Is my new eVGA-GTX-260 a dud?

[videopho]

Freshly arrived from the Egg is an eVGA gtx-260-sc version.
It took over an hour to install this 10.5" sucker with all of my cables (ata, sata, power etc) re-arranged. Mobo is eVGA 650i Ultra, btw. I lost one SATA dvd burner in the process as a result, due to the sata (right angle) would not even let the gtx sit tight.

Right of the bat, the card scores 12.5k in Mark06 slightly below my previous 8800gts (g92) card of 13k, using the whdl signed 177.41 (Vista64) on day one. One attempt to o/c it to 724/1100 which score over 13.8k 13k on Mark06, a very poor result, imo.
The card has already given a BSOD while playing GoW and one freeze or two with FSx.
One thing I notice is by using eVGA precision, the card seems to down clock quite a bite during game (low 3d), why is that happening?
Thinking may be the driver right now I just d/l and installed the latest Beta 177.79 and see what happens in the next 24 hr or so, otherwise I'm thinking RMA.
I've been happy with the 8800gts until now.
Any thoughts?

EDIT: temps: 45 idle, mid 60 load, fan speed; 40% per eVGA precision.
The case is Antec 900 very well vented.
See the rest in sig.

 

[BassBomb]

What PSU?

 

[OCGuy]

The downclocking may be your problem. Head over to the EVGA forums, Im in a hurry or Id link it. The new drivers fix this issue.

A temporary fix is to go into rivatuner and force constant 3dmode.


Basically they have introduced a power-saving feature similar to Intel Speedstep, AMD Cool N' Quiet, etc.

 

[videopho]

PSU

 

[chizow]

copied my post from the other thread:

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.

724 is a really high OC....I'd back it down to make sure its stable at slower speeds first and also unlink Shaders. Also, how is a 150MHz OC a poor OC? That's a 25% overclock on a massive GPU.

As Ocguy31 said, the 179.79 fix the 3D downthrottling problem, there's some registry edits or RT fixes as well.

Those 3DMark06 scores do seem a little bit low, but I wouldn't worry too much about 3DMark06 at 1280, its extremely CPU bottlenecked. Also, depending on how much you OC'd your G92 GTS, you'd be surprised how close some of your theoretical #s are. For instance, a 9800GTX+ actually has higher texture fillrate and shader ops/s than a stock GTX 260. GTX 260 still stomps G92 where it matters, in games.

 

[videopho]

The purpose of o/c a new card to see how high it could go, then I'd downsize it a bit and see how it runs for the next few days.
In this case, all BSOD and freezes occurred at default speed.
May be the driver is the issue as someone suggested, I'm running the Beta at the moment and will give it a chance before trying something else.

 

[Zap]

I wouldn't worry too much about 3DMock06 scores. If you run Vantage, it should handily outperform the G92.

For the freezing and BSOD, are you running with AA in the game? If so, try disabling it to see if the problems go away.

With downclocking, that's the built-in power management. I've noticed that it will do that when overclocked too high, or when thermals hit too high. I suspect it may also do that when there is insufficient power. There is a power LED on the back of the card that is normally green - has it ever turned red?

Your PSU may be a bit insufficient. I think Nvidia recommends a PSU with at least 38A combined, and yours is 35A.

 

[Genx87]

btw what is the length of the 260 compared to the 8800GTS 640? I am seriously debating getting a 260 or a cheap 4870 and not doing an upgrade until 2010.

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: Genx87
btw what is the length of the 260 compared to the 8800GTS 640? I am seriously debating getting a 260 or a cheap 4870 and not doing an upgrade until 2010.

10.5 inches, so its about an inch longer than most other cards.

More importantly, the card has double slot thickness the entire length of the PCB. I upgraded from an x1900 XT and found I couldn't use my top 2 SATA ports.

 

[videopho]

Either mobo designers should start taking notes of how the sata sockets should be located, especially at the hi performance mobos or g/c pcb lay out folks should take a more serious consideration on how to shrink the length a bit in order for it to fit, comfortably.
I lost one SATA dvd burner because of this, and I swear I would never buy another video longer than this.

 

[videopho]

Looks like the 177.79 beta (which can be d/l either NV site or eVGA site) has fixed the downclock issue.
If you just bought this card, use this driver or else.

 

[adlep]

Originally posted by: videopho
Looks like the 177.79 beta (which can be d/l either NV site or eVGA site) has fixed the downclock issue.
If you just bought this card, use this driver or else.

You got me worried because your system specs are very similar to mine. But so far, I have no problems with my new GTX 260...
We have the same cards, the same PSU, the same chipset on the mobo, except mine is made by MSI and I still use 32-bit XP....

 

[videopho]

Originally posted by: Zap
I wouldn't worry too much about 3DMock06 scores. If you run Vantage, it should handily outperform the G92.

For the freezing and BSOD, are you running with AA in the game? If so, try disabling it to see if the problems go away.

With downclocking, that's the built-in power management. I've noticed that it will do that when overclocked too high, or when thermals hit too high. I suspect it may also do that when there is insufficient power. There is a power LED on the back of the card that is normally green - has it ever turned red?

Your PSU may be a bit insufficient. I think Nvidia recommends a PSU with at least 38A combined, and yours is 35A.

Not sure where or how you saw the spec but my PSU has 38A rating.
Would this OCZ GameXStream PSU do the tirck?
The Ultra has been running great over a year now but may be a bottleneck for my low benchmark?