Argh, hard crashes in games.

Echo

So I keep getting hard freezes when playing certain games. Not all of them, and at totally random times - sometimes within minutes, usually after 45-60 minutes, sometimes not for hours on end.

It's a hard freeze where nothing works and sometimes giving me screeching static in the speakers until I punch the reset button.

The games it's happened in so far are the SW:TOR beta (...going on right now) and Champions Online.

I upgraded my computer earlier this year, and didn't have the problems before. I have no idea if I should blame the video card or not -- could be absolutely anything. I'm stumped here, open for suggestions.

Specs:

Video card - Asus ENGTX460 (Nvidia)
Motherboard - MSI P67A-GD65
CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K 3,4GHz
RAM - Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz CL9 (2x4 gigs)

edit: it also happens when I stream video with XSplit.

Echo

Also, I just reinstalled Windows to get a fresh start in case I had old driver crap lying around from my last video card... but I just had my first crash again after that. Hence about time to make a thread.

Priest

It sounds to me like a GPU issue. Do you get artifacts on the screen when it crashes?

I have a 470, and what somebody recommended to me was getting MSI afterburner. I pumped up the GPU Fan RPM's a bit, and turned up the voltage a bit, and it did the trick for me.

I'm not familiar with 460GTX voltages, so I don't want to give you a wrong number, but just those two tweaks alone have stopped any hard crashes I have had at all. (I used to have the same, about 1 every hour.)

Echo

Nope, no artifacts or other warnings, it just up and freezes.

Echo

Downloaded MSI Afterburner, but for whatever reason it won't let me change the voltaged. I clocked the GPU down a bit, we'll see if that makes any difference. The annoying part is that it's hard to tell if changes did anything because I can play for several hours between crashes.

edit: actually, there's a newer firmware for my card. Flashed to that, going to try that first before I fiddle with GPU clock rate and stuff.

Echo

Welp. Video card BIOS update did nothing. Just crashed again.

Clocked the GPU down now, let's see how that works.

Going to check for new firmware for the motherboard as well, and I'm going to leave the computer on running a memory test over night.

TetraNitroCubane

Is your 460 a superclocked version of the card?

I'm not sure if you're experiencing the same thing that I did, but my GTX 570 SC was giving me similar problems. Essentially the superclocked version of the card ships with a factory overclock applied, but the manufacturer never modified the voltages to accompany such an overclock. So when playing DX11 games at high detail, the card would get stressed, be undervolted for the OC, and crash hard. Lowering my card's clocks to reference speeds was the only way I could complete Deus Ex: HR without the game dying every 30 minutes.

This only happened in DX11 games, though. Every other game would run fine and dandy.

If this is the same issue, putting your card at the 470 reference specs, or alternatively bumping up the voltage (don't know how if MSI isn't allowing that), would be the way to solve it.

My sympathies, though. Having the crashes spaced out by hours is maddening. It's really hard to get into a game when the whole time you're bracing yourself, wondering if the next crash is just about to happen.

Echo

So, yeah. I clocked it down from the default 675 MHz to 405 MHz, and no crashes since.

Think I'll return it for a refund and get a new card since it's still under warranty.

TetraNitroCubane wrote:

My sympathies, though. Having the crashes spaced out by hours is maddening. It's really hard to get into a game when the whole time you're bracing yourself, wondering if the next crash is just about to happen.

Extra infuriating when trying to tank in the SW:TOR beta. :x

edit: huh, 675 MHz is the reference speed for the GTX460. Welp, further proof that it's not working as intended.