Holy! My new GTX260 is longer than my...

[frythecpuofbender]

I just got myself a GTX260 from Point of View. Didn't even think about the possibility of it being any bigger than my trusty old 8800GTS 640MB!
It's 4 cm longer! Argh. Of course I'm only using Sata now for my HDs and DVD and Asus was so clever as to put the 6 connectors right behind the card. Perfect.
Now I have some right angle connectors that I used on the right ones and only one normal connector at the lower left. Ít now looks like:

0,-
0,-
X,-

With the card going over the two unused (0s) and two right angle connectors (-).
It seems to fit somehow but the thing pretty much touches the connectors.

Could this be a problem down the road with the cables becoming to hot or something?
Any experience?

 

[BassBomb]

Similar board layout, and I have no problems (I wouldn't be worried about heat)

The only thing is it will be hard if you want to use more HD's. Unfortunately for me only 1 right angled cable was supplied

 

[videopho]

Same dilemma here, exactly!
A pain in the rear.
Went from 8800gts-512 to this it took me over an hour to rearrange all of my ata/sata cables to make room for this 10.5 incher.
I'd never buy any other video card longer than this one, period.
Mine is a eVGA gtx-260-sc with very poor oveclocking results right of the bat, it's much worse than any other card I've ever owned from NV.
More on this probably on the new post, I think there is something wrong with the card with one BSOD (GOW), and one freeze with FSx, not too impressed.
Thinking RMA, any thought?

 

[Juked07]

Lol at title..

 

[chizow]

What kind of temps are you getting under load and what do your case temps look like? Not overclocking well isn't grounds for RMA if it runs fine at stock.....what speeds are you trying to overclock to? Temps really impact shader stability and clock speed so if its unstable run core/shader unlinked and lower shader clocks. You can try to re-apply the thermal compound to try to get more of an OC out of it but its hard to say what the problem is without more info. There's also a chance you just got a chip that does not OC well.

 

[frythecpuofbender]

I just got my first BSOD nv_disp.dll while MP Crysis, could have been while minimizing checking temps.
I made a mild OC 626 Core, 1336 Shaders, 1048 Memory Temps were fine at 75C.

Is this BSOD maybe related to NOT uninstalling the 177.41 cause I thought "hey they are the newest" why bother? I just installed them again after putting the card in. Hope that didn't screw anything up.

 

[chizow]

I wouldn't worry about your cables heating up, although I would consider moving your HDDs to a different cage at either the top or bottom and leaving the center open. Some guy on the GTX 200 forums reported a pretty significant drop moving his Raptors out of that middle cage. I've had it the middle empty on my 900 but will have problems if I want to add more drives in the future....which I'm tempted to do with the recent price drops and performance boosts on SSDs.

 

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: chizow
I wouldn't worry about your cables heating up, although I would consider moving your HDDs to a different cage at either the top or bottom and leaving the center open. Some guy on the GTX 200 forums reported a pretty significant drop moving his Raptors out of that middle cage. I've had it the middle empty on my 900 but will have problems if I want to add more drives in the future....which I'm tempted to do with the recent price drops and performance boosts on SSDs.

He's talking about the connectors on the mobo. Moving HDDs doesn't solve that problem.

 

[frythecpuofbender]

Ok just a quick update for potential GTX260 users:

No problems so far with too much heat. Thanks to the intelligent memory/shader/core underclocking when unused the core temp is 46°C under Windows which is nice.
Under heavy Crysis gaming the thing is 72°C, a little OC to 620,1336,1048 seems to push it to 74-76°C
I had some other problems though: Under Crysis and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage I got random BSODs often after exiting/entering 3d/map changes.
BSODs reported nv4_disp.dll had crashed. Yeah of course! Drove me crazy.
I uninstalled 177.41 drivers, safe mode, clean everything with DriverSweeper then reinstall. BSODs seemed to get less but they still occured.
Then I got 177.79 beta drivers, repeated the uninstall, safe mode, DriverSweeper method and the BSODs are gone!
Friggin weird.
Either way, exchanging a Nvidia card with another seems a bit troublesome. Guess I got lucky that there were even newer drivers than the last official ones.

 

[adlep]

Originally posted by: videopho
Same dilemma here, exactly!
A pain in the rear.
Went from 8800gts-512 to this it took me over an hour to rearrange all of my ata/sata cables to make room for this 10.5 incher.
I'd never buy any other video card longer than this one, period.
Mine is a eVGA gtx-260-sc with very poor oveclocking results right of the bat, it's much worse than any other card I've ever owned from NV.
More on this probably on the new post, I think there is something wrong with the card with one BSOD (GOW), and one freeze with FSx, not too impressed.
Thinking RMA, any thought?

Head over to EVGA's forums for the 2nd opinion. They have a very dedicated staff in there. They will help you.

Heads up, EVGA has its own OC utility that you may wish to try. Also try the new set of 177.79 set of drivers that you can download off their web site.

 

[LightningRider]

The nVidia drivers before version 177.79 have a bug on the GTX200 series where they downclock the GPU and the graphics memory while playing games. They are only supposed to do this when the system is idle or not in need of the GPU at full clocks. Could be that your GTX260 was downclocking itself during your games?

 

[frythecpuofbender]

Yeah I played Crysis windowed to monitor via Rivatuner and at least in the menus it seemed to downclock. Maybe it got all confused at Flatout everytime a race end screen came up and that resulted in a BSOD. Dunno, it seems gone now, been playing for hours with the 177.79 drivers and not one hang or freeze. At first I thought it was my slight overclock but now I feel like I could push it a little more

 

[videopho]

177.79 Beta has definitely fixed the donwclock or BSOD and alike.
I've been playing Crysis, FSx, GoW all weekend without a hitch.
Seems like a great card thus far despite a bit of some issue early on
Damn NV driver developers, listen up, don't call it WHQL until the driver is proven working.

 

[TC91]

put the hard drive in backwards with the connectors in the front if possible with your case.

 

[bryanW1995]

I've had some problems with my 4850, too, but I also finally figured them out eventually. As taltamir said, when you buy the latest and greatest you should expect to have to deal with some hassles, driver updates, initial crashes, profile fixes, etc etc.