GTX 680 2gb problems?

Gavin78

anewhope wrote: »

Which Motherboard do you have and what BIOS version is it running?

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3517&dl=#ov

That is my motherboard GA-870A-UD3 version 2.1

Note sure what bios version still the same one I think that came with it but looked at the latest bios version dated 2011 so wont make a difference.

I'm also running a AMD phenomenon ii 965 black edition x4 3.4ghz.

I know the pc is old stock now but read other posts on the net with people running the 680 on the same board

Gavin78

I've had a look on pc world at power supplies and I'm totally lost if I were to buy a psu as to whether i am buying the right one. I've seen a 600w for £52.99 but insure if it would be the right one for this card.

Would appreciate someone taking a look and pointing me in the right direction for a suitable psu and I'll give it a go just on the off chance mine is crap but don't want to pay well over the odds

Cycrow

Can you still get into safe mode ?
is the problem only happening when booting normally into windows?

for psu's its best to stick to the well known makes, the wattage doesn't actually mean much because it depends how that figure has been worked out.

ideally you should look for one that delivers the correct amps on the 12v.
Any superflower or seasonic backed psu should be decent.

i would go for something like this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-040-SS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463

no guarantee it'll fix your problem as it could be a faulty gpu. But at least it'll give you a decent psu that should last a long time

JasX

Cycrow wrote: »

i would go for something like this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-040-SS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2463

This is a good quality PSU, I bought one for my brother-in-law's new PC 2 weeks back (well I got an XFX TS 550w Bronze which is a Seasonic S12II inside with an XFX badge on it )

enfield_freddy

why not get the video card tested by a local dealer ,

Fightsback

Enough of this PSU nonsense, test the card first either in another machine (which is available) or by a professional before any money on replacing kit is spent.

Common sense here people, it's a second hand card bought off an ebay private seller so you want to confirm or discount whether the card is faulty before anything else is done.

Nilrem

Re the card showing up as a 680 with the 570 drivers installed, that is completely normal and to be expected.
Nvidia, AMD and the like all now (and have for years) made driver packages that work for pretty much their entire range of cards, partly because they tend to add to the existing architecture of the card with each generation so all the driver has to do is only load the parts it detects the card needs (and indeed you can find a low end card that is part of Y range is actually a chip from the upper end of the older X range with extra memory or something as Y may have just had additional processing units).

Thankfully long gone are the days when every single card from every single manufacturer tended to need you to have exactly the right driver depending on if it was the 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c and if it was the varient with 1mb of ram or 2mb


With regards to PSU's I tend to stick with the big names, things like Antec, Seasonic, Corsair, Enermax, Zalman etc.

To give you an idea an Antec 650 supply will cost around £65ish and up depending on the exact model (the gold ones which better efficiency cost more, as do the more silent models or the ones with detachable cabling).

It's only a guess that it could be the PSU, but I've seen it happen a fair bit with cheap brands working fine when you've got one card in the machine, but when you swap to a newer card that might draw an extra 20 watts it struggles despite it being a "550" or whatever.
I got caught with one of the old 550 watt supplies (qtech I think) that was sold by various places as being a good budget model (at the time it was between 50-75% of the price of an Antec or Seasonic model, thankfully I never used it in a system that needed more than about 300 watts as it turns out when it was tested by one of the more thorough and technically/engineering minded sites that it could only sustain something like 500 watts for a few seconds before dying (550 turned out to be an optimistic peak supply), whilst other 550 watt units were happy at 500+ for long periods of time. Over the next couple of years there was a steady stream of threads and posts about the PSU's dying.

There is also the matter of PSU aging, as they get older most PSU's lose some of their ability to deliver power reliably (I think it's reckoned it's something like 5% a year on average), as parts age and things like capacitors lose some of their efficiency.
So a PSU that might have worked fine with a particular card at one point in it's life can have issues when it's 3-4 years old.

So whilst I can't guarantee that it's the PSU, if you can it really is worth testing the card with another PSU in use.

Nilrem

Fightsback wrote: »

Enough of this PSU nonsense, test the card first either in another machine (which is available) or by a professional before any money on replacing kit is spent.

Common sense here people, it's a second hand card bought off an ebay private seller so you want to confirm or discount whether the card is faulty before anything else is done.

One of the reasons people are talking about PSU's is that the line between a PSU problem and a GPU one can be very hard tell.
If you've got a graphics card problem one of the most common tests you can do (especially if the psu in use is a low end brand or low wattage) is to try another PSU.

A machine might boot up fine with a new card and fail when playing a specific game.
Most people would take that to be a GPU problem (it often is), but it can also be that it's failing because at that point the GPU is asking for more power and the PSU is failing to supply it.

I'm also very wary of cheap unknown brand PSU's I've never heard of before, that have been sold cheap for their claimed wattage.
Something to do with having had one go pop on me, and seeing several others struggle with something as simple as adding a second HDD to a system.

The PSU is one of the areas of the PC that these days I will not skimp on, as cheaper units are more likely to fail under load/early, and when they fail (or if something else fails in the system), often lack the protective electronics that save other parts.

Gavin78

Right I took the card round to my brothers place reluctant to open up his 2k tower unit and start messing about inside of it as it was built by pc specialists so still under warranty

It is the first time I have opened up his unit. I was surprised to find a Corsair AX1200 watt PSU.

So took his cards out and tried mine. it booted up the same way although he doesn't have a post boot screen so couldn't see if there were any distorted lines like it shows on mine.

It loaded up to desktop on his. In my case the login screen and lasts about 10 seconds then the monitor goes onto standby while the pc is still powered on.

Which is what it was doing with mine. the only things I don't see before the monitor goes off is that the picture looks clear no distortion and the same with mine.

The only thing I get is distorted lines on the boot logo. When I had it in safe mode the picture seemed ok but when I was clicking the start menu it was flickering on and off a few times before letting me click on it.

I also have a V12 cyborg keyboard that lights up and the lights were flickering like mad on boot up before stabilizing. I tried it with my brothers pc as well and the same thing happend. it also play havoc with is keyboard as well.

So looks like the card is going back.

JasX

Gavin78 wrote: »

So looks like the card is going back.

Well, ebay protection should default into your favour so long as you've not tripped past any time limits.

Being clear that the card appears defective and has been tested in two separate high spec PC's and observed to have the same fault present (ie to shut down after 30s ish in both)

I hear paypal disputes tend to resolve in the buyers favour more robustly (even in obvious 'buyer commiting fraud' cases!) so consider that route

and when buying complicated hardware really seriously consider buying brand new from a reputable supplier, especially if you're paying full wack for an old model card to boot