[metal_gunjee]

First off, here is the card I have.

This GTX260 weighs in at stock speeds of 625MHz core, 1348MHz shader, and 1100MHz memory clock (2200MHz effective).
Using 3DMark Vantage at these speeds gave a result of around 1000 points less in both 3D marks and GPU score than my 9800GT SLI setup with a modest overclock. This was acceptable to me as I had planned to add a 2nd card in a couple months.

I tried a light overclock on the core and shaders (650/1401) and got artifacting in the first 2 mins of running 3DMark Vantage again. Speeds of 666/1440 or higher resulted in a driver crash. I've tried 3 versions of Nvidia Forceware drivers (190.62, 191.07, 195.62) while properly removing the drivers with Driver Sweeper and manual file deletion in between installations.

Any idea what may be going on here? I'm thinking of RMA at this point, especially since it says "Sonic Overclocking Edition" right on the box.

 

[Moparman]

What are you using to OC the card? Also Use eVGA percision and try it. Check the temp the card is running at. Make sure you have the right drivers for WIN 7.

 

[metal_gunjee]

Using rivatuner for overclocking.
Core temp hasn't passed 67C that I've noticed so far, monitored with speedfan, gpuz, and everest all on seperate occasions.
Used drivers from Nvidia support site for Win7 x64.

This is really odd.

It kinda reminds me of the Geforce 6200 PCI that a friend of mine had. It was "locked" so to speak.. couldn't even overclock 1Mhz (literally) without artifacting, not even by editing the bios with nibitor.

Needless to say I'm stumped at this point. I'll try the evga tool and see what happens, and whatever else I can think of.

 

[greydor]

It's that **** frog.

Joking aside, it could be a number of things. I know cooling is almost ruled out at this point, but it's still a possibility (keyword: possibility). It could be an issue with voltage as well. Try the EVGA tool and respond back. The thing about your RMA is that it's not actually defective. Try to solve the actual reason why it's messing up first before you RMA. If Palit gets it and sees that it runs as advertised on stock clocks, they will send you back the same card.

 

[metal_gunjee]

According to the bios it should be using 1.12v at the performance 3d clocks. Whether or not this is really happening I'm not sure yet. I can assure that temps aren't an issue, other than that I can only say I'm still working.
I'll update with details in a bit. Judging by a little overclocking experience the symptoms are characteristic of a lack of voltage so far, but I wouldn't wanna put money on that just yet.

 

[metal_gunjee]

I tried the evga tool and got the same results as with rivatuner. It will only handle a light overclock on the core and shaders. Memory overclocks good though, got it to 1250MHz (from 1100 stock) without errors in OCCT gpu memtest and no artifacts running 3dmark vantage.
I'm ready now to blame this on lack of core voltage. This card is supposed to be a custom board design so I hope I can find a volt mod that applies here.

A couple questions though... with my power supply I have 4 6-pin pci-e power connectors, 2 are labeled +12v1, other 2 are labeled +12v2. Would it make any difference using 1 connector from each 12v rail rather than using both connectors from a single rail? There are 4 rails @ 20A each so I assume that rails 1 & 2 are dedicated to pci-e power only, would this be correct?

 

[Mugen_G]

Yeah i have this same card and it's pretty much the same.
Unless you're talking about a physical mod, i don't think there is a way to adjust voltage on this card. Palit used a generic Realtek volt chip, so no voltage control whatsoever.

Most review sites rated it as a "moderate overclocker" with numbers around what you got. (what with it being factory OC'ed and all)
did you have it do that thing were it resets to it's minimum clocks when pushed to far? lol
Had me scratching my head as my furmark score bottomed out without reboot crash nothing.