zaiin10

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Feb 28, 2012
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10,510
Hey forum, I have been experiencing problems lately with my graphics card. I recently purchased a second EVGA GTX 550 ti SC and ran the two in sli. I am very happy with the performance boost. Anyways I have been getting a crash relating to my display driver and I fixed that by rolling back my graphics drivers. However today I am getting a constant crash whenever I open a game. All i have to do is open BF3 and it will crash to a black screen and freeze my mouse cursor. I am not to sure sure on what is happening and could use some guidance. I have tried updating my drivers etc. It is not a heat related issue, My gpu idles at 50c and it goes to 70-80c under full load. My Cpu idles at 18-25c and 45-50c under full load. Any help will be taken into consideration. SPECS bleow.

AMD FX 4100 4.0ghz

2x EVGA gtx 550ti SC SLI

500gb WD caviar

MSI 970A-G46 MOBO

Ultra 750 watt silver 80+ PSU
 
did you try running each card one at a time ? the new card may be bad and you might have to rma it... maybe.

also run each card in each slot and see what happens.

the idle temp of the cards seems a little on the toasty side. maybe you need to reapply thermal paste.......... at least to the old one ?......... or you might have dust build up on the fins in the cooler keeping air from blowing through ?

in sli there will always be more heat and from experience the top card is always hottest. .......... have you tried running the second card as a physx card only ?.......... you can do that by opening the nvidia control panel and finding physx and enable it there.
 

mvitkun

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2011
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18,640

try using EVGA precision,or msi afterburner,or some other overclocking utility to bring the graphics cards clocks down to nvidia stock clocks,often times they're parters factory overclock the graphics card causing some instability.

EVGA has it at 981mhz for the core/processor clock.
Nvidia's stock clock is 900mhz.use one of those programs mentioned above to lower it to 900mhz.

also never use windows update for graphics card driver updates,always go to the nvidia website for the newest drivers.

latest nvidia drivers for gtx 500 series,work for Windows 7 64-bit,Windows 8 64-bit,Windows Vista 64-bit.
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/306.23/306.23-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-whql.exe

if for whatever reason you have a 32 bit os heres the 32 bit version.
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/306.23/306.23-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-32bit-english-whql.exe
 

zaiin10

Honorable
Feb 28, 2012
15
0
10,510
I have done what you said and it seems to be working so far! I haven't had any computer crashes related to the driver. But I am getting a OpenGL crash when running BF3 at sometimes that leads to a computer crash if I don't alt+tab out quickly. Is this also a driver issue? I was told this could be a conflicting problem with two programs?
Thanks for the great help so far.

Cheers!
 

mvitkun

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2011
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18,640

I didn't think this might be a problem but since underclocking it helped lower the frequency of the crashes it could be the power supply,still not sure though.
battlefield 3 might be making them both go to near max power draw and since your power supply has only 45A Amps on the 12V rail it might be causing issues.
they recommend 28 Amps for a single gtx 550 ti,so for two you'd want around 52-56 amps on the 12v rail.

anybody else think this is the problem?honestly not sure.
my thinking on this is that the power supply is low quality,only outputs 72% of the rated power under ideal conditions.
and it doesn't crash as often with the physX card config,and lowering clock reduced frequency of crashes as well,because it takes less wattage.
I figure the power supply is the only thing left to consider,
other than the sli bridge being bad or not connected completely.
 
I know the Ultra's aren't the best. did have one and only one.....

if you play at a reduced resolution and cut back on shadows and some of the other demanding settings, how do things play out ? there may be too much of a demand on those little cards.

and that would loop us back to heat.
 

mvitkun

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2011
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cutting back on the resolution might help as it will put more of the stress on the cpu.
although I think it would help since it would draw less power at lower resolutions.
as he said previously the temps are 50-80 C and nvidia rates this to 100 C.
 

zaiin10

Honorable
Feb 28, 2012
15
0
10,510
I have not been getting any crashes when running games for a whole day. I will report back this afternoon for status. As to the psu, this is my third ultra psu and I can saw I am extremely pleased with it. I updated my driver the same time as I lowered my gpu clock, so I believe it was a driver. Swifty- I go under origin setting and update via origin.

Cheers