Issue I had with a GTX 780 a year ago that is now fixed but would love some more info on how I fixed it.

GS540 · September 18, 2014

Ok so this is a problem I was having when I got a GTX 780 Direct CU II from Asus about 1 year ago. I had a GTX 580 before and never had one issue with it.

My setup (important bits)

i7 2600K

ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME-Z

8GB Kingstone RAM

So the problem I had when I got the card was this, When I was doing something intensive it would just stop, by stop I mean my two monitors would go black and then they would come back on and the game or whatever I was doing would still be there. I found out a awhile later that it was a driver crash. So what did i do? re-install the driver. Did that fix it? nope. So after that I came on here and told you guys about it and some people said it was a faulty unit and to RMA it, So I did. The guys tested it and said there was nothing wrong with it. I got it back and done more testing on my end. The problem was still there. I then re installed windows, but the problem was still there, random driver crashes, black screen and then everything comes back on. I re installed windows again( i don't know why actually) but problem was still there.

Before i get to the next part, a pretty important piece of info. My motherboard has two BIOS chips. One of the BIOS's is totally up to date and the other hasn't been touched since I got the board.

I was looking at my motherboard and decided I would try the other BIOS and see if the problem persists. guess what? Problem is GONE. havn't had an issue with the card since changing over to the older BIOS chip.

I really just want to know what exactly caused the issue? was it the new bios version? was the chip faulty? would love some responses.

Lord Pantaloons · September 18, 2014

changed bios, problem stopped.

Obvious answer is obvious(the specifics of what in the newer bios caused it would be almost impossible to determine)

hmminteresting · September 18, 2014

changed bios, problem stopped.

Obvious answer is obvious(the specifics of what in the newer bios caused it would be almost impossible to determine)

but newer bios updates generally improve stability so that doesnt really make sense plus OP WANTS SPECIFICS LORD PANTALOONS :')

GS540 · September 18, 2014

but newer bios updates generally improve stability so that doesnt really make sense plus OP WANTS SPECIFICS LORD PANTALOONS :')

Exactly.

Lord Pantaloons · September 18, 2014

but newer bios updates generally improve stability so that doesnt really make sense plus OP WANTS SPECIFICS LORD PANTALOONS :')

If nothing else changed aside from reverting to the old bios then clearly something about the newer bios was causing the issue. There's nothing left to debate there, but considering that there's no easy way to determine what caused the issue even if the OP hadn't reverted there's no sense in trying to understand what happened. It's better to just move on and skip that bios version, and plenty of times a new bios version has actually been detrimental to the stability of a system so it's completely reasonable to assume that's what occurred here.