GeForce 6800 and random freezes

[Ancient1]

Hi .
Its beena while since I posted here and I see people still have issues with freezes. So I thought I'd write my solution again.
What solved the problem of FREEZES was modding the BIOS to provide 1.4V for 3D mode - as the Ultra. The card been running as Ultra (in 3D mode of course , why else ) without a problem.

GL.

btw, if u got problematic card and try to dump it, than the reduced price is your penalty. Try and fix it. No reason it shouldn't work.

[theslug]

What solved the problem of FREEZES was modding the BIOS to provide 1.4V for 3D mode - as the Ultra. The card been running as Ultra (in 3D mode of course , why else ) without a problem.


What kind of BIOS and motherboard do you have and where is this option?

[theslug]

Here's my story..I got the Geforce6800GT back in 04 and immediately had the stuttering problem. Fixed that by turning off fastwrites like everyone else did. All was good until this past summer when I started playing Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft. Back then I was using some 66.x drivers.

In BF2, the game would stutter (with the sound looping, as if fastwrites were still on) and essentially freeze, but if I pressed ctrl-alt-del to get to the Windows Security screen, then cancel out of it, I would be right back in the game without a problem.

In WoW, the game would stutter with the sound repeatedly looping for about 5-10 seconds, again similar to when I used to have fastwrites turned on.

I eventually upgraded to the 85.77 drivers which fixed both problems..until recently. BF2 still seems ok, but in WoW the problem now is I get artifacting (polygons where there shouldn't be any, missing textures), and an occasional 5-10 second freeze again. But this freeze is different, the sound doesn't keep skipping in a loop like before, but keeps going like nothing's happening, and it's solely the video that comes to a halt. And, every so often I see a white flash or flicker on the screen. This only seems to be in WoW though.

This is all under Win2k SP4, with a nforce3-ultra board. I'm going to try upgrading to the newest nforce and forceware drivers, but has anyone else experienced this, particularly the problem with warcraft?

[Ancient1]

It looks like you have overheating or "plain old" freezes like I had.
These are quite Opposite ! . you should check Temps , and get a big hone fan to blow into the PC to make certain its not a bad cooling issue. I would check that the thermal goo is ok.

I have PNY BIOS , but any GT's BIOS would enable you to raise the voltages. You should try that before everything else as its quite easy to do with niBitor look at www.mvktech.net for appropriate BIOSs and guides on how to.

I still have NF2U board.

[joshua7]

Hi .
Its beena while since I posted here and I see people still have issues with freezes. So I thought I'd write my solution again.
What solved the problem of FREEZES was modding the BIOS to provide 1.4V for 3D mode - as the Ultra. The card been running as Ultra (in 3D mode of course , why else ) without a problem.

GL.

btw, if u got problematic card and try to dump it, than the reduced price is your penalty. Try and fix it. No reason it shouldn't work.

That is not a solution... I don't think it is healthy, giving 1.4v to a GT. You will destroy it sooner or later. How long have you benn doing this?

[Suflex]

I want to know the effect of modding the GT BIOS to Ultra, so the voltage will increase, the card will think it is an ultra, but will it push ultra speeds on the core/mem ? My GT can not handle ultra mem speeds at all, max OC for the memory fo me is 1050 mhz ..., what to do then?

[joshua7]

I want to know the effect of modding the GT BIOS to Ultra, so the voltage will increase, the card will think it is an ultra, but will it push ultra speeds on the core/mem ? My GT can not handle ultra mem speeds at all, max OC for the memory fo me is 1050 mhz ..., what to do then?

By increasing the voltage your clocks will be higher. That is for sure. But your card will still be a GT, it will have the same clocks (350/1000). You can edit the clocks too, however. :) To 400/1100, for example. 1.4v and 400/1100. Like an Ultra, isn't it? But it will still be a GT.
If you want your card recognised as Ultra, you need to flash a real Ultra bios. As far as I know the memory timings on the Ultra a different (worse), so your GT flashed to Ultra will be a bit slower than a GT at Ultra clocks. If you get what I mean. :)

[theslug]

It looks like you have overheating or "plain old" freezes like I had.
These are quite Opposite ! . you should check Temps , and get a big hone fan to blow into the PC to make certain its not a bad cooling issue. I would check that the thermal goo is ok.

My card idles around 61-62 C and when I play Warcraft it's around 70-75. Is this normal?

[Dismal]

I haven't gotten into any formal testing with the 8x.xx drivers yet, but I did install the 81.94 drivers and start playing Call of Duty 2 (Which I guess is DirectX). No stuttering yet.

Speaking of which... how can I tell what API a game uses without hearing it from the developers themselves? There's got to be a way to know if a game is OpenGL or DirectX without googling it.

Crap... Just installed GTA: Vice City for old time's sake and have stuttering. I can throw that 8x.xx idea out the window. CoD2 still continues to perform fine, though, which is pretty odd.

...and if someone still wants to take a stab at my API querying question that'd be super.

[Dismal]

Crap... Just installed GTA: Vice City for old time's sake and have stuttering. I can throw that 8x.xx idea out the window. CoD2 still continues to perform fine, though, which is pretty odd.

...and if someone still wants to take a stab at my API querying question that'd be super.

Hmmm, undercloking my vid card seems to make the GTA:VC stuttering go away, at least to a great degree (only tested it for about 10 minutes at a time). And I just started playing FEAR. Aside from this game eating up a massive ammount of system resources, there is no stuttering, even while the card runs at normal clocking.

[pablo]

I'm getting low fps on all of my games ( CS:S, COD 2, and even the Geforce 6 Nvidia Demos!) execpt for Quake 4. Can any one help I went to Nvtweak thing and set it to Server instead of Desktop. bfg tech said it was a power issue and to make sure no other deviece is connected to the power chain and it doesnt work. Plz help.

AMD ATHLON XP 3000+ (462)
1.5GB OF RAM
200GB HDD
NFORCE 2 MOBO.

[SLippe]

My card idles around 61-62 C and when I play Warcraft it's around 70-75. Is this normal?

Hard to say, if I was answering your question, then no that is not normal. Does your case have good airflow? In a warm room? My idle temps are 49' / 32', but I have 6 case fans and a copper heatsink on my 6800 GT. Oh yeah, what kind of card are you referring too? Is dust a problem inside your case?

[Tho Jo Smale]

During my 5-10 second freezes Rivatuner reports a core freq. of 11.3mhz. Anyone out there have an answer for this? Why would the card throttle to 11mhz I'm perplexed :confused:. Someone please help :)

[joshua7]

Hmmm... 3dmark06 tells me 11mhz on the gpu all the time. It's a 6800gt agp specific problem I guess. Maybe Rivatuner monitors incorrectly too.

[chicogrande]

I feel like this thread is a support group...

I too am a victim of GeForce 6800 freeze up issues. It all started with any and all driver versions released after BF2. This would be drivers 77.xx and above. Games such as, WoW, Bf2, HL, CS:S all lock up randomly during play. Temp is good, power supply is good. The system is very stable with the exception being during play of "modern" PC games.

If I roll back to older drivers, such as my faithful 72.13's from guru3d, everything works great. No freezes. Ever. As soon as I upgrade video drivers to say 81.98, all bets are off and the freezes return.

I've read various theories on fixing the problem in the lineage of this forum.

Disable fast writes
Issues with non VIA chipsets


Any new data to support these? I've recently done a complete reinstall, and the problems remain. For now, I'm going to run with the faithful, but old drivers.

I'm pondering trying a new mobo out, a VIA one as mentioned in some previous posts. Any insights are appreciated at this point.

[theslug]

Hard to say, if I was answering your question, then no that is not normal. Does your case have good airflow? In a warm room? My idle temps are 49' / 32', but I have 6 case fans and a copper heatsink on my 6800 GT. Oh yeah, what kind of card are you referring too? Is dust a problem inside your case?

I have ok airflow (one 80mm on the side for intake and another on rear for outtake). I was just playing the new Star Wars rts demo the other day, and I started experiencing freezes like I used to. Rivatuner reported my temps as getting up to 80-81 under load. I turned down some of the graphical settings (namely turned off soft shadows), and the temps returned to 74-75, and the freezes stopped. I'm thinking my issues are heat related. I also have fast writes turned off and this is on an nf3 board. No dust inside the case either, I just recently cleaned it out, and even then there wasn't much dust to begin with.

[Tho Jo Smale]

Slug,

When I first recieved my eVga 6800GT I emailed tech support as I believed that my temps were "way too high" they responded to my email with this

"Answer (12/21/2004 11:16:25 AM): Hi John,

The average idle temperature for your video card is around 50 to 60 degrees and average load temperature is around 80 to 90 degrees. These numbers will vary slightly depending on the computer system.

eVGA.com Customer Service


So temperature may not be a factor for you at all.

Disabling fast writes solved the problem for me as far as playable gaming. I do believe that the performace hit that is associated with turning fast writes off, is something that nVidia should compensate all the 6800/NF3 users for, or get off thier lazy buttocks and fix. Let's face it, incompatibility between chipsets and video cards manufactured by the same company borders on class action lawsuit territory.

JC

[theslug]

I don't mind having fast writes off, as there is very little performance hit. What I want to know is, if it's not heat, why would it freeze at higher temps and not lower ones, and what is causing my issue with WoW/directX? (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=63542)

[Tho Jo Smale]

Slug,

I had that problem in WoW but only some of the mid 70's series drivers. when you install new vid card drivers what procedure do you follow????

JC

[theslug]

I had that problem in WoW but only some of the mid 70's series drivers. when you install new vid card drivers what procedure do you follow????

Uninstall the old ones, reboot into safe mode. Run regcleaner or some other cleaning program to get rid of any stuff left over, reboot into normal mode and install the new drivers.

Interesting that you say it happened with the 70.xx drivers. I can't remember if I had the same problem with those or if I was getting whole freezes instead.

You're right that it might not be temperature, as I've never had a problem with openGL programs, but I haven't tried monitoring my temps while running any.

[Tho Jo Smale]

Slug,

Seems like you have your driver swap procedure up to snuff. Try the 8.22 remix nforce drivers from guru3d.com, no need to uninstall like the vids, just install right over top of your current system driver set.
Download Here (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1271)

[theslug]

Thanks Tho, I'll give that a shot.

[chicogrande]

Uninstall the old ones, reboot into safe mode. Run regcleaner or some other cleaning program to get rid of any stuff left over, reboot into normal mode and install the new drivers.

Interesting that you say it happened with the 70.xx drivers. I can't remember if I had the same problem with those or if I was getting whole freezes instead.

You're right that it might not be temperature, as I've never had a problem with openGL programs, but I haven't tried monitoring my temps while running any.

Sounds like your asking yourself the same questions that I've been asking for the past few months. Is it running hot? Is the PSU providing enough power? etc.

All know is that when I run "older", pre 77.xx Forceware drivers, I have zero issues. Granted, I can't take advantage of new features like dynamic shadows in BF2, but I do not get full system freeze ups when I use them. I'm currently forced to use 72.13 drivers from guru3d.

This reeks of driver issue. Hopefully we can find some modern ones that actually work.

There is a great thread here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=938842

regarding this issue and what some users have tried.

[theslug]

Sounds like your asking yourself the same questions that I've been asking for the past few months. Is it running hot? Is the PSU providing enough power? etc.


I've seen it get up to 81 under load. Some say this is too hot, some say it's normal. It certainly could be overheating, but at the same time my problem seems to be specific to directx, so I don't know for sure. My PSU is pretty new and puts out 29A on the 12V lines. Thanks for the thread link, I'll look through it. I'll probably experiment with various driver versions to see what happens with each.

[Deeko]

I found this thread over a year ago and for 6 months I checked it religiously and not a single thing helped. I then put up with it for a few more months then ditched it all for 7800GT based system. This thread will probably still be active when it is a full 2 YEARS old and still no fix. Seriously guys , this fault must lie in the hardware and cant be fixed otherwise it would have been fixed long ago, Nvidia arent intested in the slightest. I recently started using my 6800GT with a media center I built , first thing I did was replace the nforce3 board with the Via chipset Asus K8V-SE and its been rock solid. I recommened anyone with this problem to try and get a refund for the board or bite the bullet and buy a new one.

On another note, I wonder if we will see the same problem with nforce3 and the 7800GS agp card, if we do I wonder if Nvidia will do anything about it this time round?