Zotac GTX 980-TI crashing in Unigine benchmarks

mathiasPS · December 14, 2019

Hi there

I recently acquired a previously used Zotac GTX 980-TI and have been running some tests today.

Specifically i have done a bunch of tests with the Unigine Heaven benchmark, and have noticed some patterns:

When i run the benchmark it crashes to a grey screen after roughly 4 seconds, but this only happens when i run it with DX11 instead of DX9 (which works without any crashes).

After the grey screen the application appears in as a minimized blank window for a few seconds with the title "not responding". Then it continues the test, although this is not always the case - sometimes it just crashes to a black screen and i have to restart the PC.

Do you guys have some guesses as to what might be causing this? I have tried the same benchmark with my even older GTX 780 in the same build and it finishes the test without any crashes.

Would appreciate any help!

PS: I have tried DDU for a clean reinstall and my drivers are up to date, and i am running stock clock.

Bombastinator · December 14, 2019

So what you seem to be saying is Dx9 is fine, but Dx 11 has problems, and what exact part of the system is buggered is unknown.

I’ve got a 970 and as soon as I updated to win10 my system started to have all sorts of problems with video. After like 3 days of messing with it I took the cowards way out and installed an a 580 which works fine.

dx12 was just coming out when the card did. The thing was “dx12 ready”. It should have been running dx11 fine though. Kinda curious what dx10 would do but that’s pure curiosity. My current theory with which along with $5 will get you a cup of coffee, is that there’s something buggered in win10’s ability to deal with 900 series cards, and it probably has something to do with drivers. It’s all I got.

im mostly following this post hoping that a solution for you might lead to a solution for me, and telling you that at least the problem is not unique.