Nvidia GTX260 problems after an hour of use - Power issue?

[OmniShinzui]

I have had this eVGA GTX260 Core 216 graphics card for a month now but due to recent pc issues I havnt got it to run till now. Anways, I got the card on sale like a month ago to replace my 7900GT and it worked great.

I played WoW for like an hour till the screen went black, then parts of the game went black and freezing then crash. Then the boot screens (like the post information) is filled with all weird characters and some of them orange for some reason (still is). Theres white dots/small dashes everywhere sometimes or weird stuff like odd lines (once it was green). That didnt happen all through the 4hrs of installing win7, drivers, programs, games and playing wow for an hour. Even after it being off for hours and stuff it came back.

Windows 7 keeps telling me the Nvidia kernal stopped working and it was fixed. Itll happen like 2-3x in half a minute and then crash. Im getting 0x00000116 stop messages due to nvlddmkm.sys and I think another nv related. Uninstalling nvidia drivers fixes that, same with safe mode. Itll crash with the 0x116 sometimes right at normal startup. Ive tried latest eVGA and Nvidia versions.

Not sure what to do here. Im thinking that preset OC maybe the culprit? (its eVGA GTX260 Core216 OC Edition). That or not enough power going to it? I thought overheating at first, but its been 6hrs since it first started so.... I read two things about kinda these issues. ram, my pc is default clocking it at 602 rather then default 600, and lowering the gpu voltage. If theres any info you need me to post ill do my best to obtain it. Thanks.

 

[happy medium]

Did you try different drivers? Try the 186.xx version. It helped me.
Did you remember to download direct x 9 runtime from microsoft and install?
Download "rivatuner" and check your gtx260 temps.
Try 1 stick of ram at a time. mabe one of the sticks has gone bad?
Make sure everything is seated properly in your system. reseat it.

Does your motherboard have onboard graphics? or do you have a different card to try?

 

[MStele]

I have a 260 216 and had problems with games due to overheating. There is a bug in some situations where your GPU fan won't speed up enough, since its optimized for noise and not temp. The fan profile is crappy by default. The easy fix is to just use riva tuner and setup a new fan profile that is based on temp and not load. Myself, i have an idle fan speed of 50% instead of the normal 30-40% and various thresholds at higher temps. I have never had a cooling problem since.

 

[Wogdog]

Also, looking at the Newegg feedback, looks like eVGA had a batch of bad GTX260 cards they pulled around Oct 13, lots of feedback with that type of problem. You should be able to RMA it. Just pull the eVGA GTX260 up on the Newegg website, read the 1 star reviews, eVGA has since recalled them and posted RMA info.