GTX670 Sli crashes constantly

[mwmorph]

I recently got a GTX670 SLI from Gigabyte. It's the triple fan windforce and I've tried, but it just wont work.

I've tried the 301.xx signed drivers, the 304.xx beta drivers, I've flashed the bios from the original shipped F2 to the latest F4 on both cards, switched the order of the cards, I've even downclocked from the stock 980mhz oc to 903mhz core and switched the orientation and which pair of connectors the SLI bridge is connected to and it just won't stop crashing.

It'll stutter for a bit and then freeze the system, putting the sound on loop and the screen unresponsive. Then, windows will work again but a message will pop up of the video card drivers encountering a fatal error and had to be restarted.

Firstly, it will crash when at desktop, but it crashes much more often when playing games or watching youtube videos with hardware acceleration turned on. Occasionally, it'll even crash when launching iTunes and using the internet without flash hardware acceleration or at the desktop. I've only tried BFBC2 so far and it will play well for a little bit, maybe 20 minutes or so, but then it does what it always does and crashes the display driver. Afterwards, if I try it again, it does it but now even more often, decreasing to maybe 5 minute intervals and then crashing withing seconds of loading up.

Is there anything else I can try to check besides trying each car singly and then getting an RMA? I live in alaska so shipping and turn around times are going to be insane.

System is as follows:
Core i5 3570k (stock 3.4ghz as of now)
Asus P8Z77-V Pro
32GB Patriot 1600mhz ram (2x PGD316G1600ELK kits, using XMP 1600mhz profile)
Crucial M4 256GB & Segate Barracuda XT 3TB plugged into the 2 ASMedia PCIe SATA controller ports (The 2 intel SATA 3.0 6Gbps are plugged into the case's 2 hotswap bays and 1 intel SATA2.0 3Gbps is connected to a esata breakout card)
2x Windforce Gigabyte GTX670 in SLI
Creative X-Fi Titanium PCI-E
Rosewill Capstone 750W modular http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=266
Dual monitors plugged into the 1st card's DVI slots
Windows 7, all updates applied

I know many will start with the PSU but the Capstone is really a great PSU, it's got great voltage regulation from the logs I have and is JohnnyGURU recommended, so I don't think that the point of failure.

Thanks in advance.

 

[notty22]

try each card singly is worth it to prove both cards are functional.

Then I would try one stick of ram at looser speed/ timings than it's even rated for.
Try 1333 , just for testing.

Have you run memtest from a boot usb stick, with that 32gb configuration ?

Also , get latest bios for your board if you don't.

 

[DaveSimmons]

FYI, I've never had a driver crash with my single GTX 680. i5-2500, ASrock Z68, 8 GB, Windows 7 64-bit, intel 310 boot + Samsung 830 data drive, Seasonic X650. It's the MSI reference card at stock clocks.

I'm not sure what my driver version is though, and that's a different PC that's powered off at the moment. It was the first non-beta driver download from nvidia after release.

That's just a long-winded way of saying that the drivers are probably not buggy, it's more likely a hardware problem.

 

[Jacky60]

Just a thought have you tried disabling and removing xi-fi titanium sound card and using onboard sound-sometimes you get conflicts with pci channels. Also if you have all ram modules slots filled and you're trying to run at xmp I know that is sometimes a problem. The more slots are filled the harder it is to run stable with xmp. I know my corsair 1600Mhz DDR slots (since sold) would refuse to run at 1600 mhz with xmp with my cpu at anything above stock. As notty says slacken off the memory speeds/timings.

 

[guskline]

Jacky60 interesting suggestion. I ditched my soundcards for Logitech G35 headphones. Even better than onboard sound. the soundcard is built into the headset so onboard sound is disabled. Great surround sound and it muffles out the whir of fans. Expensive but well worth it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

With z77 boards running ivy bridge cpus and pcie 3.0 there is a known issue with gigabyte gtx 600 series cards. The fix is to set PCIe in your bios to run at 2.0. If that fixes the crashes then you can run it that way or rma the cards through gigabyte for replacement or return to retail and try a different brand (Asus, msi etc)

 

[jacktesterson]

With z77 boards running ivy bridge cpus and pcie 3.0 there is a known issue with gigabyte gtx 600 series cards. The fix is to set PCIe in your bios to run at 2.0. If that fixes the crashes then you can run it that way or rma the cards through gigabyte for replacement or retuen to retail and try a different brand (Asus, msi etc)

Problem is some boards don't have the option.

Hopefully the OP's does.

I thought this issue was only with Single Gigabyte 670s though.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Pretty sure Asus has that option. All the rog boards do and they share mostly the same uefi.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> With z77 boards running ivy bridge cpus and pcie 3.0 there is a known issue with gigabyte gtx 600 series cards. The fix is to set PCIe in your bios to run at 2.0.

That could be it, my MB is 2.0

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not everyone has it. I think its specific to certain bios versions or something. Worth a look though.

 

[mwmorph]

Wow thanks all, that's crazy, I've always used ASUS or Gigabyte in my builds for MBs and graphics cards and I thought they were top notch. I wish I'd know about the issue about PCI-E 3.0 sooner.

I'll try out all the suggestions, but that's disappointing that PCI-E3.0 might have to be disabled, otherwise everything else is just so awesome.

 

[cmdrdredd]

you can always replace the cards if that turns out to be the case. If that doesn't work I'd update the BIOS for your motherboard. If that also fails, try each card individually and verify they work fine. If one fails then that card is the problem. If both fail...replace both. If they both work that points to motherboard PCIe slot.

 

[mwmorph]

Thanks everyone, it's been solved, the Asus P8Z77V-Pro is incompatible with the Windforce OC GTX670 in PCI-E 3.0 mode. Dropped it into 2.0 and it's run BFBC2 for 4 hours perfectly fine even oc'ed to 1006mhz core and 6500mhz memory.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

So this actually happens in SLI too. I heard someone say it did not happen in SLI, since the PCI-E 3.0 bandwith was cut in half between the cards.

I knew it can happen with one Windforce x3 670/680, since I fixed this issue in a friends PC by converting to PCI-E 2.0. He has a ASUS P8Z77-V and a Ivybridge i5 3570K. His brother has the excact same mobo and CPU, only he is using a reference Gainward GTX 670, and he did not have this bug.

BTW: PCI-E 2.0 does not limit one GTX 670, however, looking at my own GTX 670 SLI scores in 3DMark11 they seem a little bit weaker than people who utilize PCI-E 3.0. I can only get PCI-E 2.0 due to ASUS P8P67 PRO 3.0 and 2600K. However, I think it's a very negible loss.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Are you running the latest BIOS for your motherboard?

 

[skipsneeky2]

I just enabled pci 3.0 for my sli gtx670s and it took about 2 mins of some BF3 before my pc just didn't crash,it restarted itself.

Got one reference msi card and one zotac reference with the same exact mobo as the Op,heck i was stable for weeks leaving pcie set to auto but just now crash boom with gen 3 enabled,so back to auto.

I went with this mobo and the 3770k to get the whole entire pcie 3.0 experience and its been great,with one nice crash.:thumbsup:

 

[cmdrdredd]

Again check your BIOS. New revisions from Asus have fixed some GTX 600 series problems from what I hear.

 

[mwmorph]

Again check your BIOS. New revisions from Asus have fixed some GTX 600 series problems from what I hear.

As part of testing, I updated the bios to 1206 from June 8th, which was the latest. It was shipped with 1015 from May 10th.

With both bioses, I manually set PCI-E 2.0 and it would work fine on both, while setting it on Auto or PCI-E 3.0 would cause system lockups and a few times entire system restarts (1 BSOD, 2 or 3 system freezes with no responsiveness period) with either bios.

I hope Asus or Gigabye gets on fixing the issue, but we'll see. As it is, the performance impact isn't large so it's not enough of an issue for me to pay to ship 2 cards back from Alaska to wherever.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

As part of testing, I updated the bios to 1206 from June 8th, which was the latest. It was shipped with 1015 from May 10th.

With both bioses, I manually set PCI-E 2.0 and it would work fine on both, while setting it on Auto or PCI-E 3.0 would cause system lockups and a few times entire system restarts (1 BSOD, 2 or 3 system freezes with no responsiveness period) with either bios.

I hope Asus or Gigabye gets on fixing the issue, but we'll see. As it is, the performance impact isn't large so it's not enough of an issue for me to pay to ship 2 cards back from Alaska to wherever.

One thing you could try, just out of curiousity... Try to disable HPET (High Precision Timer) in the bios, then try to enable PCI-E 3.0. I've seen people having trouble using SLI when HPET is enabled, in some cases.