Unhappy with Asus HD7850-DC2-2GD5, need a Nvidia Card. Please suggest.

[holyindian]

Hi there.

Few months back i had build a high end HTPC which was also used as a gaming PC.
The components i used were an i7 2600K cpu, 16gb ram, and a Asus HD7850-DC2-2GD5 graphic card *rest of the specs at the end of this post*

Now with this gaming card i have it looks like it has never been running stable. I think its a driver issue, cos i have been reading around and see lots of people have faced the same. If i open multiple sessions of youtube video, *3-4 at max* the graphic driver crashes thus taking the system down, and i have to force reboot. Plus hi-def audio such as DTS-HDMA or TrueHD does not seem to work properly on certain players such as PowerDVD or Total Media Theater, however it works fine in XBMC and Jriver. I have tried changing all the settings in tmt and pdvd.. but in vain.

I am planning to get a Nvidia GTX based card, but as i will be gaming hence i need a solid powerful card, but due to the fact that this PC is an HTPC as well, hence i need a card that can support all the high def audio bitstreaming possible.. along with flawless video.
I think the high end audio/video part is very very important, cos this rig is connected to a high end home theater system for htpc. Please suggest if GTX 670 is an ideal contender in my situation. I can spend upto 400 dollars max.

The components i choose were.

CPU : intel i7 2600K
Motherboard : ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
PSU : CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX850
Memory : G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB
Heatsink : Thermalright Silver Arrow
Case : SilverStone CW02
SSD : Crucial M4 128GB
Media Disk Drive : LITE-ON iHBS212-08 LightScribe
GPU : ASUS HD7870-DC2-2GD5
120mm Fans : Gentle Typhoon
80mm Fans : SilentX
Lots of noise dampning stuff

 

[Onus]

Before you replace your video card, test your RAM, one stick at a time. After that, if anything is overclocked, go back to stock clocks for testing; even if there's a factory OC on the graphics card, back it down to stock. If you achieve stability that way, you might have a bad card.

 

[holyindian]

Before you replace your video card, test your RAM, one stick at a time. After that, if anything is overclocked, go back to stock clocks for testing; even if there's a factory OC on the graphics card, back it down to stock. If you achieve stability that way, you might have a bad card.

Thanks for your reply.
Its very hard to remove the ram sticks one at a time and test them now, cos a tall heatsink is sitting over it with very less clearness. I used a Thermalright SilverArrow CPU cooler..

I have also seen that the driver crashes very frequently when few videos are played.

 

[Onus]

Well then, test the RAM anyway. My wife's new system was crashing during videos, and it turned out to be bad RAM. Replacing it cleared up the problem.

 

[mikeny]

Listen to Onus. Same thing happened to me. I did memtest on each stick and sure enough, I found the culprit...bad memory stick. It is a pain to remove them but if you replace the video card and it still happens, then you replaced a perfectly good card.


You have the z68 Asus pro board??? Gen3? Does it have Memtest? Check the manual. I have the Gen3 board and it has memtest

 

[holyindian]

I am gonna do that, is there a simple tutorial on how do do this ram test. I really wanna do this now. I might sound like dumb, but i have never done this. This was my first system build.. and every thing turned out fine, except for the fact, that many a times the videos crash the system when played. Just like you mentioned above.

Any guidence will help on this.

 

[Onus]

The program is called memtest86, or memtest86+. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86

 

[mikeny]

Check your motherboard manual also. If Memtest is built in, it will state it in the manual and what to do. If it makes no mention of it, then your board doesn't have it which in that case, use the link Onus sent. It's easy to use. You're not dumb....we all were in your spot (first build) and you learn as you go and just when you think you know it all, a problem arises that you never encountered and you're back at square 1!

 

[mikeny]

Here's the MemOK tool if your motherboard has it (check your manual);

http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Features/MemOK/

 

[holyindian]

Guys thanks so much for your replies, really really appreciate, i am going to try this on saturday and let you know how it goes.