Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce Overclocking Hardware or Driver problem?

[ZeGhostrider]

My Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce arrived yesterday (finally) and I ran into some problems.

 

First the specs, this is my casual gaming 1080p@60FPS secondary PC in my living room.

 

Mainboard: Gigabyte Z97P-D3

CPU: Intel I5 4690K @ 4,8Ghz; 1,35V; (bequiet Shadow Rock 2)

RAM: 16GB G.Skill Ares DDR3 @1600Mhz CL10

Storage: 1TB HDD + 128 GB SSD

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce [Factory Overlocked 1582Mhz Core/1797 Boost/2000Mhz (8000Mhz GDDR5) Memory]

Monitor: LG somethingsomething 1080p/60hz IPS monitor - Displayport 1.2

PSU: Seasonic X series 1050W 80+Gold (this is from my main PC only used here for testing)

Windows 10 Home

Nvidia drivers 372,54

 

 

Now to the problem:

 

This is my first Gigabyte GPU so I downloaded their own OC software (XTREME GAMING ENGINE) which for some reason would not regocnize the GPU at first and when I fixed that it wouldn't get into OC mode.

 

So I went back to Afterburner and did some mild OC +100Mhz on core and +300Mhz on memory + custom fancourse ofc. 1 hour MSI Kombustor = no problems temps 67°C max.

Upped OC +200Mhz on core +500Mhz memory again 1 hour Kombustor no problems temps reaching 72°C max.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

I was happy with that for now and ran GTA V, about 15 minutes driving around aimlessly I got a message "nvidia driver has stopped responding and has recovered".

 

Never mind I ran Witcher 3 about 5 minutes into the game same error message.

 

Dialed OC to +160Mhz/+480Mhz and ran Intel Stress test 1 hour, again no problem 

 

Spoiler

 

Back to GTA V after 10-15 minutes again same error message, same with Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor or Crysis 3.

 

Reverted back to factory clocks and the error message still persists when gaming.

 

Now I ran Aida64 for 2 hours and no such problem.

 

What should I do?

 

Anybody experience anything of the sort with other GTX 10 series cards?

 

Should I RMA the card or is this just a driver issue?

[Skiiwee29]

Sounds like maybe some residual effects of older drivers. Try downloading DDU: LINK and uninstall your drivers and try re-installing 100% fresh.  

[ZeGhostrider]

I already did that before removing the pervious GPU, ran DDU, removed old GPU, installed new, booted up installed Nvidia drivers.

 

Just to be 100% I did a clean windows install today, problem still exists. 

 

Windows, Nvidia drivers and the games are all up to date.

[Skiiwee29]

Try using the older drivers. 368.XX instead of the 372.XX and see if the issue persists. 

[racer243l]

GTA V isn´t happy with OC´s on Pascal cards for some reason. On my 1080 it artifacts with even the slightest oc and crashing with higher clocks.. I heard a few people have this issue.

But like the others said, do a fresh driver install and see what happens.

[ZeGhostrider]

5 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

Try using the older drivers. 368.XX instead of the 372.XX and see if the issue persists. 

Will do and report back thanks.

 

3 minutes ago, racer243l said:

GTA V isn´t happy with OC´s on Pascal cards for some reason. On my 1080 it artifacts with even the slightest oc and crashing with higher clocks.. I heard a few people have this issue.

But like the others said, do a fresh driver install and see what happens.

 

Wow, I hope it gets resolved for you aswell, it's quite dissapointing this way.

[ZeGhostrider]

I now tried drivers from June to all the way back January for good measure (all proper clean install with DDU) and instead of GTA V I ran The Crew, lasted for almost 20 minutes and same error message.

 

Running stock speeds atm.

 

Unless anybody has more ideas I will RMA this card the next day.

 

This is seriously dissapointing.

 

A 1070 would be waste of power for this build and I didn't get a RX480 because the very low TDP of the 1060 was just too good to ignore (this PC is going to run 24/7)

 

What's even worse is that there are not many GTX 1060s in stock where I buy my Hardware from, only alternative atm. is a Gainward 1060 Phoenix.

 

Never had a Gainward card before, but from a friend who has a Gainward (non Phoenix) 1070 I heard very bad things.

[ZeGhostrider]

I think I fixed it finally.

 

Replying in case somebody has a similar problem.

 

• clean windows install again,
• downloaded and installed old 368.81 driver from Guru3D,
• had suspicions about Gigabytes OC software "XTREME GAMING ENGINE" causing problems, so did not install that this time,
• only Afterburner for OC,
• previous driver crash in games after 10-15 minutes even with stock clock speed was no longer present,
• went a bit easy on the OC at first +125Mhz core; +250Mhz memory + custom fan curve,
• 8 hours of Aida64 no problems,
• 4 hours GTA V no problems,
• running Witcher atm. also no problems so far.

 

Not 100% sure if the main problem was the xtreme gaming engine or newer Nvidia drivers being messy, or a bit of both.