Drivers crash once, but never again?

[Octavialicious]

Hey all, I'm noticing this weird thing with nvidia drivers. After a few games of CS (when my card has heated up) my screen goes black for a few seconds, then it comes back and it says the driver has crashed. After this, I can play however many games I want and the driver will be absolutely fine.

 

Any ideas on what could be happening? Thanks!

[Hunched]

Do you have GPU-Z open to see what happens before and after the crash?

It's unlikely overheating is the cause of the crashes.

[Octavialicious]

12 hours ago, Hunched said:

Do you have GPU-Z open to see what happens before and after the crash?

It's unlikely overheating is the cause of the crashes.

I'll do that, and GPU temps are always under 60C

[zzz123]

I understand you. I am very scary about driver crashess But thankfully i played many hours with games and 0 crashes. Card is 980 Ti Gaming Xtreme.  Maybe your card is not fully 100% stable?

[Octavialicious]

11 minutes ago, zzz123 said:

I understand you. I am very scary about driver crashess But thankfully i played many hours with games and 0 crashes. Card is 980 Ti Gaming Xtreme.  Maybe your card is not fully 100% stable?

I was thinking the OC is unstable too, the thing is I have no idea why it will never crash again once it crashes once? So for now I'm keeping the OC because the 3 second black screen once per day is worth the performance bump

[Octavialicious]

22 hours ago, Hunched said:

Do you have GPU-Z open to see what happens before and after the crash?

It's unlikely overheating is the cause of the crashes.

I've figured it out, no matter what my GPU crashes at 70C. Always... No matter how much voltage or anything it will crash at that temp. what gives?

[Hunched]

13 minutes ago, Octavialicious said:

I've figured it out, no matter what my GPU crashes at 70C. Always... No matter how much voltage or anything it will crash at that temp. what gives?

Does it show your voltage lowering or anything right before it happens?

Seems like it could be GPU Boost lowering the voltage at that temperature, but does so too quickly/aggressively causing a crash.

If that were the case though, I don't understand why it would stop happening after it happens once.

 

Do you know what's different after the crash? Do things not change that changed before according to GPU-Z when you hit 70c?

You should have GPU-Z open at all times and take a screenshot of everything once it happens, post it. See what's different afterwards to stop it from crashing again.

 

If it is voltage lowering at 70c, K-Boost in EVGA Precision X may help, supposed to lock clocks and voltage at max regardless of utilization and temperatures.

If that doesn't help then BIOS editing might, or lowering your clocks but nobody wants to do that.

Try maximum performance in Nvidia Control Panel, though that shouldn't change much.

[Octavialicious]

10 minutes ago, Hunched said:

Does it show your voltage lowering or anything right before it happens?

Seems like it could be GPU Boost lowering the voltage at that temperature, but does so too quickly/aggressively causing a crash.

If that were the case though, I don't understand why it would stop happening after it happens once.

 

Do you know what's different after the crash? Do things not change that changed before according to GPU-Z when you hit 70c?

You should have GPU-Z open at all times and take a screenshot of everything once it happens, post it. See what's different afterwards to stop it from crashing again.

 

If it is voltage lowering at 70c, K-Boost in EVGA Precision X may help, supposed to lock clocks and voltage at max regardless of utilization and temperatures.

If that doesn't help then BIOS editing might, or lowering your clocks but nobody wants to do that.

Try maximum performance in Nvidia Control Panel, though that shouldn't change much.

Don't notice anything weird in GPU-Z, but I will try all the things you mentioned

 

and also it's not crashing because it's resetting the OC, and then the temps don't ever hit 70 C

[Hunched]

K-Boost may not help. I used to have issues where no matter what my GPU would throttle down its voltage and clock at a mere 68c. 

It didn't cause crashes, but it can, and isn't great for stability.

 

I just ran Unigine Valley with my fans disabled up to 80c, fucking GPU-Z popup window appeared but you can see the red lines, they don't throttle.

I do use a custom BIOS, and I do have prefer maximum performance in NVCP.

As you can see on the far right, I don't have K-Boost enabled and I don't have the issue. So if it does solve it, it's not the only solution.

It's been so long I'm afraid I can't remember what exactly solved the issue for myself. 

 

Regardless, you can solve almost any issue by customizing and flashing a BIOS to your card but that isn't the easiest thing to do.

You can usually find some good custom BIOS's out there if that interests you.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1558645/official-nvidia-gtx-980-ti-owners-club

There's some, you'll have to make sure they work with your card and do your research if you do this, you can brick your card if you don't know what you're doing.

I can't personally recommend those, but I use a custom Gigabyte 970 G1 BIOS from here.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1544574/gigabyte-gtx-9xx-10xx-g1-gaming-h2o-air-bios-tweaking

 

I'm not an expert on all the voltage and power settings, I only further customized things that were obvious to me such as fan rpms and self explanatory settings.

So I don't know what exactly needs to be edited to alleviate throttling, I'm sure there's people on LTT (and OCN)  that know more about this than myself.

 

There may be other solutions, I'm just most certain a custom BIOS edited properly would solve it.

I solved it somehow, probably the custom BIOS I use, some setting(s) in it fixed it but I didn't do it, I just downloaded the thing and flashed it

 

[Octavialicious]

1 minute ago, Hunched said:

K-Boost may not help. I used to have issues where no matter what my GPU would throttle down its voltage and clock at a mere 68c. 

It didn't cause crashes, but it can, and isn't great for stability.

 

I just ran Unigine Valley with my fans disabled up to 80c, fucking GPU-Z popup window appeared but you can see the red lines, they don't throttle.

I do use a custom BIOS, and I do have prefer maximum performance in NVCP.

As you can see on the far right, I don't have K-Boost enabled and I don't have the issue. So if it does solve it, it's not the only solution.

It's been so long I'm afraid I can't remember what exactly solved the issue for myself. 

 

Regardless, you can solve almost any issue by customizing and flashing a BIOS to your card but that isn't the easiest thing to do.

You can usually find some good custom BIOS's out there if that interests you.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1558645/official-nvidia-gtx-980-ti-owners-club

There's some, you'll have to make sure they work with your card and do your research if you do this, you can brick your card if you don't know what you're doing.

I can personally recommend those, but I use a custom Gigabyte 970 G1 BIOS from here.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1544574/gigabyte-gtx-9xx-10xx-g1-gaming-h2o-air-bios-tweaking

 

I'm not an expert on all the voltage and power settings, I only further customized things that were obvious to me such as fan rpms and self explanatory settings.

So I don't know what exactly needs to be edited to alleviate throttling, I'm sure there's people on LTT (and OCN)  that know more about this than myself.

 

There may be other solutions, I'm just most certain a custom BIOS edited properly would solve it.

I solved it somehow, probably the custom BIOS I use, some setting(s) in it fixed it but I didn't do it, I just downloaded the thing and flashed it

 

Thank you so much for your help! I appreciate your detailed posts. I've flashed a few custom bioses, and I think you're right in saying it would fix the problem (and I think we had the same issue, mine is also 68 C to be exact)

 

KBoost is keeping my temp 10 C lower for some reason, so I can't tell if it helps or not as it isn't reaching 68 C haha

[Hunched]

1 minute ago, Octavialicious said:

Thank you so much for your help! I appreciate your detailed posts. I've flashed a few custom bioses, and I think you're right in saying it would fix the problem (and I think we had the same issue, mine is also 68 C to be exact)

 

KBoost is keeping my temp 10 C lower for some reason, so I can't tell if it helps or not as it isn't reaching 68 C haha

K-Boost is supposed to force maximum voltage and clocks at all times, even when idle.

So that's odd that it would be cooler.

You could just manually lower your fans so it heats up to 68c real fast and see if it happens.

 

 

[Octavialicious]

1 minute ago, Hunched said:

K-Boost is supposed to force maximum voltage and clocks at all times, even when idle.

So that's odd that it would be cooler.

You could just manually lower your fans so it heats up to 68c real fast and see if it happens.

 

 

yea, that's what I was thinking. Hopefully in a few games it heats up and I can see

 

I have a custom loop so sadly that won't work (although I may block some intake fans!)

[Hunched]

17 minutes ago, Octavialicious said:

yea, that's what I was thinking. Hopefully in a few games it heats up and I can see

 

I have a custom loop so sadly that won't work (although I may block some intake fans!)

Yea. If that doesn't work it's just the challenge of finding a good custom BIOS for your card.

Idk what exact EVGA 980 Ti you got, but that link I posted claims to have a custom EVGA 980 Ti bios that doesn't throttle.

 

It's a GPU Boost issue, you can alternatively find guides that show you how to disable it in the BIOS. Again good guides on overclock.net

Or you could download one of the really good BIOS's from the Gigabyte link I posted, obviously not use it on your card, but just look at what settings were changed.

You could likely copy many improvements over from the Gigabyte BIOS to the EVGA BIOS. They're still both 980 Ti's, many of the same settings are applicable, but you have to be the judge of that.

 

There's also this giant thread where people ask for custom BIOS's to be made.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1573308/nvidia-gtx-900-cards-custom-bios-upon-request

I'm sure you could find someone with your GPU who got one made for them that hopefully solves the issues, which it will if made correctly.

OH SHIT first part of that post!!!

"What we can do here ?

1-Disable the boost ( to avoid throttle at 67c) "

[Octavialicious]

1 minute ago, Hunched said:

Yea. If that doesn't work it's just the challenge of finding a good custom BIOS for your card.

Idk what exact EVGA 980 Ti you got, but that link I posted claims to have a custom EVGA 980 Ti bios that doesn't throttle.

 

It's a GPU Boost issue, you can alternatively find guides that show you how to disable it in the BIOS. Again good guides on overclock.net

Or you could download one of the really good BIOS's from the Gigabyte link I posted, obviously not use it on your card, but just look at what settings were changed.

You could likely copy many improvements over from the Gigabyte BIOS to the EVGA BIOS. They're still both 980 Ti's, many of the same settings are applicable, but you have to be the judge of that.

 

There's also this giant thread where people ask for custom BIOS's to be made.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1573308/nvidia-gtx-900-cards-custom-bios-upon-request

I'm sure you could find someone with your GPU who got one made for them that hopefully solves the issues, which it will if made correctly.

yup, Mr Dark is where I get all my custom bioses

 

and sadly kboost didn't work. It worked for a little bit, then it crashed. I'll go request a bios now!

[Hunched]

7 minutes ago, Octavialicious said:

yup, Mr Dark is where I get all my custom bioses

 

and sadly kboost didn't work. It worked for a little bit, then it crashed. I'll go request a bios now!

First part of the post in that thread " What we can do here ?

1-Disable the boost ( to avoid throttle at 67c) "

 

 

Fucking Nvidia and their shitty GPU Boost garbage