QM3K

Well, all looked well yesterday .

I overclocked my 9600GTs to 780/1950/1015.

This was testing well, and it gave me some very nice 3dmark06 scores.

I had been putting it through the ringer...lots of UT3 at highest settings and forced AA (not available in program) with no trouble.

Played about an hour or so of Crysis tonight, and was thrilled to find out that I could run it more than reasonably well on very high settings with an AA of 2.

And then the crash...had 2 crashes in the form of lockups. Neither one needed a reboot...managed to simply close the program. The second one let me see enough of Windows to get a message that the video driver had suffered an error, but had recovered.

I moved my shader down to 1925, since I have read that too high a shader clock can cause instability. And I played for about 15 minutes without incident. However, this is making me nervous about destroying my cards. Should I go back and do the whole OC again? Oh, and I am not getting any type of artifacts.

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--Now that my rig can handle the games, I can only blame myself for having a 12:1 death to kill ratio in UT3.

thenailedone

... IMO if your temps. are fine your card shouldn't be at-risk of just dying on you... if it is stable at your present settings and you are happy with the performance then I would leave it be... but that't just me

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Missing graphics in Warlord Battlecry 2, pls help

Because of the above problem I decided to re-install Vista... pity I didn't use Windows Updates Downloader so now I gotta get all the updates again

noodle

if it survives 3dmark06 then id say its something else, 3dmark06 is designed to stress the GPU to the max, so if it doesnt die or freeze during any of the gpu tests id say you have a stable OC but another problem

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British Overclockers Club

15.2k 3dmark06
4ghz E8400

noodle

also, open a window and turn the fan up on the card, it amy be noisy but itl shift far more air, if its locking up on crysis id say its a heat issue

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British Overclockers Club

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4ghz E8400

QM3K

I slid the core down to 775 and tested on ATI tools...no errors. I played Crysis for about an hour and a half, turning all settings down to High with no AA. Crashed to Windows after that. My fans are running at 100%, and the heat never goes above 57...not sure if that is too hot or not...have stock cooling on the GPU.

One problem I MIGHT have is my case design. For those of you with these cases, if you have a workaround, I'd appreciate it. My PSU is in its own cage below the main case...supposed to keep the PSU heat from getting into the case. Unfortunately, it means that I have to work all of the cables upwards to their components, and all of the remaining cables are mashed in the small space between the bottom of the case and my second GPU (I have tried to get them out of there, but there just isn't any room)...I can't imagine that this does much for air flow.

I am wondering if my second card is overheating and that the temp readings I get in Riva Tuner are just for the card above it. Thoughts?

__________________
--Now that my rig can handle the games, I can only blame myself for having a 12:1 death to kill ratio in UT3.

QM3K

Gonna update the above...just went into the case to check things out. I had moved most of the cables out of the way when I installed the card, so there is a bit of room for air in there. The card isn't even that warm to the touch. (I should have mentioned that I have 2 intake fans blowing air onto the SLI setup)

I keep going back to an unstable OC, but the only game that is giving me problems is Crysis...could it be a fault in the game itself that may have a fix sometime soon? Sorta clutching at straws here...not sure what I should do. The only testing I've done on the OC is the artifact scanner in ATI tools and 3dmark06, both of which produced no errors. If it isn't an OC problem, and isn't a heat problem....hmmmm....

Oh...and I even reinstalled the driver.

__________________
--Now that my rig can handle the games, I can only blame myself for having a 12:1 death to kill ratio in UT3.

MasterKromm

I can tell you that 57°C is pushing it when OC'd. I played around a lot with my 8800gts and discovered that temps play a crucial role in stability when OCd... For example my card is stable even when fan speed is set to auto and temps flirt with 70°-80°C so long as the card is close to stock speed... However as the card is OC'd temps become a huge factor. It seemed anything past 750mhz core required temps to remain max 50-55°C otherwise stability would deteriorate. You might be experiencing the same phenomena.

BTW maybe it's the game Crysis itself, perhaps you could test with another game?

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gamervivek

some games do seem to have an oc limit and sometimes drivers also play a part.i can get my card to play crysis at 885Mhz but it would lock rightout at the sight of atitool at that speed.though i would say its better to play around 20-40Mhz less than your max stable oc,for you won't see much of a performance decrease and lessen the probability of crashes.

edit-nice siggy there

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QM3K

I have played UT3 forcing AA and AF up to 16x, highest textures, etc., with no problems whatsoever. I know that Crysis is a bit of a beast, so I'll keep trying other things.

__________________
--Now that my rig can handle the games, I can only blame myself for having a 12:1 death to kill ratio in UT3.

gamer7

I agree completely about the temps.
Once I upped my fan speed and kept my card at 50-55C under load, my oc stability went up and I can push a lot more mhz out of it.
My msi has an aftermarket cooler on it thought, so I keep it at around 60%, at 100% it sounds like a vacuum cleaner.