Afterburner and EVGA Precision cause display driver to stop working, then defaults.

[HollowRopes]

I fan-modded my 460 GTX and decided to play around with the clocks/temps so I got the version of Afterburner that supports the voltage increase. I read a thread about someone saying the best thing to do is increasing the voltage to the max (1.087) and then mess with it from there. I managed to get up to around 866/1733/2066 before starting to have these 'problems', but not artifacts problems, hea problems, freezing, or anything like that. If I set any of my clock speeds any higher than those values, after about 10 seconds my nVidia display driver stops working, fixes itself, and goes back to normal (defaulting the clock speeds that I had set back to factory).

The same person that told me to get Afterburner told me to try EVGA Precision, so I got that and installed it and immediately noticed it had no voltage control (which I was told was needed to clock most cards a little higher, makes sense). Anyway, I played with EVGA Precision for a few minutes, set my clocks to 850/1700/2000, then applied it. Nex thing I know I'm getting the same nvidia driver error again, resetting my clocks back to factory.

Now here's the part that gets strange that I don't understand. If I can use Afterburner, set my clocks all the way up to 950/1900/2200, apply it, and run Furmark and any other test, the test will run flawlessly and with a noticible FPS increase as well, but then of course the driver stops working and goes back to the default values. With EVGA Precision, after setting my values and checking GPU-Z, it never even shows that my clocks change, so I'm not sure if that program is even working from the get-go.

But yeah, that's basically the problem. Trying to get a bit out of my card but the display driver is failing not too long after I set any new clock speeds. I heard of something called "Coolbits" so I download a .reg file, merged it, and now I have no idea what it's supposed to do with it in order to change any of the settings.

I know that this isn't a heat problem because I have the card fan-modded extremely well, plus the tempertures never exceed 72 C in Furmark when I'm running them at factory settings. If it helps anyway, I'm using Forceware 266.58.

I feel as though I can get a bit more out of this card if I can find away around the display driver error, I just can't get around that. If anyone has any information or a suggestion on another program I can use that may not have this problem, -please- let me know. Thanks a lot.

 

[SickBeast]

I've managed to get around these problems by tweaking the fan speed in MSI Afterburner. Granted, I have a Cyclone cooler on mine, but you should be able to get some mileage out of it also.

My GTX 460 does 950mhz at 1.15v.

GL

 

[calvin0416]

Is it true that overvolting your card can cause permanent damage while increasing the core speed and memory speed won't?

 

[HollowRopes]

Yeah, I had just realized that the fan control seems to be -really- buggy, and actually works a whole lot better if I keep it at 40% or 60%. Right now I have the voltage at 1.025, 850/1700/2266 and I'm not having any problems, Furmark is maxing out around 78-79 celsius. No matter what I do to the voltage, I can't get the core or shader clock above 850/1700. Just causes a bunch of artifacts, and I know it's not a cooling issue.

 

[happy medium]

Its a software conflict. Unistall both evga and afterburner and drivers. Reinstall your drivers make sure overclocking is not checked in CCC and reinstall just one overclocking program.

Never try to run or install more then one overclocking program at the same time, they conflict with each other.

Let us know how it works out.

 

[Daedalus685]

Is it true that overvolting your card can cause permanent damage while increasing the core speed and memory speed won't?

Generally it is true.

The two things that will generally cause the chip to never work again are voltage breakdown physically destroying some part of the chip that was not intended to conduct but reached a point where it did, or the temperature getting too hot (which also reduce the voltage breakdown point and causing conduction of an insulator).

Temperature is dependent on both voltage and clocks. With poor cooling and high enough clocks you could kill the card but this would be more difficult than killing the card with increased voltage unless you damaged(or otherwise reduced) the cooling.

So, you can technically kill a chip with just clock increases by reaching thermal breakdown, but this is generally more challenging (unless you take off the heat sink) than accomplishing the same with voltage breakdown. Though I suppose they are both voltage breakdown, just one brings the threshold towards V while the other brings V towards the threshold...

/end wall of text

 

[SickBeast]

Its a software conflict. Unistall both evga and afterburner and drivers. Reinstall your drivers make sure overclocking is not checked in CCC and reinstall just one overclocking program.

Never try to run or install more then one overclocking program at the same time, they conflict with each other.

Let us know how it works out.

I think it's actually some sort of fail-safe protection within the GPU that throttles the speed down to ~400mhz on the core to protect it from damage during overclocking. If my temps are good, my card doesn't throttle. What I did was alter the fan "curve" in afterburner so that it ramped up in speed once the core hit around 50-60C instead of 50-80C like it was before.

 

[happy medium]

I know that this isn't a heat problem because I have the card fan-modded extremely well, plus the tempertures never exceed 72 C in Furmark when I'm running them at factory settings.

@ sickbeast

I don't think thats the problem.

 

[SickBeast]

@ sickbeast

I don't think thats the problem.

Well, it only happens for me with an unstable overclock. At stock settings it never happens. I could be wrong but I don't think I am FWIW. :whiste: