8800GTS downclocking itself - Need expert help

[recoiledsnake]

I have been having a issue with my 8800GTS G92 since about four weeks. The graphics card is being downclocked as per rivatuner info here:

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0600
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected


$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0600 (ROM strapped to 0600)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 399.600MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 810.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 499.500MHz (999.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$1100000000 Title : GeForce 8800 GTS 512 VGA BIOS
$1100000002 Version : 62.92.25.00.02
$1100000100 BIT version : 1.00
$1100000210 Core clock domain 0 : 400MHz
$1100000211 Core clock domain 1 : 800MHz
$1100000201 Memory clock : 500MHz
$1100010003 Performance level 3 : 670MHz/1674MHz/972MHz
$1100020000 VID bitmask : 00000011b
$1100020100 Voltage level 0 : 1.00V, VID 00000000b
$1100020101 Voltage level 1 : 1.05V, VID 00000001b
$1100020102 Voltage level 2 : 1.10V, VID 00000010b
$1100020103 Voltage level 3 : 1.15V, VID 00000011b
$1100030001 Core thermal compensation : 8°C
$1100030002 Core thermal threshold : 100°C
$1100030006 Thermal diode inaccuracy : 0000b
$ffffffffff -----------------------------------

I bought it in late Dec, and it has been working fine till a few weeks ago. One day, I suddenly noticed that the card was showing up zero clocks on RivaTuner(in the overclock dialog, 'detect now' shows 0, GPUZ, ntune, Nvidia ESA software etc.. I hadn't changed anything in the past few days at all, installed no drivers or didn't change any settings. (I had installed Vista SP1 like 3 weeks before this started happening, so can't blame it). It doesn't upclock itself under load either.

GPUZ, ntune and RivaTuner show the clocks as zero, but from later on, RivaTuner started showing the real clocks(the underclocked ones). I changed driver versions in Vista(didn't reboot), and it returned to stock speeds, but after a bit returned to the lower clocks. I immediately downclocked my Q6600 back to stock speeds in the BIOS but there was no effect. I heard about the x4 PCI-E slowdown so I always checked the PCI-E lanes and GPUZ and other apps show it's running at x16. Also, I've never set any tools like RivaTuner to run on startup ever. I used to overclock, play and downclock to stock and sleep. One day I left the fan running at 75% by mistake and set it back to stock the next day but can't see that causing any problem.

I installed and reinstalled almost all the possible driver versions(including the latest 174.74), used driver cleaner to clean them in safe mode, changed and updated the nforce mobo drivers. I heard about the power supply bug with the G92 GTS and disabled the system sentinel services on startup and tried the 169.44 in which this bug was fixed, but with no success. I also updated my GPU BIOS to the latest version from EVGA but the problem persists. UT3 performance is down a lot, and 3DMark06 dropped from close to 12K to 7K
Even UT2004 shows some slowness even while showing 75fps as the framerate(vsync on).
Very rarely, I see the normal speeds after cleaning the drivers and reinstalling, but they dont' last for more than few mins.

I finally thought it could be a power supply/GPU hardware problem, so to find that out, installed Vista 32bit dual boot. To my surprise, everything runs normal in there, shows stock clocks, even OCes well with RivaTuner, everything runs as it's supposed to(didn't change anything in the bios). But I want to run the other 64bit install because I have everything set up there and also I have 8 GB which will go waste in 32bit. I'm guessing it will work normally in a 64bit fresh install. So, this has to be a software issue, but I can't figure out what the issue is. I don't want to reinstall Vista 64bit and all my apps from scratch since that will be a huge waste of time and energy. Does anyone have some points to help me out? Should I try different overclocking tools that might let me clock up from the low clocks(rivatuner's sliders show 0 and are disabled)? ATITool oc'ing doesn't seem to work on Vista 64bit because of unsigned 64bit drivers issue.

Can anyone help?

Edit: GPUZ screenshot http://img122.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gpuzcz3.jpg
Rivatuner monitor http://img122.imageshack.us/my...image=rivatunerkp6.jpg

 

[PurdueRy]

Try to use Drivercleaner to get rid of all traces of previous GFX driver installs before you reinstall. Perhaps run CABcleaner as well.

 

[recoiledsnake]

I've already tried that and it didn't work

 

[tigersty1e]

What manufacturer card do you have?

Gigabyte?

What are your 3dmark06 scores?



Can you see your clocks when you are in a game? (not when you exit)


BTW, list your system specs if you haven't already.

 

[thilanliyan]

I had this same problem when I installed certain drivers or certain versions of Rivatuner with both a GTS 640 and my current GT. Uninstall Rivatuner, clean drivers, and start again but this time try a different driver or version of Rivatuner. Those were the exact clocks I was getting with this GT when the same thing happened.

 

[flexy]

i would get Nibitor (NVidia Bios Editor)
http://www.mvktech.net/compone...,2537/parent,category/
and check clocks of the card, looks like there's something odd in the bios already.

If needed, edit clocks in bios, save bios to USB stick/floppy/CD etc...boot and use nvflash to flash the card to new bios.

Also...first extract your bios nvflash --save <filename>, then load with nibitor and check.

Alternatively, send extracted bios to me rauh.georg AT gmail DOT com, i can edit it...or check techpowerup.com for a recent bios of your card and reflash with nvflash.

Edit: However...its unlikely something changed your bios...it looks like all your values are at 50%...some type of power-saving active??

 

[flexy]

here my output, i flashed my generic Asus EN8800GTS to EN8800GTS/TOP speed

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0600 (ROM strapped to 0600)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 738.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 1782.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 1036.800MHz (2073.600MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

 

[recoiledsnake]

@tigersty1e: It's a EVGA card. The 3dMark06 scores were ~12,000 before this started happening and about 7000 now. The clocks during heavy gaming are the same, the rivatuner monitor graphs show no increases at all(except the temperature graph) and gpuz also shows nothing if I alt tab or alt enter during games. I thought I had my specs in sig, but guess not. Here they are:

Q6600 G0
8GB OCZ 800Mhz RAM
Evga 680i LT
Evga 8800GTS G92 512MB
1TB Hitachi HDD
16x DVDRW
Antec P180
OCZ GameXStream 700W

The system was built from scratch at the end of last year.

@Thilan and flexy, I will try those after getting back home in a bit.

Also I had updated the bios from Evga and there's no change. Also, if bios is the problem, how come it works fine in the vista 32bit fresh install?

 

[recoiledsnake]

Originally posted by: thilan29
I had this same problem when I installed certain drivers or certain versions of Rivatuner with both a GTS 640 and my current GT. Uninstall Rivatuner, clean drivers, and start again but this time try a different driver or version of Rivatuner. Those were the exact clocks I was getting with this GT when the same thing happened.

I tried that and didn't even install Rivatuner after installing the new drivers and gpuz still shows the clocks as 0MHz.

 

[videopho]

I had a down clock issue with my newly purchased eVGA 8800GTS 512 card a few days ago (see gaming rig #2 sig, Vista 64) for no more than apparent reason than I just finished a round or two of 3dmark06 benchies.
RT only reads half of core/memory actual clock. The next 3dmark06 benchie did in fact verify the card was down clocked.
I was lucky that the only thing I had to do to fix the issue was remove the driver, deleted all Nvidia directories that had to do with my previous drivers installed. Re-installed the driver (174.74 Beta) then it went back to normal.
yesterday I had another close call that the system did not post while booting up. When it successfully booted, Vista froze a couple of times but after a couple of system resets things seem to be to normal now.
Ever since what's happened I've played Crysis (over 45 minutes last night) on top of some other flight sim games, the system seems to respond just fine.
Even to this day I still have no idea what'd caused the issue.
I did come very close returning the card or RMA it, btw.
FYI: my 8800gts is a part number that suffices -A3 came with a free Crysis game.
OP: your rig looks very impressive on the spec although mine mimics yours to some lesser extent (e.g. eVGA 650i Ultra etc.)

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: recoiledsnake
I tried that and didn't even install Rivatuner after installing the new drivers and gpuz still shows the clocks as 0MHz.

Did you try doing a clean driver install of either older or newer drivers? (same thing videopho posted above me)

 

[recoiledsnake]

Yes, I've uninstalled and then used driver sweeper (and driver cleaner on another try) in safe mode. Still get this problem.

 

[videopho]

May be it's time to either call eVGA's tech support or RMA the card.
There is no more reason to stick around looking for solutions.

 

[flexy]

is he already deinstalled all drivers AND wiped w/ drivercleaner...and it STILL shows this...
Btw...deinstalled and wiped anything to any rivatuner and 3rd party nvidia app also?

Assuming any 3rd party app is removed, registry wiped, and NORMAL drivers installed off nvidias site...then it must be a bios-issue or hardware issue and you should do what i said above in regards to bios. I would also maybe check in your PC bios setttings and vista powersavings settings...maybe something is forced to low-power in regards to pci-express or something. Anyway this is bizarre since i never saw something like this, alsu using RT and countless other programs..why should they downclock? They dont here.

I can see this maybe some added feature of some EVGA-special driver...but then make sure you wiped everything you had before in regards to those drivers.

 

[recoiledsnake]

I haven't RMA'ed the card yet because it worked fine in the Vista 32bit dual boot install. Another card also might have the same problem. Also if it was a hardware issue or a bios issue, why would it work well in the other OS? This has to be a software or a driver issue. I uninstalled various software like PowerDVD etc. just to make sure. Still no luck. Maybe I'll try to do a fresh Vista 64 install on dual boot to see if it solves the problem.

 

[videopho]

Have you yet installed SP1 on Vista64 OS?
You'd never know.

 

[recoiledsnake]

I had installed SP1 about three or four weeks before this started happening.

 

[videopho]

If have not yet done so.
I'd go to eVGA site and download the latest bios from them.
When you do make sure you so in the XP 32 bit environment, simply because the eVGA bios down loader does not work with Vista 64 (I've already tried, twice and gave up).

 

[Nafets]

I'm sure you've figured this out already, but I though I'd chime in.

Originally posted by: recoiledsnake
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0600 (ROM strapped to 0600)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 399.600MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 810.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 499.500MHz (999.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

This information shows what the card is currently running at and is affected by whatever drivers or 3rd party software (Rivatuner, nTune) you may have installed. The core and memory clocks are obviously way off.

Originally posted by: recoiledsnake
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$1100000000 Title : GeForce 8800 GTS 512 VGA BIOS
$1100000002 Version : 62.92.25.00.02
$1100000100 BIT version : 1.00
$1100000210 Core clock domain 0 : 400MHz
$1100000211 Core clock domain 1 : 800MHz
$1100000201 Memory clock : 500MHz
$1100010003 Performance level 3 : 670MHz/1674MHz/972MHz
$1100020000 VID bitmask : 00000011b
$1100020100 Voltage level 0 : 1.00V, VID 00000000b
$1100020101 Voltage level 1 : 1.05V, VID 00000001b
$1100020102 Voltage level 2 : 1.10V, VID 00000010b
$1100020103 Voltage level 3 : 1.15V, VID 00000011b
$1100030001 Core thermal compensation : 8°C
$1100030002 Core thermal threshold : 100°C
$1100030006 Thermal diode inaccuracy : 0000b
$ffffffffff -----------------------------------

This information shows what the card's bios setting are. These speeds and settings do not change and are not affected by any drivers or 3rd party software you have installed.

Your bios and it's settings are fine and are what they should be. The Nvidia driver uses these default speeds during operation regardless of operating system. The only thing to change them would be a program like Rivatuner, or nTune.

Since you've already seen that the card works just fine in Vista32, it's easy to see that it's a software problem, in Vista64. Some resident setting is still active and locked (possibly changed by Rivatuner originally) that is not allowing the card to run at it's default speeds.

You may have to bite the bullet and just do a full reinstall of Vista64. The only problem is that you need to figure out what originally caused this problem, as it just may crop up again. It's possible that Vista64 with SP1 and Rivatuner's settings don't play nice. Next time, don't put any software on your computer that can change the clocks on your 8800GTS 512, only software like GPU-Z that can only read the clocks, to verify the speeds. If everything runs fine then you know something is fishy with how the settings are applied when overclocking the card.

Not really a solution, but just thoughts I had reading over your post...