GPU 'Disappearing' MSI Afterburner

[Aereldor]

Greetings.

 

I'm trying to overclock my GTX 960, and was following standard procedure- power limit to full, start raising core and memory clocked.

 

I got to a point where Unigine Heaven crashed, and MSI Afterburner said 'Connection to GPU 1 Lost'. Upon restarting Afterburner, everything was greyed out, my GPU driver version was no longer showing. I rebooted my computer, and it didn't help. The only thing that fixed it was updating my GPU drivers.

 

Now it's happened again, as crashing is an invariable part of overclocking. Do I have to reinstall my drivers every time this happens?!

 

I'd really appreciate any help with this. My system specs are in my signature.

 

Regards,

Aereldor.

[Droidbot]

Tried reseating it in the slot? Maybe something's loose. Or your mobo isn't supplying it enough power or something. 

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

Tried reseating it in the slot? Maybe something's loose. Or your mobo isn't supplying it enough power or something. 

If it's a loose connection, why would it go back to normal after a driver update?

 

Can't be motherboard power delivery. @STRMfrmXMN runs a GTX 970 off an inferior version of this motherboard. 

 

My power supply is a 430w SeaSonic unit, so I doubt that's to blame.

[Droidbot]

Just now, Aereldor said:

If it's a loose connection, why would it go back to normal after a driver update?

I don't know, really. It's quite strange.. maybe it's messing with something? 

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

I don't know, really. It's quite strange.. maybe it's messing with something? 

Evidently. 

 

I edited my post to include this-

6 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Can't be motherboard power delivery. @STRMfrmXMN runs a GTX 970 off an inferior version of this motherboard. 

 

My power supply is a 430w SeaSonic unit, so I doubt that's to blame.

Pretty sure this isn't a hardware issue.

 

Edit: Oh, I also reinstalled MSI Afterburner, as well as updated my drivers, and only the driver update worked. 

Man, nothing seems to work with this computer, and I don't want to go through the headache of installing Windows just to see if that's it.

[GuruMeditationError]

Are you relying on motherboard power delivery only?

 

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Are you relying on motherboard power delivery only?

 

No, I don't think any GTX 960 does that. There's one 6-pin PCIe power input from the PSU. 

[GuruMeditationError]

7 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

No, I don't think any GTX 960 does that. There's one 6-pin PCIe power input from the PSU. 

To be honest it's beyond my understanding, but hopefully someone on the forum might be able to help with it.

It sounds like a total pain...I can only suggest maybe running a search for the standard stable overclock achieved with that card and halving it to see if it'll get you up the curve a little quicker.  

...if you're nowhere near that point and it's already crashing, I'm not sure what to say...if you're pretty close to the average overclock for that card it might just be worth sticking with your last stable setting.

Hopefully someone else might have a better solution.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, GuruMeditationError said:

To be honest it's beyond my understanding, but hopefully someone on the forum might be able to help with it.

It sounds like a total pain...I can only suggest maybe running a search for the standard stable overclock achieved with that card and halving it to see if it'll get you up the curve a little quicker.  

...if you're nowhere near that point and it's already crashing, I'm not sure what to say...if you're pretty close to the average overclock for that card it might just be worth sticking with your last stable setting.

Hopefully someone else might have a better solution.

I hope so.

 

I'm not even close. The GPU boosts to 1316 MHz with GPU Boost, and even cheap 960s like mine have gone well into the 1500s.

I wouldn't be so pissed if I could just click the reinstall button and just reinstall the GeForce driver every time this happened, but that's broken too. I can't afford to use DDU every time. Maybe someone knows what the hell is going on. If I can get the easy reinstalls working, then maybe I'll shoot for that 1500 anyway.

[Aereldor]

@Droidbot @GuruMeditationError- I've just noticed that GeForce Experience doesn't detect my GPU anymore. The display outputs from it and it shows up in Device Manager and GPU-Z (but with several fields 'unkown', but it doesn't show up in GeForce Experience OR Afterburner.

 

Now I'm really confused.

[GuruMeditationError]

It's an odd one. I was overclocking my GPU last night and had it crash and knock my operating system over onto nVidia's onboard graphics card audio but  must admit I've never experienced what you're describing...

...do video card manufacturers still provide proprietary drivers? It might be worth contacting the card manufacturer or consulting their website...if it's a known issue they might have a forum where that specific issue's been discussed. It's a long-shot but maybe worth a try?

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

...do video card manufacturers still provide proprietary drivers? 

No, and I can't find any solutions for this besides the same people who recommend reinstalling Windows for everything...

 

[GuruMeditationError]

Just now, Aereldor said:

No, and I can't find any solutions for this besides the same people who recommend reinstalling Windows for everything...

 

I know...it's the software solution equivalent of telling someone to completely disassemble and re-assemble their hardware to trouble shoot a faulty RAM module...

...have you considered that the card might just be faulty? If it's not a known issue and not something that can be resolved through software then it might mean it's a hardware fault.

 

Does your motherboard have a second PCIe slot it'll let you use? If so it might be worth giving that a try to see if a failure gives the same result...that's one way of potentially trouble-shooting the socket before you pay out any money for a new graphics card...

...or if you have a family member that's willing to pull their graphics card for you to run the same process on to see if it yields the same result?  That might help you to identify if it's the system or the card that's causing the problem...if it just keeps happening with every card you put into it then it's a problem with the system, otherwise, it could very well be a faulty card.

I'm really not sure if there'd be anything in a Windows installation that would cause that conflict but, as I say, that's really beyond my understanding...I just try and work lateral-thinking workarounds for this kind of thing, but sometimes it's just more time and stress than it's worth.

If you have a back up or spare or family computer you could stick the graphics card in and try to overclock it there, it might be another way of finding out if the problem's with the card or with the system or just a combination of the two.

[STRMfrmXMN]

5 hours ago, Aereldor said:

If it's a loose connection, why would it go back to normal after a driver update?

 

Can't be motherboard power delivery. @STRMfrmXMN runs a GTX 970 off an inferior version of this motherboard. 

 

My power supply is a 430w SeaSonic unit, so I doubt that's to blame.

I actually have the same board as you I likely have a better version of it too since I have an older revision of it.

 

Have you tried going into Device Manager and disabling and subsequently re-enabling your GPU after a crash occurs?

[Aereldor]

3 hours ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I actually have the same board as you I likely have a better version of it too since I have an older revision of it.

 

Have you tried going into Device Manager and disabling and subsequently re-enabling your GPU after a crash occurs?

No, we talked about this. I have the very oldest version- Rev 1.0.

 

You know what, I'm going to try that. Will I have to re-enable my iGPU and plug the monitor's HDMI cable into my motherboard and then change it back every time?

[STRMfrmXMN]

3 hours ago, Aereldor said:

No, we talked about this. I have the very oldest version- Rev 1.0.

 

You know what, I'm going to try that. Will I have to re-enable my iGPU and plug the monitor's HDMI cable into my motherboard and then change it back every time?

No, you'll use the default Windows driver that gets you by

[Aereldor]

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

No, you'll use the default Windows driver that gets you by

So disabling the GPU in device manager doesn't cut off display output from the GPU, right? I think I'll try that.

[STRMfrmXMN]

52 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

So disabling the GPU in device manager doesn't cut off display output from the GPU, right? I think I'll try that.

Yeah

[GuruMeditationError]

Hang on, I just got some sleep (I was tired last night) and this just occurred to me...

...you wrote you're nowhere near what it should be able to overclock to...so...the issue is mainly one of figuring out what's causing the crashing right?

I mean, if it's not stable enough to let you figure out a good overclock then the instability should be the priority...because even if you had the perfect overclock for the card it's probably just going to crash at launch.

 

Someone just recommended me this in another thread... "Event Viewer".  It's in Windows and can hopefully tell you what it is that's going wrong...it might be able to shed light on whether it might be a driver issue.

 

Also, rolling back to an earlier driver might help you to bypass the problem...I guess it's not a long term solution but it might help with troubleshooting, but next time it happens pull up "Event Viewer" and take a look at what it's reading.