680m SLI Random Black Screen/sound loop/crashes/ display driver stopped responding.

Well Just installed these on Saturday, and my enthusiasm was a bit premature i guess (my premature celebration thread)

The computer ran fine the first day the cards were installed, played world of tanks, world of warplanes, and some team fortress but i didnt really have time to do too much else. I ran a couple benchmarks and temps were great.

I went to bed and my Fiance couldnt sleep so she woke up and played team fortress 2 on my computer (hers was packed up and she was lazy) After she got done i guess she came to bed. I left the computer running so when i came in the next morning and saw the login screen i thought it was odd because that meant the computer restarted through the night.

I asked Jessica(my fiance) if she had restarted it or turned it off she said no, i asked her if it crashed on her or anything and again she said no. There is no reason for it to have restarted unless it crashed.

So i forget about it and chuck it up to an anomoly, i start playing WoT and i get a black screen, no errors no sound just a black screen, i close the lid and open it back and again no change. I hard reset and run a benchmark and everything ran fine.

Start playing again and this time i get sound looping with the black screen, again i have to hard reset... At this point im getting frustrated because SLI is enabled, i get no screen flickering, temps are fine, benchmarks are fine yet im still crashing using stock drivers (except for the inf mod)

So i take to google to search this problem and while using ONLY google chrome my screen flickers 2 times and black screen again, this time it comes up and says display driver stopped responding. The only time i have ever seen this is while overclocking which i am not currently.

So i tear the computer down, searching for any loose cables, they are all firm so i decide to go all the way down to the GPUs and switch them to the other slots. Boot the computer up and run another benchmark and again everything is fine.

Start playing again and everything works fine, for about 12 hrs. I get on here tonight and it crashes again. Here is where it gets interesting.

I boot to safemode, scan for maleware and virus. Uninstall the nvidia driver (320) run cc cleaner and driver sweeper and i downloaded a previous driver (314) and installed it again using the INF mod.

Booted back up and got the crash again.

So now i flashed my bios to Dell's A05 (previously using an unlocked a05) and also ran a windows 7 repair.

Booted up and started a game and again i crashed, Very small variations between crashes, sometimes with sound loop sometimes without. Temps never higher than 65 but usually in the 50s. I crash in games or on desktop.

I have NOT crashed in safe mode yet so i feel like this is a driver issue but i could be wrong. I also have not crashed in any benchmark tests.

The only thing i know to do at this point is flash the vbios of the cards but before i do that i was hoping someone here may have some insight.

Thanks in advance.
Aaron

 

Sorry to read of your problems, Bro.

It sounds like a video driver issue to me, to be honest. You could try downloading Who Crashed and after it happens again, view the logs it creates. That would hopefully pinpoint the culprit.

Also, is this using the external or internal? - wondering wether the high refresh rate might have some impact....???

 

Sounds like it is most likely driver corruption or driver issues.
Try a different package. Say 320.20 or lower.

I have experienced the same things as you above with my 780M. Drivers crash like crazy on some driver versions.
Others seems more stable with the odd crash.

Cheers.

 

Do 680m's offer temp monitoring for VRM's/IC's and other components? I used to have near identical behavior on a 7970m that didn't have IC's thermal padded properly. After reseating the heatsink and making sure the IC's got contact, everything worked fine.

 

Thanks for the reply I tried driver 314 already same result

I thought of that too when I switched the graphics cards to the other slots I made sure the heat sinks were fitted properly and they are



I got to do some further testing last night after I posted this playing World of Warplanes and used a program to manually set the fans on maximum the computer ran fine temperatures never got above 55 Celsius with no crashes I played about 3 full games like this.

Then I set the fans back to system auto and crashed the very next game I tried to load into I didn't even get to start the game before I crashed

starting to think this is a vBIOS issue maybe the cards are shutting themselves off at a certain temperature and are not telling the fans to kick on?

I sent a message to Mr Fox to get his input I'll try reflashing the V BIOS to one from SLV 7 if that doesn't work I guess I'll be tearing it down and checking the heatsinks again

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

First, do a BIOS reset by clearing the CMOS. Be sure BCLK is set low (no more than 100.3). I used to have the identical problem with 7970M CF and if BCLK was more than 100.3 it was about 10 times worse.

It can also be driver corruption. Check in the Windows Event Viewer and see if you can find any record of errors or warnings that seem to coincide with the date/time of the crash events you have experienced. That may provide some clues, but they can be misleading if the problem is clashing drivers. (The offending driver may be a different driver than the one that is crashing.)

Since you have installed new hardware, it might make sense to just do a clean Windows reinstall instead of wasting a lot of time and energy chasing a driver problem. It may have nothing to do with the video driver, but something changed that is not playing nice now. This can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. When I switched from 580M SLI to 7970M CF, reinstalling Windows resolved a number of really goofy glitches I was experiencing.

 

This is also what I would recommend. Usually changing video cards between AMD and nVidia causes a few issues, at least for me working on desktops.

Good luck!

 

Alright I have reinstalled windows and as soon as the computer got back up and running and I installed the drivers I got another crash


I reflashed the BIOS back to unlocked version of a05 from SLV7 but I can't find the blck settings to check the frequency

Running out of ideas if the blck doesn't work then I will try the vbios

I'm pretty sure its a temperature sensor issue it seems to be going black at 65 Celsius every time this is why its not going black when I manually turn the fans on max





Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

So quick update I've reinstalled windows re flashed the bios to unlock version my BLCK settings was 9980 I assume that's the one you were talking about

Since the reinstall the system has become more unstable at best I am now crashing on the desktop almost everytime I boot I have not even launched a game yet or ran a benchmark

The very last crashed whent to like a sky blue color instead of black.

I have not once crashed in safe mode I did notice that when the computer is booting up and the window symbols on the screen there is a little bit of graphic corruption in the Windows logo I can't help but to continue to think that this is a graphics driver issue I'm going to try to roll back the graphics driver one more time

is there an easy way to upgrade the vbios of these cards?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

2nd Update:

Instead of flashing vbios i decided to isolate the cards,

I removed secondary and crashed almost immediately.

Removed primary and replaced with secondary (previous secondary)

Now seems to be running fine, i am 5 min in with no crashes or any signs of crashes and temp is staying low.

I did get a bluescreen on the first boot, used windows startup repair and now it boots fine and is stable (or seems to be)

I noticed before my temps on my primary before would jump to 60+ on idle use and the secondary (this primary now) would be low 40s. Now i am idling at 45.

Getting ready to run bench test as well as try to play some games. Seems like it was the other card.. we will see!

 

3rd Update:

Been running for 2 hrs now no crashes

Last night ran a bench test and played 3-4 games no crashes.

Seems like it was a bad card. When i stop being lazy i will put the other card back in and test one last time to make sure.

 

Looks like you've sorted it out. Do you have any comeback on the Seller? - table21, right? (not wanting to diss the guy, but I saw his name crop up on another thread where someone bought something off him that crapped out.....)

 

Yeah he said he would take a return if the card was DOA, i have already contacted him he said test it and if its the card send it back and he will test and give refund.

 

Can't say fairer than that then.....

 

Final Update:

After a full day without a crash on the good card i put in the alleged bad card and made it through 1 bench test then crashed, rebooted and crashed again both times on desktop and temps were in the 50s.

Put the good card back in and am now into hour 3 without a crash.

Confirmed one of the cards was bad and started this whole very weird mess. I have never had a bad card exhibit these symptoms but i digress.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

 

Well, I am glad you figured it out.