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I've been having major issues with my 6870 which was operating extremely well for 3 weeks..
I'm at a complete loss and have exhausted pretty much every resource at my disposal (outside of testing the card in different machine) and need some help..
First of all, here are my system specs:
i7 2600K @ 4400 1.29v (tested with Prime95 blend for 3 days, no errors, fully stable, 36c / 72c under heavy load)
16GB Corsair Memory, Running at 1333, Memtest86 tested, no errors (4x4)
MSI 6870 920/1050, was overclocked to 950/1100 with no problems
Cooler Master GX-750 (I know this is not the best, didn't do enough research but it seems to have ample power)
Intel 510 SSD 120GB
Dual Samsung 1TB Drives, Raid 0
AsRock P67 Extreme 4
Problem:
I have been out PC gaming for many years and finally dove back in with the rig listed above.. For the first 3 weeks I played my fair share of COD Black OPS and had zero problems with the card.. I'm not certain if that specific game has a lower GPU load, but it ran stable. Around a week ago I started playing Portal 2 and noticed green dots on the screen.. I figured the OC was unstable so I went back to stock, which is 920/1050 on the MSI config.
Fast forward to today- Random screen splitting in 3d, with occasional problems in 2D, Furmark or Kombuster run perfectly fine overnight then crash within 3 minutes the next time I run them.. BF3 runs great then crashed after 5 minutes the next time I play. The crashes, split screen errors, red lines, red dots and black screens are random. I don't know if it's my PSU, the video, my MB..
I've tried the following:
Removed the card and placed it on the PCIe slot below it. Same problem.
Placed a different set of power cables in to the card.
Uninstalled and installed 11.9 / 11.8 / 11.10 beta using the standard removal tools and uninstallers that are commonly used.
Re-applied thermal paste which was a disaster.. Lowered core temps by roughly 8c under load.
GPUz shows 80-90 VDDC under heavy Furmark load, is that too high?
Downclocked card to 900/1050 same problem.
Installed MSI utility and increased voltage to 1.25 and kept lower clock settings.
+12v seems stable, dips to 11.88 under heavy load, which is within spec *according to AsRock tool*
The thing that is so strange is the random nature of how these crashes happen.. They seem to be related to higher loads, but I once I figure that out, the machine will start artifacting in windows before I launch any game.. Reboot and everything is OK - I can then game for 2 hours.. Reboot then problems come back..
However, as of the last 8 hours, the stability has declined. OCCT results in red dots and lines within 2 minutes, before the GPU really has time to heat up.. Yet upon reboot I can play Black OPS for an hour with no problems..
So what do you guys think? Is this a power supply issue or the card toast? One thing I want to mention is that I added a second CPU fan to Cooler Master 212+ to setup a push pull system right after the first sign of trouble.. In doing so I removed the MSI card.. Could I have shorted the card out when I took it out of the case???
EDIT: Fanspeed set to 45%.. I don't think this is a heat issue even though I have seen it go as high as 90c.. At first it crashed around 88 or higher but re-applying the thermal compound lowered high load temps, in addition to crashing under 70c
I'm at a complete loss and have exhausted pretty much every resource at my disposal (outside of testing the card in different machine) and need some help..
First of all, here are my system specs:
i7 2600K @ 4400 1.29v (tested with Prime95 blend for 3 days, no errors, fully stable, 36c / 72c under heavy load)
16GB Corsair Memory, Running at 1333, Memtest86 tested, no errors (4x4)
MSI 6870 920/1050, was overclocked to 950/1100 with no problems
Cooler Master GX-750 (I know this is not the best, didn't do enough research but it seems to have ample power)
Intel 510 SSD 120GB
Dual Samsung 1TB Drives, Raid 0
AsRock P67 Extreme 4
Problem:
I have been out PC gaming for many years and finally dove back in with the rig listed above.. For the first 3 weeks I played my fair share of COD Black OPS and had zero problems with the card.. I'm not certain if that specific game has a lower GPU load, but it ran stable. Around a week ago I started playing Portal 2 and noticed green dots on the screen.. I figured the OC was unstable so I went back to stock, which is 920/1050 on the MSI config.
Fast forward to today- Random screen splitting in 3d, with occasional problems in 2D, Furmark or Kombuster run perfectly fine overnight then crash within 3 minutes the next time I run them.. BF3 runs great then crashed after 5 minutes the next time I play. The crashes, split screen errors, red lines, red dots and black screens are random. I don't know if it's my PSU, the video, my MB..
I've tried the following:
Removed the card and placed it on the PCIe slot below it. Same problem.
Placed a different set of power cables in to the card.
Uninstalled and installed 11.9 / 11.8 / 11.10 beta using the standard removal tools and uninstallers that are commonly used.
Re-applied thermal paste which was a disaster.. Lowered core temps by roughly 8c under load.
GPUz shows 80-90 VDDC under heavy Furmark load, is that too high?
Downclocked card to 900/1050 same problem.
Installed MSI utility and increased voltage to 1.25 and kept lower clock settings.
+12v seems stable, dips to 11.88 under heavy load, which is within spec *according to AsRock tool*
The thing that is so strange is the random nature of how these crashes happen.. They seem to be related to higher loads, but I once I figure that out, the machine will start artifacting in windows before I launch any game.. Reboot and everything is OK - I can then game for 2 hours.. Reboot then problems come back..
However, as of the last 8 hours, the stability has declined. OCCT results in red dots and lines within 2 minutes, before the GPU really has time to heat up.. Yet upon reboot I can play Black OPS for an hour with no problems..
So what do you guys think? Is this a power supply issue or the card toast? One thing I want to mention is that I added a second CPU fan to Cooler Master 212+ to setup a push pull system right after the first sign of trouble.. In doing so I removed the MSI card.. Could I have shorted the card out when I took it out of the case???
EDIT: Fanspeed set to 45%.. I don't think this is a heat issue even though I have seen it go as high as 90c.. At first it crashed around 88 or higher but re-applying the thermal compound lowered high load temps, in addition to crashing under 70c