Graphics locking up

[Campy]

First some history. I recently bought a GTX460 to replace what i thought was a faulty 8800ultra. The 8800 was locking up randomly in games and at desktop. I tried installing new drivers and used driver sweeper and driver cleaner to make sure it was done properly. I also flashed my motherboard BIOS and tried playing with some BIOS settings but to no avail.
A few days after getting it the GTX460 started doing the same, but with a slight twist, i can load a game and play a decent session and everything will be fine. I've played both CSS and Crysis and it's worked fine... until i exit the game. After just a small time on desktop the graphics lock up and the graphics driver crashes. Civ4 seems to crash the graphics ingame also.
I can restart the machine(windows doesn't crash, just the graphics driver) and its working fine again.

I'm now at the point where i think this is a motherboard issue, but thought i'd hear what you guys think. I've run memtest today and it's passed twice.
System specs:

PSU: Corsair HX620
CPU: c2d E6850
Mobo: EVGA 680i SLI
RAM: 2x2GB Corsair XMS 800Mhz CL5
HDD: 2 Raptors, 2 WD GP

 

[superccs]

GPU Temps, check out your GPU stats (temps, % load... etc) with GPU-Z.
Possibly still a driver conflict going on, go into safemode and uninstall drivers that way as well in addition to driver sweeper.

Either way, it may offer a good excuse to upgrade system components. :/

Best of luck.

 

[Campy]

Temps aren't the problem. I've even overclocked this card from 700 to 875 core 1.05vcore and it ran smooth as silk in crysis. Max temp in furmark was 77c with these settings.
Also I've already done what you suggest for drivers and it didn't help a bit. I've done some reading on the net and it seems like this is some kind of nv4_disp random error. A weird hardware/driver problem which affects nvidia and has been around for a long time. You can try googling "nv4_disp infinite loop" to learn more about it but basically after having tried a few things there isn't really much more that can be done to fix the issue. I might try windows 7 to see if that helps.

What really bugs me is that my 8800 worked fine for 3 years before this started happening, even though this is similar to what some other people report it's just really weird.
I think I'll RMA the mobo in hopes of that fixing the issue(i might even get a different mobo with a different chipset since the shop doesnt carry the one i bought 3 years ago). If it doesn't help i'll probably go full system upgrade.

Oh and thanks for the reply, I know how weird this problem is

 

[imaheadcase]

Did you have this problem prior to the 8800ultra. Or did you upgrade anything major between the ultra and the gtx460 that might effect it?

I doubt mine is related, i had the same issue with GTX 460, i'm in middle of RMA with random lockups. desktop/games, etc. tried everything so evga told me to just send it back for new one. The diffrence is my "old" GTX 260 core 216 works fine the 2nd i put it in. Just the 460 was having issues. EVGA thinks it has something to do with how GPU downclocks and is not working with lots of games. Apparently nvdia knows about it, is why the driver release has been taking so long.

 

[georgi984]

Campy
i can sugest to chek what's going on in you'r "Event Viewer" and more precisely in the system tab before buying new stuff.

 

[Campy]

Did you have this problem prior to the 8800ultra. Or did you upgrade anything major between the ultra and the gtx460 that might effect it?

I doubt mine is related, i had the same issue with GTX 460, i'm in middle of RMA with random lockups. desktop/games, etc. tried everything so evga told me to just send it back for new one. The diffrence is my "old" GTX 260 core 216 works fine the 2nd i put it in. Just the 460 was having issues. EVGA thinks it has something to do with how GPU downclocks and is not working with lots of games. Apparently nvdia knows about it, is why the driver release has been taking so long.

The problem came very suddenly with the 8800 after it having worked fine for 3 years. This led me to believe that the card was failing and that's why i bought the 460. Between the 8800 and the 460 i used an old ATI X850 card. The ATI worked just fine for the 1-2 weeks i had it in.
Do we have any clue when the new nvidia driver is coming out? If it isn't long I'll give it a go before i RMA the card.

 

[nenforcer]

I believe the new nVidia drivers should be out on Monday September 13th when the GTS 450 is announced.