GTX 680 SLI problems/non SLI problems too

[Nizzel]

Hello i have quite the weird case with my two 680 that i recently bought from a guy and im going to try and explain it the best i can.

First my setup is:

i7 2600k

MSI P67A-GD65 (motherboard)

Corsair vengeance 16gb 1866mhz

Cooler master Silent pro M 850W

680 Gainward Phantom 4GB

 

Little background story:

The guy i bought it from said that he recently sent it in to get repaired and that they sent it back saying they are completly fine but doesnt like getting stressed really hard. he also said that i can send the card back that doesnt work and get half of my money back (he is a really kind guy that i have known for quite some time now but only online) 

 

The problem:

Massive flickering/shaking after playing for a bit with SLI. now i did record this but on the videos (recorded with fraps) all it does is stop recording when it happends. also it turned off SLI by itself after that happend and it also crashed after it happends

seems like the card downclocks itself or that the driver is crashing alot making me unable to play the game since it freezes alot (even with SLI off) this is taking from afterburner and shows what happend while i was playing cs go - 

Cant run stress test (tried valley and 3DMark) in valley it looks like it downclocks itself (could just be driver crash too) and then crashes shortly after and with 3DMark firestrike extreme it crashed after about 5s

Turning SLI on/off in nvidia control panel sometimes makes my screen go blank and i have to restart my pc - then for some reason it wont boot up after that and is just blank right before you type in your password but i fixed this by simply typing random stuff and hitting enter and it goes to the normal screen where i can type in the password

 

Extra information:

Picture of the sensors with the max value showing after playing for a bit

Picture of gpu-z with both of them where it also shows that they have a different BIOS 

One of the cards have Hynix memory while the other have samsung memory

i havent overclocked them but i have tried upping the voltage a tiny bit to see if they were unstable on stock but i can belive that they would be even after adding a tiny amount of voltage. 

The guy before me doesnt seem to have overclocked it cause he said to me that he doesnt really tinker with it

before this i had 2x 560 which i had no problems with

 

 

 

 

[Archangel1994]

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers?

[Nizzel]

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers?

yes multiple times as i had too cause it would boot up with no drivers after some of the episodes have happend (forgot to mention in the post i think)

[Archangel1994]

Sounds like a bad SLI bridge. Try both cards separately in a single Graphics card setup (not SLI) and see if flickering occurs with either.

[Cryptonite]

Hello i have quite the weird case with my two 680 that i recently bought from a guy and im going to try and explain it the best i can.

First my setup is:

i7 2600k

MSI P67A-GD65 (motherboard)

Corsair vengeance 16gb 1866mhz

Cooler master Silent pro M 850W

680 Gainward Phantom 4GB

 

Little background story:

The guy i bought it from said that he recently sent it in to get repaired and that they sent it back saying they are completly fine but doesnt like getting stressed really hard. he also said that i can send the card back that doesnt work and get half of my money back (he is a really kind guy that i have known for quite some time now but only online) 

 

The problem:

Massive flickering/shaking after playing for a bit with SLI. now i did record this but on the videos (recorded with fraps) all it does is stop recording when it happends. also it turned off SLI by itself after that happend and it also crashed after it happends

seems like the card downclocks itself or that the driver is crashing alot making me unable to play the game since it freezes alot (even with SLI off) this is taking from afterburner and shows what happend while i was playing cs go - gpu crash.PNG

Cant run stress test (tried valley and 3DMark) in valley it looks like it downclocks itself (could just be driver crash too) and then crashes shortly after and with 3DMark firestrike extreme it crashed after about 5s

Turning SLI on/off in nvidia control panel sometimes makes my screen go blank and i have to restart my pc - then for some reason it wont boot up after that and is just blank right before you type in your password but i fixed this by simply typing random stuff and hitting enter and it goes to the normal screen where i can type in the password

 

Extra information:

Picture of the sensors with the max value showing after playing for a bit

680 gpu-z.PNG

Picture of gpu-z with both of them where it also shows that they have a different BIOS 

gpu-z.PNG

One of the cards have Hynix memory while the other have samsung memory

i havent overclocked them but i have tried upping the voltage a tiny bit to see if they were unstable on stock but i can belive that they would be even after adding a tiny amount of voltage. 

The guy before me doesnt seem to have overclocked it cause he said to me that he doesnt really tinker with it

before this i had 2x 560 which i had no problems with

first thing I see is heat. heat might cause some cards to downclock when above 70 degrees, though that is bypassable by tweaking the GPU's bios a little. (always make a backup of the original)

[Askew]

Your avatar is incredibly annoying I'm adding you to ignore because of it.

[Nizzel]

Your avatar is incredibly annoying I'm adding you to ignore because of it.

... i can change it if its that much of an annoyance, could of just told me to do that - changing it now

[Cryptonite]

Your avatar is incredibly annoying I'm adding you to ignore because of it.

you could use his avatar for fixing stuck pixels though.

 

... i can change it if its that much of an annoyance, could of just told me to do that - changing it now

 

[Nizzel]

first thing I see is heat. heat might cause some cards to downclock when above 70 degrees, though that is bypassable by tweaking the GPU's bios a little. (always make a backup of the original)

i changed fan speed to 100% to make that not happen while "testing them" (playing games)

[Askew]

... i can change it if its that much of an annoyance, could of just told me to do that - changing it now

 

OK awesome, excessively flashing images like that are kind of distracting when trying to read your posts so I would have just opted not to see them if you kept that avatar.

 

Thank you for changing the avatar.

[Nizzel]

Sounds like a bad SLI bridge. Try both cards separately in a single Graphics card setup (not SLI) and see if flickering occurs with either.

i just used this sli brdige on my two 560's though. i dont get the flickering while not having sli but games still crash though i havent tried using the 2nd one for the primary which is the one that should work 

[Nizzel]

OK awesome, excessively flashing images like that are kind of distracting when trying to read your posts so I would have just opted not to see them if you kept that avatar.

 

Thank you for changing the avatar.

NP i dont want to annoy people ^^' i just want people to help me solve this issue cause if it cant be solved then i have to send it back to that guy

[Cryptonite]

i changed fan speed to 100% to make that not happen while "testing them" (playing games)

the max temp shows 81 degrees though. I'd send you my custom bios if you had asus 2 gb version cards, but mixing brand bios's might brick your GPU and it might cause problems anyway since my memory is overclocked like crazy.

[Nizzel]

the max temp shows 81 degrees though.

should a temp of 81 really downclock though?

[Archangel1994]

Depends on the gpu but 81 does seem a bit low to start throttling.

[Lord Pantaloons]

first thing I see is heat. heat might cause some cards to downclock when above 70 degrees, though that is bypassable by tweaking the GPU's bios a little. (always make a backup of the original)

Gk104 doesn't throttle at 70c it throttles at 90c

 

 

@OP

 

This sounds like a faulty card to me but just to be sure I want you to try some things.

 

1. Turn off SLI

2. Download and use "Display Driver Uninstaller" you completely remove your display driver, be sure to follow all suggested instructions including booting into safe mode.

3. Download and install a fresh version of the most recent non beta driver from Nvidia's website.

4. Leave SLI off and test each card individually, it would be best to remove one of them from the system at a time.

5. If the one or both cards continue to show odd behavior even while being the only card in the system then they are faulty.

[Cryptonite]

should a temp of 81 really downclock though?

 

 

Gk104 doesn't throttle at 70c it throttles at 90c

 

 

@OP

 

This sounds like a faulty card to me but just to be sure I want you to try some things.

 

1. Turn off SLI

2. Download and use "Display Driver Uninstaller" you completely remove your display driver, be sure to follow all suggested instructions including booting into safe mode.

3. Download and install a fresh version of the most recent non beta driver from Nvidia's website.

4. Leave SLI off and test each card individually, it would be best to remove one of them from the system at a time.

5. If the one or both cards continue to show odd behavior even while being the only card in the system then they are faulty.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/519260/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/

https://esports.geforce.com/forums/topic/519260/geforce-700-600-series/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/2

 

Though I know a lot of them don't actually throttle. Mine being one of them.

[Nizzel]

Gk104 doesn't throttle at 70c it throttles at 90c

 

 

@OP

 

This sounds like a faulty card to me but just to be sure I want you to try some things.

 

1. Turn off SLI

2. Download and use "Display Driver Uninstaller" you completely remove your display driver, be sure to follow all suggested instructions including booting into safe mode.

3. Download and install a fresh version of the most recent non beta driver from Nvidia's website.

4. Leave SLI off and test each card individually, it would be best to remove one of them from the system at a time.

5. If the one or both cards continue to show odd behavior even while being the only card in the system then they are faulty.

Okay im going to do all of what you said. will come back with an report after being done with it

[Nizzel]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/519260/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/

https://esports.geforce.com/forums/topic/519260/geforce-700-600-series/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/2

one question though. would it stop the game for a bit if it does throttle so that it can downclock or should that be completly fluid

[Lord Pantaloons]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/519260/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/

https://esports.geforce.com/forums/topic/519260/geforce-700-600-series/get-rid-of-thermal-throttles-on-all-gk104-cards-33-stop-underclocking-my-shiny-new-expensive-graph/2

My 760's don't throttle until they hit 90c and my 660 Ti's did the same, sounds to me like that person had set the thermal limit on their card too low.

[Cryptonite]

one question though. would it stop the game for a bit if it does throttle so that it can downclock or should that be completly fluid

Your game shouldn't hang, your FPS should just drop.

My 760's don't throttle until they hit 90c and my 660 Ti's did the same, sounds to me like that person had set the thermal limit on their card too low.

Like I edited my post. I know some cards don't throttle but others have the throttle temp on 70 by default. mine is at 90 degrees. also keep in mind the 700 series uses GPU boost 2.0 unlike the 600 series (though it's easy to implement on a 600 series card)

[Nizzel]

Your game shouldn't hang, your FPS should just drop.

Like I edited my post. I know some cards don't throttle but others have the throttle temp on 70 by default. mine is at 90 degrees. also keep in mind the 700 series uses GPU boost 2.0 unlike the 600 series (though it's easy to implement on a 600 series card)

well then it probably doesnt downclock - never mind then ^^

[Lord Pantaloons]

Your game shouldn't hang, your FPS should just drop.

Like I edited my post. I know some cards don't throttle but others have the throttle temp on 70 by default. mine is at 90 degrees. also keep in mind the 700 series uses GPU boost 2.0 unlike the 600 series (though it's easy to implement on a 600 series card)

It's still GK 104 and the only difference with GPU boost 2.0 is that you can set it to ignore the temp limit in favor of the power limit. You couldn't do that on GPU Boost 1.0 so the throttle temp was set in stone. That being said I've never heard of any particular GK104 card having a different throttle point than others based off the same chip. Having more or less cores unlocked doesn't raiser or lower the chips tolerance for temperatures, it just increases/decreases the amount of heat the chip can generate the tolerance is still the same.

[Cryptonite]

It's still GK 104 and the only difference with GPU boost 2.0 is that you can set it to ignore the temp limit in favor of the power limit. You couldn't do that on GPU Boost 1.0 so the throttle temp was set in stone. That being said I've never heard of any particular GK104 card having a different throttle point than others based off the same chip. Having more or less cores unlocked doesn't raiser or lower the chips tolerance for temperatures, it just increases/decreases the amount of heat the chip can generate the tolerance is still the same.

I know what they can Handle, I just know of multiple reports of GPU boost slowing itself down by - 13 mhz the moment it hits 70 degrees and again at 80. like I said though my cards don't do that either and I changed my 680s bios to reflect that of a 770

 

another report of the "throttle" http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=377676

[Cryptonite]

It's still GK 104 and the only difference with GPU boost 2.0 is that you can set it to ignore the temp limit in favor of the power limit. You couldn't do that on GPU Boost 1.0 so the throttle temp was set in stone. That being said I've never heard of any particular GK104 card having a different throttle point than others based off the same chip. Having more or less cores unlocked doesn't raiser or lower the chips tolerance for temperatures, it just increases/decreases the amount of heat the chip can generate the tolerance is still the same.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1265110/the-gtx-670-overclocking-master-guide

Though I know it's easy to bypass..

 

One thing to keep in mind is the Kepler Boost is only throttled once per throttle point. For example, if the GPU got up to 75C, it would be throttled exactly one time at 70C by 13MHz; It would not be throttled continuously until the temperature dropped back below 70C.