DarkRogue
Golden Member
Hello everyone,
I need some help with troubleshooting this very annoying issue I have - my display drivers will crash fairly often during gaming of any real load and reset itself, causing the display to have a momentary loss of signal, and depending on the game, causing the game to crash as a result.
My rig is the one listed in my signature, though in case that's not visible, pertinent details are that it is an i7-3770k on an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, 16GB of DDR3-1600 from Corsair, and a GTX 670, powered by a SeaSonic X650 PSU. OS is Windows 7 Ultimate x64, of course on SP1 with all Windows updates applied, except for the stuff related to Windows 8/10 "preparation."
The issue has plagued me for several years now, but at the time it happened infrequently enough that I just rebooted and dealt with it. Unfortunately, the problem appears to have gotten worse over time, and now there's a high chance that the driver does not recover and the PC as a whole simply locks up with no signal coming from the GPU.
Over the years I've constantly upgraded drivers, but the issue persists through every single version I've tried. Curiously, when I sent my GTX 670 back for an RMA, I had to resort to using my ancient 8800GT for the couple weeks before Gigabyte sent it back saying nothing was wrong with it, and during that time the PC was completely solid - no issues with the 8800GT (aside from having to reinstall older drivers since the card is no longer supported by the newer ones.)
I posted here about that some time ago (almost a year ago) and some users claimed it could potentially be the PSU. I haven't been able to secure a secondary PSU until now, but I have gotten a hold of a second SeaSonic X650 from a friend of mine. It's lightly used, and has actually been in storage for a while, but it's the same model as my current PSU which was under constant use for years, so it made for a relatively easy swap-in. At the same time, I also got a hold of a second GTX 670 as well (eVGA, rather than Gigabyte.)
Unfortunately, even after swapping both of those in, the issue persists. My system was overclocked, but for troubleshooting I reverted the OC (I set the maximum multiplier back to 39. Voltages were on auto.) Even without the OC, the issue persists.
Having already swapped both the GPU and the PSU, I'm not sure where to go next. However, I have another potential lead: The motherboard.
Some time ago, my mouse (a Logitech G5) died. I didn't think much of it, since I had a spare mouse available, but after some testing, I believe that a couple of the USB ports on the motherboard itself died - Nothing I plugged into them (mouse, keyboard, iPod, card reader, etc.) would work when plugged into them. I have no idea if the USB ports dying caused the mouse to be killed, but my keyboard seems to have survived even if it suddenly stopped working in those ports as well. Either way, I wonder if the USB ports dying would signal that the motherboard itself was dying (perhaps issue with power delivery?) and the display drivers crashing and resetting under load was another indication of this.
Sadly, if this is the case, I honestly have no idea how to proceed. I do not have a secondary motherboard to test with, and the only places selling an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe at this point charge exorbitant amounts. At the same time, I don't know if I should bother upgrading to a Skylake system, since that's a large expense I cannot quite afford at the moment (Would involve new CPU+Mobo+Ram at the least.) Part of this is that, at least on the CPU side, I don't feel limited by the 3770k yet at all, and the performance gains into Skylake don't sound particularly huge.
I kind of have an idea of what the suggestions will be along the upgrade lines, but I just wanted to doublecheck -- could a failing motherboard actually exhibit these symptoms? That is, working perfectly fine until a decently beefy GPU is placed under a heavy load? If not, what else could it be?
I need some help with troubleshooting this very annoying issue I have - my display drivers will crash fairly often during gaming of any real load and reset itself, causing the display to have a momentary loss of signal, and depending on the game, causing the game to crash as a result.
My rig is the one listed in my signature, though in case that's not visible, pertinent details are that it is an i7-3770k on an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, 16GB of DDR3-1600 from Corsair, and a GTX 670, powered by a SeaSonic X650 PSU. OS is Windows 7 Ultimate x64, of course on SP1 with all Windows updates applied, except for the stuff related to Windows 8/10 "preparation."
The issue has plagued me for several years now, but at the time it happened infrequently enough that I just rebooted and dealt with it. Unfortunately, the problem appears to have gotten worse over time, and now there's a high chance that the driver does not recover and the PC as a whole simply locks up with no signal coming from the GPU.
Over the years I've constantly upgraded drivers, but the issue persists through every single version I've tried. Curiously, when I sent my GTX 670 back for an RMA, I had to resort to using my ancient 8800GT for the couple weeks before Gigabyte sent it back saying nothing was wrong with it, and during that time the PC was completely solid - no issues with the 8800GT (aside from having to reinstall older drivers since the card is no longer supported by the newer ones.)
I posted here about that some time ago (almost a year ago) and some users claimed it could potentially be the PSU. I haven't been able to secure a secondary PSU until now, but I have gotten a hold of a second SeaSonic X650 from a friend of mine. It's lightly used, and has actually been in storage for a while, but it's the same model as my current PSU which was under constant use for years, so it made for a relatively easy swap-in. At the same time, I also got a hold of a second GTX 670 as well (eVGA, rather than Gigabyte.)
Unfortunately, even after swapping both of those in, the issue persists. My system was overclocked, but for troubleshooting I reverted the OC (I set the maximum multiplier back to 39. Voltages were on auto.) Even without the OC, the issue persists.
Having already swapped both the GPU and the PSU, I'm not sure where to go next. However, I have another potential lead: The motherboard.
Some time ago, my mouse (a Logitech G5) died. I didn't think much of it, since I had a spare mouse available, but after some testing, I believe that a couple of the USB ports on the motherboard itself died - Nothing I plugged into them (mouse, keyboard, iPod, card reader, etc.) would work when plugged into them. I have no idea if the USB ports dying caused the mouse to be killed, but my keyboard seems to have survived even if it suddenly stopped working in those ports as well. Either way, I wonder if the USB ports dying would signal that the motherboard itself was dying (perhaps issue with power delivery?) and the display drivers crashing and resetting under load was another indication of this.
Sadly, if this is the case, I honestly have no idea how to proceed. I do not have a secondary motherboard to test with, and the only places selling an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe at this point charge exorbitant amounts. At the same time, I don't know if I should bother upgrading to a Skylake system, since that's a large expense I cannot quite afford at the moment (Would involve new CPU+Mobo+Ram at the least.) Part of this is that, at least on the CPU side, I don't feel limited by the 3770k yet at all, and the performance gains into Skylake don't sound particularly huge.
I kind of have an idea of what the suggestions will be along the upgrade lines, but I just wanted to doublecheck -- could a failing motherboard actually exhibit these symptoms? That is, working perfectly fine until a decently beefy GPU is placed under a heavy load? If not, what else could it be?
