GTX460 drops its core clocks to 405MHz until reboot (edit: fixed! details by notty22)

[Idontcare]

Edit: Solution is in post 24.

OK this thing (GTX460 stock OC @ 725MHz) is really starting to annoy me.

I'm playing Dragon Origins at 1920x1200. Not exactly the most GPU intensive of situations.

Then I started to notice that some days when I play the graphics seem really smooth, and then other days after I have played a while the graphics get real jerky (not as bad as a slideshow, but only one step better).

I've got two LCDs, so I decided I'd run MSI Afterburner on the 2nd screen while I am gaming on screen one, just to keep tabs on the GPU utilization.

Then I realized what the problem was, anytime the graphics in the game started getting real choppy it was because the card had downclocked from 725MHz to 405MHz.

When it does this auto-downclock thing I can't get it to clock back up to regular clocks no matter what I do unless I reboot my system. That is a rather irritating solution considering this happens about every 15-20 minutes.

Is my card just crap (yet again!?) or is this indicative of some other part of my system being unstable?

I have nothing overclocked, Q6600 + 8GB DDR-200 + GTX460 (stock OC 725MHz) + Corsair 620HX and Win7 Ult x64. Most recent WHQL drivers, etc.

The GTX460 itself passes OCCT GPU test with zero errors and does not downclock when that test is running. But for some reason it can't handle Dragon Origins?

 

[Skurge]

Maybe its reverting to idle clocks for dual monitors. Have you tried with just one monitor?

EDIT: Similar thing happened with my 4870, cleaning out drivers fixed it. I was only on one monitor though.

 

[Idontcare]

Idle clocks for dual monitors is 51MHz.

There's three tiers...fullspeed (725MHz in my case), 405MHz...it does this anytime you drop out of 3D and into 2D...and then 51Mhz for 2D provided nothing is really challenging.

My issue is that after a while the card just drops to 405MHz while I am in a 3D game, and thereafter it refuses to ever clock higher no matter what I do (close the game, restart, change clocks in MSI Afterburner, etc)...until I reboot the rig. Then I get full clocks again.

 

[tviceman]

Skurge's suggestion is probably the best. Use driver sweeper, get rid of everything GPU related, and then install the latest driver.

 

[Vesku]

Been there on both a GT220 and a GTS450, all has to do with dual monitor setups being a driver crapshoot. Basically, do a driver sweeper full uninstall in safe mode then a reinstall the current drivers. If that doesn't fix it you have to try older drivers until it works properly. That or wait for the next driver revision to see if it clocks properly.

I'm surprised this unstable aspect of nVidia down-clocking doesn't come up often in the "Green or Red drivers!" threads. Do most gamers stick to a single monitor setup just so these kinds of things don't crop up and ruin their gaming?

 

[Rifter]

wow you really arnt having good luck with those 460's are ya.

Have you tried putting The power management mode to Prefer maximum performance? When i had mine on the default adaptive it sometimes gave me strange clocks when i was stability testing. I have had no issues with it keeping correct clocks since changing to max performance.

 

[BD231]

NVidia released a bios update not to long ago for the 460's that had to do with power saving features. You might see if MSI has a vga flashing tool and update that BIOS. I updated my gigabyte this week and found more stability in high overclock.

It's not your system though that's for sure.

 

[manutdc]

Had the same problem with my Galaxy GTX460. Only thing that worked was an RMA, unfortunately.

 

[notty22]

I have sli cyclones and have something similar happen in less demanding games. 1 or both gpu's will attempt to run at 405mhz.
Under
Nvidia control panel
Manage settings
program settings
each individual game
power management mode - prefer maximum performance

This allows me to set global mode to adaptive.

One final thing, under windows 7 Power settings.
Advanced settings
pci-e
link state power management - set to OFF

these settings allow my gpu's to downclock and up clock normally in 2d etc

you need to reboot sometimes after these settings changes or global changes to Nvidia power settings.

 

[WelshBloke]

I think some reputable website should do a really in depth review of how cards handle more than on monitor when they are different resolutions.

Seems there are a lot of glitches regardless who you buy from.

 

[Grooveriding]

Another vote for trying to force maximum power settings rather than adaptive. I get the same problem in certain games. Nvidia's power management is buggy. I also have issues with it and using multiple monitors.

 

[drizek]

I heard it does this when you go too high on voltage to protect it from overheating. I just got my 460 today and it dropped to 405 while running Kombuster. Lowered the voltage and the speed and it hasn't done it again (yet).

Are you sure your card isn't overheating? Didn't you say you had a problem with your ramsinks?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Stupid question, but you aren't playing in a windowed mode, are you? I seem to remember there being some kind of problem with some cards not kicking into 3D if gaming in a window. I think that was from a while back, but just figured I'd bring it up.

GTX460's and IDC... oil and water.

 

[SickBeast]

I heard it does this when you go too high on voltage to protect it from overheating. I just got my 460 today and it dropped to 405 while running Kombuster. Lowered the voltage and the speed and it hasn't done it again (yet).

Are you sure your card isn't overheating? Didn't you say you had a problem with your ramsinks?

This.

I've had this same issue when I overclocked my 460 too high.

Scale back your clockspeeds a bit.

 

[SickBeast]

BTW, you shouldn't have to reboot. Just set a new clockspeed in afterburner.

 

[toyota]

BTW, you shouldn't have to reboot. Just set a new clockspeed in afterburner.

when the clockspeeds get locked like that it requires a reboot.

 

[Idontcare]

Skurge's suggestion is probably the best. Use driver sweeper, get rid of everything GPU related, and then install the latest driver.

I just installed this video card maybe 1 week ago and did a full driver sweep at that time (including uninstalling Afterburner and then reinstalling).

Been there on both a GT220 and a GTS450, all has to do with dual monitor setups being a driver crapshoot. Basically, do a driver sweeper full uninstall in safe mode then a reinstall the current drivers. If that doesn't fix it you have to try older drivers until it works properly. That or wait for the next driver revision to see if it clocks properly.

I'm surprised this unstable aspect of nVidia down-clocking doesn't come up often in the "Green or Red drivers!" threads. Do most gamers stick to a single monitor setup just so these kinds of things don't crop up and ruin their gaming?

I am beginning to suspect this might be the case.

Oddly enough (to me anyways) I disabled Vsync in the Dragon Age config menu and I haven't had a repeat occurrency of the issue ever since. Normally by now I'd have had 3 or 4 locked low-clocks after this many hours.

Does that add up at all though? Would disabling Vsync have anything to do with this? Maybe it does because I have 2 screens but the game is playing fullscreen on one screen and Vsync on such a 3D+2D situation just screws with the video card? :hmm:

wow you really arnt having good luck with those 460's are ya.

Have you tried putting The power management mode to Prefer maximum performance? When i had mine on the default adaptive it sometimes gave me strange clocks when i was stability testing. I have had no issues with it keeping correct clocks since changing to max performance.

I don't blame the 460 really, just one of those situations where I'm getting beat down to the point where I just want the damned thing (my rig) to simply work.

NVidia released a bios update not to long ago for the 460's that had to do with power saving features. You might see if MSI has a vga flashing tool and update that BIOS. I updated my gigabyte this week and found more stability in high overclock.

It's not your system though that's for sure.

I'm definitely going to look into the bios update possibility. Thanks for mentioning it. :thumbsup:

I think some reputable website should do a really in depth review of how cards handle more than on monitor when they are different resolutions.

Seems there are a lot of glitches regardless who you buy from.

YES :thumbsup:

I have sli cyclones and have something similar happen in less demanding games. 1 or both gpu's will attempt to run at 405mhz.
Under
Nvidia control panel
Manage settings
program settings
each individual game
power management mode - prefer maximum performance

This allows me to set global mode to adaptive.

One final thing, under windows 7 Power settings.
Advanced settings
pci-e
link state power management - set to OFF

these settings allow my gpu's to downclock and up clock normally in 2d etc

you need to reboot sometimes after these settings changes or global changes to Nvidia power settings.

Another vote for trying to force maximum power settings rather than adaptive. I get the same problem in certain games. Nvidia's power management is buggy. I also have issues with it and using multiple monitors.

If I do this then does that mean my card will be running "full out" even when idle?

I heard it does this when you go too high on voltage to protect it from overheating. I just got my 460 today and it dropped to 405 while running Kombuster. Lowered the voltage and the speed and it hasn't done it again (yet).

Are you sure your card isn't overheating? Didn't you say you had a problem with your ramsinks?

This.

I've had this same issue when I overclocked my 460 too high.

Scale back your clockspeeds a bit.

Yeah that is the overheat (or is the over-amp?) protection kicking in. I'm not tripping that, like I said this sucker passes OCCT GPU with zero errors and the temps max out at 60C in that test. In Dragon Age my temps are more like 40C. My idle temps are 22-24C.

(This is with an artic cooler extreme)

At any rate, in my case I have duplicated the issue even when I set my clocks lower. It doesn't seem related at all to temps or clockspeed, it just gets into some funk after a while and decides it won't clock any higher than 405MHz for some reason.

Stupid question, but you aren't playing in a windowed mode, are you? I seem to remember there being some kind of problem with some cards not kicking into 3D if gaming in a window. I think that was from a while back, but just figured I'd bring it up.

GTX460's and IDC... oil and water.

Nah, it's full screen. The clocks kick in just fine when I play, its just that after some indeterminate amount of time (usually 20-30min) then the clocks just dump down to 405MHz on me.

BTW, you shouldn't have to reboot. Just set a new clockspeed in afterburner.

when the clockspeeds get locked like that it requires a reboot.

Beast, what toyota said. I'm using Afterburner and I when the card decides 405MHz is the max then it doesn't matter what I set it to, the card just ignores the settings until I do a reboot. Does not require a cold-restart, a normal reboot initiated by windows is enough to "restore" the GTX460 to its normal operating clockspeeds.

For now my temporary solution is to disable Vsync. It doesn't bother me whether Vsync is enabled or disabled so if this is the fix then I'm ok with it. Still though, I'd like to know why Vsync eff's up my card, seems like it shouldn't.

 

[SparkyJJO]

My GTX260 does something similar. It'll randomly go to "low power 3D" and get stuck there. I used rivatuner to force performance 3d mode all the time, which works mostly except then at idle it's still blazing away and every so often it'll BSOD and restart and be fine for a while again. Not drivers, it has done this with various driver updates, so I dunno what's up with that.

 

[toyota]

my 260 has only done this when a game causes an issue. for instance Batman glitched on me a few times because of physx. each time it did that my clocks went to 400 and stayed there until I rebooted. I quit using physx and never had another problem in that game.

 

[dust]

It appears the problem isn't uncommon:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=336246

You can download Nvidia Inspector here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Inspector-1.94-download-2612.html

I've never used it myself so I don't know if the clocks are set at maximum all the time though, or they're still down-clocking while idle.

Another issue might be the drivers. Apparently the problem was spotted with 260.99, reverting to 258.96 fixed the problem for some users, not at all for others:

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=179519

I would wait before flashing the bios, maybe it'll be fixed with the future driver.

 

[drizek]

I think it is overamp protection, as you said, as opposed to overheat.

Maybe a bad power supply is triggering the overamp protection. That would explain both your overclocking problems and your volt problems.

Also, try running Kombustor. It triggered mine even though OCCT didn't. Use the Xtreme Burning Mode.

BTW, the clock down for me from overclocking too high also required a full restart. Messing around with Afterburner wouldn't bring it back up.

 

[3DVagabond]

If you do decide to flash the BIOS DON'T use the automatic online BIOS update that MSI offers. All you need is for some glitch in Windows or your internet connection and you could brick your card.

 

[Idontcare]

I've never used it myself so I don't know if the clocks are set at maximum all the time though, or they're still down-clocking while idle.

I can confirm that even when you set everything to "max performance" instead of adaptive/etc the clocks still step down in idle as before. So you don't give up this feature.

So far the only thing I can get to trigger it on my system is to enable Vsync in Dragon Age. If I turn off Vsync then it doesn't matter what else I do the card just performs fine at that point.

Weird.

 

[Idontcare]

I have sli cyclones and have something similar happen in less demanding games. 1 or both gpu's will attempt to run at 405mhz.
Under
Nvidia control panel
Manage settings
program settings
each individual game
power management mode - prefer maximum performance

This allows me to set global mode to adaptive.

Just wanted to post an update on this. I had disabled Vsync as my solution to the forced downclocking while gaming and it worked, but the screen tearing was just dreadful, totally annoying.

So I re-enabled Vsync and went looking for something else that would work for my problem.

notty22's post was the key for me. By setting "prefer maximum performance" and then selective "adaptive" as global I can now game with vsync on and have zero issues with the card getting locked at 405MHz.

No idea why this makes a difference, but it works so I hope it helps anyone else with similar symptoms.

thanks notty22 :thumbsup:

(PS - I did not have to do anything with the PCIe)

 

[Rifter]

at least you figured it out, now you can enjoy it.