninstalling all the drivers for the onboard video, and hook both monitors up to the 560ti, you may need an adapter, but it will run both monitors just fine.

 

[Warmacblu]

Try turning off hardware acceleration in your browser and turn of aero on your desktop. You may have to wait until better drivers are released.

 

[chiptouz]

Uh, you are running the onboard and the discrete GPU at the same time? Don't you think there "might" be driver conflicts in this situation? What you should be doing is disabling and uninstalling all the drivers for the onboard video, and hook both monitors up to the 560ti, you may need an adapter, but it will run both monitors just fine.

+1

It sounds like a driver conflict issue

 

[jon the cpa]

Uh, you are running the onboard and the discrete GPU at the same time? Don't you think there "might" be driver conflicts in this situation? What you should be doing is disabling and uninstalling all the drivers for the onboard video, and hook both monitors up to the 560ti, you may need an adapter, but it will run both monitors just fine.

My thought process was that when both monitors are hooked into the 560 Ti, it always runs at maximum. Is this not an issue?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The "stopped working" issue is one I fought with regarding my son's factory OC'd GFX card from EVGA. After 30 support calls and 5 RMA's over 20 months they finally replaced it with a next gen card and the issue went away. During that time I replaced it with twin 560 Ti's (Asus) and no problem, replaced it with a 480, no problem which were taken from my other son's boxes. And this was running the EVGA card at reference card speeds not the factory OC'd speed.

Is this a Z68 Board ?

http://www.ukgamingcomputers.co.uk/difference-between-h67-p67-z68-and-h61-chipsets-a-22.html

....the Z68 chipset combines the advantages of the H67 and P67 Chipset so that overclocking, dual dedicated graphics cards and use of the integrated CPU graphics is available.

The EVGA card was also connected to 2 monitors, a 24" Dell IPS and a 19" TN ....the TN panel died as did a 2nd one a few months later.....but they were 4 years old so I didn't lay the blame on the card.

 

[jon the cpa]

Well, I plugged my other monitor into the card and disabled my onboard graphics drivers. I'm not sure if my issue has been fixed, but something just happened that was different. While I was playing SWTOR, I got the "stopped working" issue (and it didn't crash my game, much less my computer!). This is new. I have never seen it while playing a game, but I have always assumed it was what was causing my crashes. Perhaps driver conflicts prevented it from properly recovering. Now if only I could fix the "stopped working" issue. I am considering returning the card, honestly.

Jack, yes, I am running on a Z68:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502

I am considering going to the ASUS Twin Frozr. This card just isn't doing what I want it to do. I've used EVGA for years and never had a problem, but it appears they've lost their touch.

 

[jitpublisher]

My thought process was that when both monitors are hooked into the 560 Ti, it always runs at maximum. Is this not an issue?

No, it doesn't work like that. It takes no extra anything to run a second monitor. Fro the most part, the card is already doing whatever work is required to run another monitor anyway, its just whether you want to plug in and use it or not. Any performance overhead caused by the programs on the second monitor has much more effect on other parts of your PC, for instance drive use, CPU use, memory allocation, etc. Now if you tried to run Call of Duty on one monitor, and Skyrim on the other, then you might be putting a lot of stain on the old 560ti. But using the other monitor to do things like facebook, listen to music, simple things that are not having to render 3D images, won't make the GPU work any harder.

PS, it could be a problem with the card, however my 560ti's have worked perfectly for 6 months now. But, every manufacturer does have a hiccup now and then. I wouldn't be too quick to give up on EVGA. See if they will replace the card?

 

[Warmacblu]

I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. What temperature is your card running at while gaming?

 

[jon the cpa]

Idles around 49 C, maxes about 65 while gaming.

 

[Mousemonkey]

No, it doesn't work like that. It takes no extra anything to run a second monitor. Fro the most part, the card is already doing whatever work is required to run another monitor anyway, its just whether you want to plug in and use it or not. Any performance overhead caused by the programs on the second monitor has much more effect on other parts of your PC, for instance drive use, CPU use, memory allocation, etc. Now if you tried to run Call of Duty on one monitor, and Skyrim on the other, then you might be putting a lot of stain on the old 560ti. But using the other monitor to do things like facebook, listen to music, simple things that are not having to render 3D images, won't make the GPU work any harder.

PS, it could be a problem with the card, however my 560ti's have worked perfectly for 6 months now. But, every manufacturer does have a hiccup now and then. I wouldn't be too quick to give up on EVGA. See if they will replace the card?

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that when two monitors are run from the same card it has to remain at 3D clockspeeds, as in no low power mode.

 

[jitpublisher]

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that when two monitors are run from the same card it has to remain at 3D clockspeeds, as in no low power mode.

Maybe they cannot enter low power mode, but I did run 2 monitors on my last build, with a 8800GTS 512 OC card, and I did not notice any difference at all in how the card ran from 1 to 2 monitors, from an outside appearance anyhow. Fan noise and spin up was pretty much on par with running only 1 monitor. If I was not gaming, the card was quiet and cool. I will have to read up a little more on it I guess.

 

[jitpublisher]

Here is something I found on another forum about Nvidia inspector and there is a special tab to deal with dual monitor power states. Interesting. On the same forum they stated that if both monitors have the same resolution and refresh rate, down clocking will be better, but the card will remain in 3D mode.
He mentions why Nvidia and AMD do what they do, and he has a work-around.
You right click on the 'show overclocking' tab and there is

Start multi-display power saver.


Saving energy when using multiple monitors
For NVIDIA graphics cards GDDR5 is use as video memory, there is a limitation in the power-saving features. If more than a single display with different resolutions/timings on the graphics card is connected, so the driver prevented that automatically downshift in energy-saving "performance States" (P-States).
The reason is memory, which may cause flickering when changing the P-States according to NVIDIA in a hardware limitation when using GDDR5. This problem is video cards thus also not limited to NVIDIA.
Unfortunately, the driver offers the user no choice to take the flicker in order to save power instead. A new feature dedicated to this fact is now "multi display power saver".
http://blog.orbmu2k.de/wp-content/pics/NVIDIAInspectorTool_DC56/image_thumb_10.png (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.orbmu2k.de%2Fwp-content%2Fpics%2FNVIDIAInspectorTool_DC56%2Fimage_ 13.png)
The driver is forced in the niedrigesten P-State to change. Now you can configure that may change as an exception in a higher P-State applications. A control based on the current usage is also possible.
This function takes a NVIDIA graphics card that has at least the three following P-States: p0, P8 and P12. The latest drivers are also provided.




Read about it here :
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.orbmu2k.de%2Ftools%2Fnvidia-inspector-tool


http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dcenter.org%2Fartikel%2Fnvidia-inspector-bringt-komfortables-multi-display-power-saving%2Fmulti-display-power-saver

 

[Mousemonkey]

Maybe they cannot enter low power mode, but I did run 2 monitors on my last build, with a 8800GTS 512 OC card, and I did not notice any difference at all in how the card ran from 1 to 2 monitors, from an outside appearance anyhow. Fan noise and spin up was pretty much on par with running only 1 monitor. If I was not gaming, the card was quiet and cool. I will have to read up a little more on it I guess.

There was something about it in the early days of the GTX480 I think, so it might just be a Fermi thing. When I get a chance I'll try to have a dig about to see if it was other series' as well.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Here is something I found on another forum about Nvidia inspector and there is a special tab to deal with dual monitor power states. Interesting. On the same forum they stated that if both monitors have the same resolution and refresh rate, down clocking will be better, but the card will remain in 3D mode.
He mentions why Nvidia and AMD do what they do, and he has a work-around.
You right click on the 'show overclocking' tab and there is

Start multi-display power saver.


Saving energy when using multiple monitors
For NVIDIA graphics cards GDDR5 is use as video memory, there is a limitation in the power-saving features. If more than a single display with different resolutions/timings on the graphics card is connected, so the driver prevented that automatically downshift in energy-saving "performance States" (P-States).
The reason is memory, which may cause flickering when changing the P-States according to NVIDIA in a hardware limitation when using GDDR5. This problem is video cards thus also not limited to NVIDIA.
Unfortunately, the driver offers the user no choice to take the flicker in order to save power instead. A new feature dedicated to this fact is now "multi display power saver".
http://blog.orbmu2k.de/wp-content/pics/NVIDIAInspectorTool_DC56/image_thumb_10.png (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.orbmu2k.de%2Fwp-content%2Fpics%2FNVIDIAInspectorTool_DC56%2Fimage_ 13.png)
The driver is forced in the niedrigesten P-State to change. Now you can configure that may change as an exception in a higher P-State applications. A control based on the current usage is also possible.
This function takes a NVIDIA graphics card that has at least the three following P-States: p0, P8 and P12. The latest drivers are also provided.




Read about it here :
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.orbmu2k.de%2Ftools%2Fnvidia-inspector-tool


http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dcenter.org%2Fartikel%2Fnvidia-inspector-bringt-komfortables-multi-display-power-saving%2Fmulti-display-power-saver

There you go, you got in before I had to go looking. It's a GDDR5 thing, which would account for why I remember it only coming about with the release of the GTX480.

 

[jitpublisher]

Well, maybe I am not "green" enough, but power saving modes never were on the top of my priority list! Plug'er in and crank it up was always more of my style.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Well, maybe I am not "green" enough, but power saving modes never were on the top of my priority list! Plug'er in and crank it up was always more of my style.

I only use power saving modes in the summer to keep the heat down, in the winter months my PC's become part of my homes heating system.

 

[jitpublisher]

I only use power saving modes in the summer to keep the heat down, in the winter months my PC's become part of my homes heating system.

Ha, I know you what mean as I set in this back room freezing my butt off this morning. Guess I need to launch something to warm things up, a little chilly around Kalama today!

 

[Mousemonkey]

Ha, I know you what mean as I set in this back room freezing my butt off this morning. Guess I need to launch something to warm things up, a little chilly around Kalama today!

This could be a good time to get into the F@H project if your not in it already.