Please help me figure this one out

[filmore crashcart]

I got my BFG 6800 gt oc Monday a week ago. I haven't had a Nvidia card in over 2 years and now I have one in combination with a Nforce Epox 8kda3j motherboard, 3200+ clawhammer (on a 210 fsb only), 1 gig of 2 x512 3200 Kingston value ram at stock timings, 420w Thermaltake PS, WinXP Home sp1a, and dx9c.

The first week I had the card, I installed coolbits and did the detect optimal frequency thing for overclocking. It detected 426/1100. I ran it at 426/1100 on the 61.72 drivers for the first few days and it didn't flinch. I didn't run 3dmark as of yet because I wasn't particularly interested in spending time doing anything else but enjoying the card. Then I downloaded and ran 3dmark getting a score of 11940, which I figured was about right for my rig. Then I started experimenting with beta drivers 61.80, 62.01, and 62.11. It was at some point in trying these drivers (YES, I USED DRIVE CLEANER BETWEEN INSTALLS - sorry, I just know someone was going to give me the drive cleaner lecture right off - sorry Mem).

Sometime during the sampling of the different drivers, my overclock started to get unstable and I got some bad artifacting in 3dMark. Then, the stopping/stuttering thing started happening that was mentioned by another forum member in another post. I kept checking my card temps and idle was 54C and after running 3dmark, around 65C. I know that you can't get an accurate account of temps AFTER stressing the card but I don't think it was heating up more than usual considering the low idle temps and the fact that it is in a tower case with 3 fans and plenty of circulating air - my cpu temps are 37C idle and 52C load on a stock fan. I then noticed that when 3dmark did run without artifacting, the scores dropped down to a low of 8240 (yes, all aa and af options set to default with a performance setting over quality). The stopping/stuttering behavior got bad in Far Cry and in BF 1942.

Yesterday, I came home and did the following: updated the bios on the 8kda3j to the latest, loaded the newest chipset drivers and, loaded the new 61.76 WQHL drivers. Ran at stock speeds (370/1000) and got a 3dmark score of 11450 with no stops and stuttering. Ran Far cry with no stops and stuttering. Then I read over in the forums at Guru3d a post from someone who was all excited that his optimal frequencies were detected at some outrageous numbers like 620/1300, or something like that. The first response post quickly pointed out that you were suppose to NOT detect optimal frequencies until AFTER you've stressed the card for about an hour with 3dmark and a demanding game. I thought, DUH! No wonder my overclocks failed, I was detecting optimal frequencies at idle! So I did the 3dmark thing and 45 mintues of Far cry and did another detect - results were: 415/1080. Sounded about right.
Here is the problem which baffles me. I set my clock speeds to this and ran 3dmark. 3dmark03 did not stutter but there was a lag between each section and I ended up with a 3dmark of 9020. I set the card back to default and ran it again with a result of 11320.

What is the problem here? Is it just that I didn't luck out with memory like a lot of others have gotten with this card? Why does it slow down on an overclock? And before you suggest doing so (unless this is a sign of card failure) I'm not going to RMA the card because it performs fine at the specs it was suppose to and it is a very fast card. I'm happy with it and if I can't overclock, then okay. But my question is: why does it slow down so sharply when it's slightly overclocked?

 

[DoobieOnline]

Hey FC, we talked about reformatting and using a fresh install of XP to see if that would help. Did you ever try that? I know it's a PITA, but it just may be what you need. It sounds like the card started acting up after trying a lot of different beta releases, so maybe something got a little screwed up in XP during that time. You're using coolbits 2 and that adds multiple lines to the registry, right? Maybe you should try coolbits 1 (the one that adds only a couple of lines to the registry) after the reformat and see if that makes a difference, too. I seriously doubt it's a temperature issue since your card runs much cooler than mine after 10 minutes of rthdribl.

At this point, my best guess is to wipe the drive clean and start from scratch with the 61.76's, SP2 with DX 9.0c, and coolbits. It may or may not help, but it solved my blue screen probs in games and it couldn't hurt to try. Good luck!

doobie

 

[Regs]

How does it run with a 400/1100 over clock?

The fact that the scores returned to normal after you clocked down the card from its overclock means the ram or the core can't handle the speed. I experienced this when I tried doing the same exact thing with my 9800np with 3.3ns ram.

 

[filmore crashcart]

Thanks for the responses.....

Doobie-
you could be right; I've wondered about what effect it had adding that coobits line multiple times after each driver installation. The fact that it ran fine starting out and then started acting up makes me wonder.
Yeah, reformatting is not my favorite thing to do in front of the computer (I've tried to do a unattended install script before so I don't have to sit there answering questions but it didn't work).

Regs-
It will flat out refuse to do much of anything with the mem speed pushed beyond 1070. It did fine with 1100 at first, but if I try it now, it artifacts and freezes after a bout of stop/stutter. When I got that last score of 9020, my mem speed was at 1080. As it stands now, this card doesn't perform optimally at any speed other than the stock settings. I hope this doesn't mean that I might have done damage with the prior overclocks but it's not like I was pushing the card that hard.
I know what you mean, I bought this card to replace a 9800 np with that infineon ram that wouldn't do much. I could get mine at 380/321 before artifacting but I doubt it did much for performance.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I read just a little bit ago in a Tomshardware article that nVidia's GPU has a built in feature that will, if I read right, underclock the card (probably to stock settings) if it has problems getting data from the memory. This could be what is going on.

For reference the article was about Gainward's watercooled 6800 Ultra and they were testing overclocks on it.

Maybe try lowring the memory settings but keep the GPU up.

 

[ponyo]

Your card is throttling. Nvidia cards will throttle down if heat gets too high and/or it's overclocked too far. You need to back down the overclock until there is no throttling and no artifacts. It's built-in safety mechanism.

 

[Regs]

Well, maybe by some chance there is a software problem like DoobieOnline stated. Maybe their was a misplaced registry key from cool bits that's screwing up the timings. It's a long shot. But I would go through the process of add/removing the drivers via the control panel. Don't always count on driver cleaner. You should use that last after using the windows control panel.

If you damaged 2.0 ns memory with nvidia's HSF unit on it, you'd have to be running some pretty hot case temps, increased agp voltage, or of had a FSB overclocked with no AGP/PCI lock.

In that case, I wouldn't feel guilty about making up a little white lie and RMA'ing. But that's just me.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Naustica
Your card is throttling. Nvidia cards will throttle down if heat gets too high and/or it's overclocked too far. You need to back down the overclock until there is no throttling and no artifacts. It's built-in safety mechanism.

I don't think he temps reached that high. I think it throttles in excess of 120c!

 

[filmore crashcart]

If you damaged 2.0 ns memory with nvidia's HSF unit on it, you'd have to be running some pretty hot case temps, increased agp voltage, or of had a FSB overclocked with no AGP/PCI lock.

That's the thing... anyone that has ever read my posts knows that I'm kind of conservative with overclocking, even though I do like to get as much performance as I can without resorting to mods and elaborate cooling, but heat and instability are not my ideas of fun. After you read all the posts from people who claim to be getting at least Ultra speeds with this card you start to think the stock speeds for the BFG 6800 gt oc IS 400/1100. My case ambient temp is usually around 37C with a high of around 42C and that's with an outside temp of, lately, up in the mid 90's. I thought at one point that maybe the sofware had screwed up the fan's running but I've watched it running 3dmark and it does what it's suppose to be doing. I just can't believe it ever got that hot.

I guess the only way to find out if it's the ram or the software is to do a clean format. Ugghhhh!

Darkswordsman17-
I thought about that as a problem. I believe I'm running my Kingston value ram to specs but I'll look at them again tonight.

 

[filmore crashcart]

Just an update... I looked at hardforum and read through the overclock results. Some people are actually not able to clock much higher than the stock speeds - not many- but some. I might be one of those people despite what my detect clock frequencies states. I never had much luck with hitting the jack pot with ram so I guess it's not unusual now. It works fine at stock speeds and I can't see there would be any performance increase by overclocking it the amount it would do now.
I guess I could return it in hopes of getting one with better ram but if that involved lying about the card being defective when it isn't, then I just can't do it. Must be those 8 years of nuns beating the hell out of me in grade school.

 

[DoobieOnline]

:beer: Cheers! :beer:

Good to see at least a few people left around here with some honor. The card still rocks at 370/1000, especially for the $299 we paid for it.

doobie

 

[darkswordsman17]

LOL, I meant the memory on the card.

I believe that I remember something about on the 6800 cards that clocking the memory higher has little effect on peformormance, whereas a higher clock on the GPU does matter far mor significantly. You might try setting the GPU to where coolbits says, but then lower the memory.

Oh, BTW, I hate you people. Lucky bastages getting your cards. I'm practically freaking out over here trying to get my hands on one. Getting my new system started. I just ordered my new CPU and mobo (that new ASUS nForce 3 250 Gb board and an A64 3000) and had my new case for a little while. I'd love to take that card off your hands...

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: Regs

Originally posted by: Naustica
Your card is throttling. Nvidia cards will throttle down if heat gets too high and/or it's overclocked too far. You need to back down the overclock until there is no throttling and no artifacts. It's built-in safety mechanism.

I don't think he temps reached that high. I think it throttles in excess of 120c!

Card will also throttle if overclocked too far regardless of temps.

 

[Slacker]

My pny 6800gt seemed a bit flaky at first. my monitor lost the signal while I was using the computer and I had to turn off the computer unplug the monitor from the card and plug it back in and power up, then a few minutes later the computer rebooted on its own but had no picture when it came back up I checked all the cards and memory to be sure I didnt knock anything loose and restarted, that was about 2 hours ago, ran 3dmark03 a couple times and played Q3 for about 45 minutes and no more problems yet :fingerscrossed)

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17Oh, BTW, I hate you people. Lucky bastages getting your cards. I'm practically freaking out over here trying to get my hands on one.

:evil: I got mine today, I sold my pny fx5900 for $100.00 and sold an XFX fx5900 for $100.00 and then I called a connection at a local compusa and got the pny 6800gt for $319.00 employee price :evil: I bought the "TAP" two year replacement plan for $13.00 Less than $150.00 out of pocket! Woot!

One of those fx5900's (the pny) was from when I rma'd a ti4600 and they sent me the 5900 in return

The XFX I bought last year at BUY.COM for $178.00 a.r.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Bastard!

Hopefully your problems have been solved.

What specs you at?

 

[Slacker]

specs? like core/clock speeds?

It tests out to 415/1120 but the settings dont stick, they keep going back to stock, I just set it to those speeds and clicked ok and then went right back in to check and they were back at stock

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah, thats what I was looking for.

Thats kinda strange. I'm trying to think what might cause that. I seem to remember someone else having a similar problem, but can't recall how they fixed it.

After rereading my posts in this thread I see that my memory isn't serving me very well.

 

[filmore crashcart]

LOL, I meant the memory on the card.

Hmmm.... pays to read more carefully. I was fixated on wondering if my system memory had something to do with this and completely misinterpreted your post.

Went through another bout of testing yesterday and found that even raising memory settings to 1040 caused poor results in 3dmark03. I ran the rthdribl test again with open temp window and peak temp still was 78C, so that isn't the problem. I guess there isn't anything to be done to fix poor memory performance.

Kinda dissapointing after such a good start with this card but taking DoobieOnline's optimistic view, I did only pay $299.99 for this card, which is what I paid for the 9800 np, and I'm getting much higher performance, even at stock.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

nvidia throttling is solely based on temp.

gpu is capable of high overclocks but not memory.

memory is a 2ns and with stock clock is already at theoretical max clock for these samsung bfgs.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Hey FC, I just read this and thought you might be interested...

LINK

It appears that several people have the same problem and some are having great success by turning off fast writes in bios (and in Windows using RivaTuner). Hope it helps ya!

OT - I know I'm at 999 posts, so this will number 1,000. Man, it's hard to believe I've been hanging around here for three and a half years already.

doobie

Edit: Doh! I had to post one more time to get "Golden Member" status.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: DoobieOnline
Hey FC, I just read this and thought you might be interested...

LINK

It appears that several people have the same problem and some are having great success by turning off fast writes in bios (and in Windows using RivaTuner). Hope it helps ya!

OT - I know I'm at 999 posts, so this will number 1,000. Man, it's hard to believe I've been hanging around here for three and a half years already.

doobie

Come back soon!

 

[filmore crashcart]

Hey Doobie,

Congrats on the Gold! I've been lurking here since 1999 but I post in bouts and I've spent times away from the forum as other interests take over. I don't know when I'll ever get gold..... maybe in another 5 years!
That is very helpful info that you found. BTW, I was going to post an update to this anyway as I did get some success yesterday in this problem but want to give it more time to see how it behaves. I just couldn't understand why this would act so strange when at first it did well on overclocking.
Anyway, in the process of modifying that .inf file for the sm3 for Far Cry, I also went into the bios and set my value ram to run at 166 so I could push my fsb up a bit more. I had to reinstall the 61.76s manually after adding the lines to the .inf file.
Anyway, just for curisousity sake, I did the auto detect thing and I was still getting 426/1100 as optimal settings. So I tried it just to see what would happen. It did make it through 3dmarok03 without any stuttering but didn't give me more than 11440 for a score, which was close to what I get at stock. But, it did not artifact or stutter, and this was after already running 3dmark at stock a couple of times. That encouraged me so I set it at 400/1100. I played Far Cry for about an hour (it is running the sm3 beta mode but it is buggy) and then tried to do 3dmark again. This time I got some artifacting so I backed the memory down to 1080.
I will try this tonight as I thought about that as being maybe soemthing to check but didn't realize that you had to also use Rivatunner to undo it. Since I have the MB that this seems to work for, it could be the answer. I'll let you know.
Thanks, man!