GeForce 6800 Ultra freezing!! *resolved*

[RampantAndroid]

Well, I ran on equal 2d/3d clocks for a while, put it back to norm, and found it didn't give me too much of a temp hike....however, in attempting to fix my card I don't want to void the warranty (that would be ironic, wouldn't it?)

So I'll be putting better fans in my comp soon. We'll see what happens. Maybe its just a temp issue (86 C after an hour or two of CS: source. I'll have to try out that 99 pass thing with 3dmark05....with and w/o being overclocked.

At this point, I'm not sure what is and isnt a lock up. Guess I'll have to finish my second round through Jedi Acadamey (fist place I got lock ups) to find out.

Thanks for your help, I'll post my results here.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Originally posted by: dfloyd
Tag

Huh???

 

[frankfan]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
Well, I ran on equal 2d/3d clocks for a while, put it back to norm, and found it didn't give me too much of a temp hike....however, in attempting to fix my card I don't want to void the warranty (that would be ironic, wouldn't it?)

I look at the whole warranty thing this way...
If I fry my card with this hack, how in the world will ASUS be able to check it and go "Ahhh, yes, he changed the speed of his 2D clock"?

The card is fried...they'll probably plug it into a system and find out, "Yep, it's dead. Send out another one."

I really can't see them extracting the BIOS and examining it. It's not like I'm overclocking it anyway...the stock 3D clock is 425MHz...same as my hacked 2D clock.

 

[X Factor]

My BFG 6800 Ultra was already set with 2D and 3D clocks running the same. Is this just a certain vendor problem or something? A certain BIOs version? Anyway, the turning "write combining" off in my settings and switching from 'AUTO' to '8x' in my BIOs, seems to have fixed mine. No more HL 2 loops or blue screen crashes saying driver nv_disp whatever whatever,... sheesh. What a pain. But now my 3DMark scores are outragious and I'm pleased as punch.

 

[frankfan]

I have heard that SOME vendors have released new BIOSes with the 2D & 3D clocks the same. ASUS has not (at least for their V9999Ultra), that's why I hacked my BIOS.

 

[dfloyd]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid

Originally posted by: dfloyd
Tag

Huh???

Tag means you mark something so you can come back to it later. There was some good info above and I tagged the post so if any of my friends had this problem I could come back to the article and try this fix.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Well, I'm trying something new to cool off my card...I took one of the slot blowers (meant to exhaust air via a PCI slot) and I was able to shove it in from the outside, effectivly throwing air in, so the videocard gets room temp air rather than hot case air. Seems to be working on idle, next I'll do a few passes with 3dmark05 to see how hot it gets (please stay under 60C!)

If it works, ill post what blower I used and how i modified it.

 

[RampantAndroid]

OK, at first, the slot blower thing did NOTHING

So I decided to upgrade my fans (4 newer fans, they push some more air, and are slightly noisier.) My case temp is down to 30, and my videocard's core is down to 48C (used to be 52-53C)

A word about my core: when cleaning my case, I took the faceplate off my card, and out of curiosuty I removed the heatsink from my core....to find there was almost no thermal grease, and it was hardened. So I put some artic silver on it....hence the temp drop.


Now I'll try that slot cooler again to see if it works now.

 

[X Factor]

Yea, heat is definitluy seems to be an issue with these things. Sometimes when playing Doom3 I hit up to 87C and will get artifacts on the screen. So I began playing with my case cracked wide now I manage to keep it below 80C under load and around 63C idle.

Still not good I know, so I've ordered a new Antec case which is rated for up to 3 gig processors so that should help. I'll be sure to pack it full of fans.

I'm going to install a AMD Athlon 3700+ when I do it too, be a nice upgrade from my 3200+ and it's the highest I can go with my 754 pin mobo.

 

[RampantAndroid]

well, I am considering an NV5 heatsink system from artic cooling, to drop the temp some. We'll see, I hope.

As for my case temp, well, lets say "coolermaster" isnt true to its own name...if anyone likes, I'll explain why.

 

[ph03n1x]

I'm having this problem as well and I only have a regular 6800. The tech support guy at XFX told me this:

Please try this driver:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=917

Please try:

Set DirectX max draw ahead frames to 0. You can find this option under performance and quality settings > additional directx settings using nvtweak or ExtremeG drivers.

Which did more or less nothing. The 2D/3D clocks were already the same so nothing to change there. I have played with fast writes (was more stable on actually), aperature size, and numerous other tweaks. I set my BIOS settings to "Fail Safe Defaults", it got worse. Using the "Optimum Settings" was the most stable, even with a little OC'ing going on. One thing that I think improved stability most was that the HT Frequency setting was 1000 MHz by default and 800 MHz makes things a good deal better. But even with all of the screwing around I have done I still get them after an hour or so of HL2. I look at my temp settings after that and nothing is really that hot - CPU: 45C, SYS: 44C, GPU: 61C. Another forum I was on kept suggesting my PS, but it is a 480W, I just can't imagine that is the problem :/.

 

[Laza]

Any idea what the new BIOS files do? I discovered that there are 2 new BIOSes for the PNY 6800GT (rev 03 and 04, I have rev 02)? I don't have any problems right now so I'm a bit unsure if I should even try these files. (source: www.mvktech.net)

BTW thermal problems were solved with a bigger heatsink, now the card stays around 60..70'C under stress.

Picture

 

[RampantAndroid]

The bios files do make it more stable....in rare occasions, flashing your bios might go awry and you'd need a PCI card to flash it again....however, I've flashed 6-7 times now, and it goes fine.

ph03n1x: what are the ratings on your powersupply.....it the 480W continuos, or peak (most seem to be peak...a-holes try to fool you by false advertising.) I use an Ultra X-Connect continuos 500W...30A or thereabouts on the 12V, and the 12V is what you 6800 draws from mainly, so the higher the rating, the better. If its an antec true 480, it'll be about 20.

Here, I'll quote one of my older posts in this thread, in case you didn't read all 1 pages of this:

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
The reason these hang ups occur is that when the card swtiches from 2d to 3d (doom 3- elevator door opens, or the loading screen switches into the level) the card moves from its 400 mhz clock to its 425 mhz clock, and thus draw a lot of power to do so...sometimes enough that it will cause a freeze (even my thermaltake 560W causes freezes) However, dont use Doom 3 to judge your card, as it itself is very unstable...download the patch for doom to start out.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Oops, forgot to say: the reason by you get sound loops is that the video and the sound are run through the CPU in different threads, meaning if one locks, the other may continue....

Anyone here play CS:S and get some lockups??

 

[X Factor]

I used to get lockups in CS:S until I made my adjustments, previously mentioned. Now it's so far, so good. Funny though, I NEVER got lock ups in Doom3. That was one of the few games that never freaked out on me. When I did get lock ups, it was video freeze AND sound loop at the same time (in other games ie. Painkiller, BFV, and HL2). Sometimes for 10 or so seconds and then it would come out of it. Other times, less often, it would get so stuck that I would get blue screen with driver error.

 

[chaonatic]

Man, I get lockups or BSOD's all the time with CS:S. This is really pissing me off. I guess I'll just send this PNY 6800 Ultra back until they get me one that has these problems less often.

Oh, and I do get errors with Painkiller and Doom 3 *yay*

 

[yrrab436]

It's so nice to see I'm not alone. I play EverQuest lots and the only other person in my guild with a 6800 has this problem. He has an ASUS, and I have a PNY. 6800 Ultra 256MB

The card is at 58C, the CPU at 38 and motherboard at 33 currently. the CPU does go up when I do more intensive things, but I've never seen the graphics card say it's very high. However, I doubt it's a heat issue since it only occurs while zoning or tabbing out. By going into windowed mode in Everquest so I could see the driver's temperature gauge, and spinning around with the mouse as fast as I could, I was able to raise the temperature quickly to 65C, and then is very very slowly rose up to 67, I could get it to 68 but it would quickly drop back down again. I'm not sure if that's normal temperature, but I still do not think the crashes are temperature related, especially since tabbing causes it just as often as zoning does.

It sounds like the same issue. When I zone (change areas in the game) the loading screen shows and then a breif moment after my character appears in zone the screen will lock up... after a few seconds it will either:

A) Totally go blank. (very very rare)
B) Continue normally. (sort of rare)
C) Continue with severe graphics corruption. (Naked characters, polygons stretched all over, general corruption "grate" effect)
D) Get caught in a loop. I'll hear the EQ music then it will stop for a few seconds, and then continue, and then stop, until finally I get a BSOD with graphics card loop or a drop into 16 color mode and a popup saying the graphics driver stopped working right.

I should have contacted PNY, but looking at this thread it looks like that wouldn't do much good. I will do that though since it's obvious that should have been the first thing to do. I was just terrified I was responsible for static damage or some such.

I don't know the slightest thing about looking for an updated bios, or modifying it myself. I'll have to read this entire thread eventually but I don't have time now.

It also happens to me in the Doom 3 demo, and when I scroll really fast on a web page with many graphics, such as a screenshot thread and such. This is extremely frustrating indeed. Everything runs so quickly and then BAM it stops and it's time to pray "pleeeeease don't get stuck in a loop."

hehe

Edit:
Okay I found RivaTuner. There's a bunch of mumbo jumbo I don't understand but I clicked on Customize, then System Settings, and told the overclock tab to detect the card's settings.

It shows:
standard 2D: 400
low power 2D: 425
performance 3d: 425

Do I understand correctly, that many people fix this issue by changing standard 2d to 425?

 

[Gentle]

I'll relate my experiences with a related card series and see if it makes sense for you.

I purchased a Geforce 6600GT recently. (I know you all have 6800's...)

Stock speeds for this particular card are 500mhz core, 1000mhz memory.

I was getting artifacting/green texture corruption (I know, not totally related to your issue, but please read on.) and decided after installing a recommended driver and disabling fast writes, to *underclock* to see if heat was an issue.

So, I used coolbits.reg and underclocked my 6600gt core by 25mhz to 475mhz.

This took care of my issue.

Then, I noticed a "Detect Optimal Settings" button and thought, well, maybe it will determine a more appropriate speed for my card.

I selected it, it went on it's merry way doing some testing and reported back....

571mhz core and 1140mhz memory.

I thought to myself, "Gee, that's odd.", but it didn't error out or anything when I ran through several runs of 3dMark03 and 3dMark05.

I've been running it this way for a few weeks now, no issues to report.

O.k. Now that you've read all this, my input here is...

Have you attempted to try the "Detect Optimal Settings" and if it reports back a new value, try that?

I just thought it was somewhat wierd that *overclocking* fixed my issue with my 6600GT.

Which is what I have seen mentioned as being done (at least on the 2D clock side...) for the 6800 series.

Gentle

P.S. Thank you for reading. I hope this information is in some way relevant and/or able to help you fix your issues with your cards. Good luck.

 

[frankfan]

Originally posted by: yrrab436

A) Totally go blank. (very very rare)
B) Continue normally. (sort of rare)
C) Continue with severe graphics corruption. (Naked characters, polygons stretched all over, general corruption "grate" effect)
D) Get caught in a loop. I'll hear the EQ music then it will stop for a few seconds, and then continue, and then stop, until finally I get a BSOD with graphics card loop or a drop into 16 color mode and a popup saying the graphics driver stopped working right.

I don't know the slightest thing about looking for an updated bios, or modifying it myself. I'll have to read this entire thread eventually but I don't have time now.

It also happens to me in the Doom 3 demo, and when I scroll really fast on a web page with many graphics, such as a screenshot thread and such. This is extremely frustrating indeed. Everything runs so quickly and then BAM it stops and it's time to pray "pleeeeease don't get stuck in a loop."

Do I understand correctly, that many people fix this issue by changing standard 2d to 425?

I tried RivaTuner and Coolbits and, yes, they change the clocks but it's via software. They do not change the hardware settings. They did not work for me. I had the same issues you listed above. The BIOS hack was the only thing that worked. It been 10 full days of gaming DELIGHT! NO crashes, loops, pauses, lockups, etc. I even turned fast writes back on!

How to backup, HACK, and reflash your NVIDIA 6800 video card BIOS.

First thing you need is a floppy bootdisk.
Download the driver free one from www.bootdisk.com
http://download.sudhian.com/fa...oads/Misc/drdflash.exe
Run the program and follow the directions.

Download NVFlash 5.08.
http://www.mvktech.net/index.p...einfo&filecatid=53
Extract the files to your new boot floppy.

Download OmniExtremeEdit FX v1.5
http://www.mvktech.net/index.p...info&filecatid=127
Extract these files to your desktop (or some folder you'd like to use).

Reboot your computer from the new boot floppy.
At the A: prompt:
nvflash -b backup.rom
[this backs up the video card's BIOS to backup.rom on the floppy]

When this finishes...Remove the floppy and reboot back into Windows.

Run the OmniExtremeEditFX program
(Put the floppy back into the drive)
Click File...Open BIOS
Open backup.rom from the A drive
In the 2D Core box change it to match whatever is in the 3D Core box.(usually 400 or 425)
Click File...Save BIOS
=============================
Save the file as newbios.rom
=============================
DO NOT SAVE THE FILE OVER YOUR BACKUP.ROM
You need backup.rom should the reflash fail!

Reboot your system using the floppy.
At the A: prompt:
nvflash -5 -6 newbios.rom

You are done!
Remove the floppy and reboot into Windows.

Run 3DMark05 or your favorite 3D game and see how it works.

Post your results!



EDIT: Fixed the broken links.

 

[yrrab436]

Your links were broken since it took them with "..." in the link portion and cut them off. I'm trying to figure them out at the minute hehe.

Ah ha! Here it is:
http://download.sudhian.com/fa...oads/Misc/drdflash.exe

Any reason to use 5.08 instead of NVFlash 5.12?
http://www.mvktech.net/index.p...lder&filecatid=701

Here's the OmniExtremeEdit FX v1.5 one:
http://www.mvktech.net/index.p...lder&filecatid=127

Edit:

I set everything in Riva Tuner back to "default" and changed the BIOS. Sad that I'm so excited just at the prospect of this horrid issue going away. I'll be sure to respond later whether or not it works.

Since you suggested running 3DMark05 (just the trial run here, I didn't pay for it):
I got 5120:

System Configuration
General Information
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP
DirectX Version 9.0c
Mobo Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Mobo Model A8V Deluxe
AGP Rates (Current/Available) 8x / 8x
CPU AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3500+ 2203 MHz
FSB 200 MHz
Memory 2048 MB

Display Information
Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
Driver Version 6.7.0.2
Driver Status Non WHQL - Not FM Approved
Video Memory 256 MB
Core Clock 425 MHz
Memory Clock 1101 MHz

Benchmark Settings
Program Version 3DMark05 Revision 1 Build 0
Resolution 1024x768@32 bit
Anti-Aliasing None
Texture Filtering Optimal
Vertex Shader Profile 3_0
Pixel Shader Profile 3_0
Force Full Precision Off
Disable DST Off
Disable Post-processing Off
Force Software Vertex Shaders Off
Color Mipmaps Off
Repeat Count Off

Main Test Results
3DMark Score 5120 3DMarks
CPU Score 3909 CPUMarks

Detailed Test Results

Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 21.8 fps
GT2 - Firefly Forest 14.8 fps
GT3 - Canyon Flight 26.6 fps

CPU Tests
CPU Test 1 1.9 fps
CPU Test 2 3.5 fps

 

[RampantAndroid]

hey, yrrab, you may want to check out your power supply, as your system is almost identical to mine, and I can score a 5300 in 3dmark05 on a bad day, 5500+ on a good day.....this is after I tossed my POS thermaltake 560W and got a Ultra 500W....suddenly shader articacts in game 2 disappeared, and performance jumped.....as for my A8V, I hope you have Rev. 2.0....I have 1.4, and I'm throwing the thing away

 

[RampantAndroid]

DRD flash is F-ed up.....just insert the floppy, go to My Computer, then right click on the floppy disk drive. Click format, then check the "Make a startup disk" option

 

[yrrab436]

Hmmm.

I've been told don't worry about the power supply but I admit I'm no expert on it. It's an Antec 550W.

There are two optical drives, one floppy drive/memory card reader, three hard drives, the video card, a modem, and the motherboard.

Is 550W enough for that? Or do I need to go down device by device and add everything up?

Should I connect two separate cords to the video card, and use the Y-splitter to put more of the other devices on a single line. Ack I hope 550W is enough. hehe

As far as the A8V Deluxe goes, in the ASUS Probe it says Revision 1.xx. I'll reboot and see what it says in BIOS.

 

[RampantAndroid]

well, dunno how Antec rates PSUs, but 550W may be its peak power (not continuous, like mine is) What you should do, is grab a voltmeter, and take a 4 pin connector, and meter bewteen yellow and ground (should be above 12V DC while under load) and the red and ground (above 5V while under load) Ground is either of the two black wires.

If you are running either of these undervolt, you have problems...like I did with my thermaltake...

Look at the specs on your PSU...if the 12V rail is rated below 25A, you might also have problems.

Do you see solid black lines in Game test 2 in 3dmark05?? (I did, changing the PSU stopped them)

So really, just as the clock speed of a processor doesnt matter (or at least cant be used to compare procs that are not the same core...A64 and p4 for ex.) , the Wattage of a PSU doesnt either.

 

[yrrab436]

Hehehe I don't have any such tools unfortunately.

There was no graphical corruption during the tests, that I could see.

This is the PSU:
http://www.antec-inc.com/us/pr...tails.php?ProdID=20550