GeForce 6800 and random freezes

[TheHelpful1]

I don't know how or why but installing SB Audigy 2zs drivers after my Nvidia driver seemed to be making my system unstable.


In my case, if it were just system instability, i'd dive right in and mess with the audigy 2zs drivers, but i doubt sound card drivers are causing my gfx core to reach Critical Core Temp after 1 game demo in 3dmark03.

[Auswak]

Try here http://mvktech.no-ip.org/

Or

You might have to write PNY Tech Support.

[ubersoldat]

ok, found a PNY bios, Rev2 on that site. I'll try to flash the bios later. I'm to busy right now.

[totalburnout]

I've had a few 6800 cards on test months ago and they have all suffered from the cooling fan being insufficent for the job at hand.

Attaching a better hs/f cured it and the core runs at 75C in Doom3 and FarCry, watercooling is better, it runs at 38C.

So it's best to send your duff card back and get a replacement. Many of the vendors now know there is a problem with the cooler.

I was surprised to find people complaining about this even though people (testers) like me have seen this problem in many manufacturers version of the reference product...

Like a lot of you I have been using an SB Audigy Platinum Pro Ex and the specific problem this has is IRQs, I found that with ACPI, quite often it would interfere with the 6800 graphics card...

Manually assigning the IRQ or putting the Audigy in a different slot cured the problem. BTW: there is no point in trying to run Doom3 unless you have a 512Mb 6800Ultra Extreme card (not out until Feb 05), I'm testing a dual 3dLabs Wildcat800 PCI-E card, wow, it's where NVidia will be in 18 months time...

I used to OC but now someone pays me to play with kit that is already faster than anything else. There is no way I would spend £4,000 on a graphics card...despite how much I'm stoked into gaming

s ;)

[ubersoldat]

I can run Doom 3 on ultra with a 6800ultra with 1024 ram. No problem besides the freezing.

[TheHelpful1]

Attaching a better hs/f cured it and the core runs at 75C in Doom3 and FarCry, watercooling is better, it runs at 38C.

Manually assigning the IRQ or putting the Audigy in a different slot cured the problem.


I 'would' slap some AC5 and my NV Silencer on my 6800ultra, but I'm standing firm when i say I got one heck of a 'duff' card, so I don't think it'd be worth it. Plus eVGA would have a valid reason to screw me out of my warranty.

And exactly how do you manually reassign IRQ channels in WINXP without changing which PCI slot it is in physically?

[ubersoldat]

The sound isn't interfering with the games, although I here loud snaps when it freezes. I tried everything you said to make the sound not interfer, but it doesn't help any.

[Pandora's Box]

ok so the solution for these random freezes is latest drivers, fastwrites off, and agp aperture to 256?

[TheHelpful1]

ok so the solution for these random freezes is latest drivers, fastwrites off, and agp aperture to 256?

Actually, AGP Aperture size should be set to 4MB...at least according to eVGA.com

http://www.evga.com/articles/public.asp?AID=9

[Pandora's Box]

they also say to put agp as primary video device. should be pci. that way you can throw a pci card in incase something goes wrong.

[Auswak]

Actually, AGP Aperture size should be set to 4MB...at least according to eVGA.com

http://www.evga.com/articles/public.asp?AID=9

That is OLD and only recommended for Troubleshooting Purposes

If you are still having problems submit for an RMA with eVGA.

[Killall]

Ive set my arpenture size to 64 mb once, got terrible stutters in ut2004 when playing assualt so arpenture size really matters. Just set it to 128 or 256.

[Pandora's Box]

ok i figured that. i once set my aperture to 4mb on my 9800 pro to see what it would do. lag in all games so...not best idea.

but anyway about this lag thing. since i dont have the time to read 15 pages of this thread. how do you solve it?

[toddt1233]

ok i figured that. i once set my aperture to 4mb on my 9800 pro to see what it would do. lag in all games so...not best idea.

but anyway about this lag thing. since i dont have the time to read 15 pages of this thread. how do you solve it?


Box up your video card and send it back.

[ubersoldat]

Although you have the risk that when you get a new gfx card back, you will have the same problems.

[janapier]

Hi folks,

here's my experience with the 10 s long freezes of the 6800 series cards in Far Cry:

With my Galaxy 6800GT it may occur during Aquamark3, 3Dmark03 and Far Cry, but not in Doom3. It may only occur when the card is overclocked. It may occur with ForceWare 61.76, 61.77, 65.73 and 66.00.

After a fresh driver install, the card played Doom3 flawlessly at 420/1150 (stock is 370/1000). Aquamark3 exhibited the freezes above 393 Mhz core clock. After installation of RivaTuner, forcing constant performance level and turning AGP FW off, all mentioned apps except Far Cry ran flawlessly at 420/1150.

After I activated "Chipset compatibility mode" in RT, even Far Cry would run at 420/1150 without the issue.

After a failed CPU OC attempt I had to clear CMOS memory. I also installed SP2, before I discovered that the freezing issue had returned to Far Cry, even as my Bios, RivaTuner and driver settings were exactly the same as when it worked before. Other apps were unaffected. I uninstalled both RivaTuner and the driver, reinstalled them and applied the old settings. The issue was again gone.

I'm sure it's neither high clock frequency, faulty hardware, driver or Far Cry software. It's just the marginal compatibility of the four. Apparently one has to walk a narrow line. Getting rid of the syndrome may involve Voodoo and your mileage will vary according to your specific hardware settings.

James

[Pandora's Box]

i havent ran into any of this freezing yet. leadtek 6800 gt at 415 1.1

[TheHelpful1]

eVGA responed and asked if i had another computer to test it in.

.....

They sure are beating around the bush and not trying to replace a bad card.

Do I have to wait for them to say "setting up an RMA" or Do i just go ahead and set that up myself?

Edit: Went to eVGA's website...


If you did not purchase this product directly from eVGA.com, you must first try to contact your vendor for a replacement. If this is not possible, you may request a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA), but all requests will be subject to the following terms:

Customers may be required to pay for associated shipping costs (including shipping the defective product to eVGA.com and return shipping for the replacement product).

eVGA.com does not offer any form of cross-shipping.

All RMA returns must be handled via shipping. eVGA.com does not allow for any products to be dropped off.

eVGA.com reserves the right to decline any application for an RMA number.


Well Crap!

[Gorion]

I have a 6800U Evga. I had problems with freezes in PainKiller and vid probs with FarCry. I did all the regular suggestions. Nothing Helped.

I took the heatsinks off of my MEMORY and removed those cheap thermal Pads and put AS5 on the mem chips. I did not touch the core.

No more freezing :) probem solved. It wasn'r clock speeds, I didn't need a new bios. Fast writes didn't matter. The freakin mem was over heating. Those thermal pads are junk. Either RMA or bite the bullet like I did and fix your cooling.

[TheHelpful1]

Either RMA or bite the bullet like I did and fix your cooling..


I'm no stranger to PC innards, but the last HSF i took off a video card was a geforce 3 (never had to since then).

Gorion, exactly how much trouble was it to take off your stuff. And by trouble, how much evidence is there that you did what you did, besides thermal pad replace with a paste.

I highly suspect that IS the cause of my overheating, but if it's not, I don't want eVGA to say go screw myself and invalidate my warranty.

[ubersoldat]

Hmmmm, what is the thermal plating. Can you explain what it looks like and where on the Ram it is?

[TheHelpful1]

I took the heatsinks off of my MEMORY and removed those cheap thermal Pads and put AS5 on the mem chips. I did not touch the core.

:kill: thermal pads.

:nana: Artic Silver 5

:kar: 12718 3dmark03 score at stock speeds.

Sad that a super card has such crap thermal solution, but hey, As well that ends well.

[TheHelpful1]

Hmmmm, what is the thermal plating. Can you explain what it looks like and where on the Ram it is?

Use my vague instructions at your own risk.

Unscrew all the black and silver screws from the backside of the card and the HS should lift off. The Heatsink on the CORE has its own screws so unless you WANT to squirt some AC5 in there too, like i did, don't worry about that popping off, it won't (eVGA atleast).

After it lifts off you should see 6 or 7 thermal pads most likely stuck to the heatsink.

Scrape these off the HS, wipe with some alcohol and DRY. I used a cotton swab damp with alcohol (not beer mind you) and also swabbed the memory tops themselves.

Squirt some AC5 (top of the line IMO) and smooth it out to an even layer and reseat everything.

My core idle temps when from 63* down to 51* with Gainward's ExpertTool keeping the fans at a constant 50%. Of course i set it to dynmaic when i loaded 3dmark.

Now I leave this to others to correct or add to, according to various card makes.

One sidenote, Ubersoldat, I don't know your hardware experience but if you've never installed a second hard drive, then I would take extreme caution in doing this or just not do it all all. There's the potential to seriously screw up your card and if they inspect any parts of it they may just void your warranty.

[Gorion]

The heatsink on the mem is a piece of cake to take off. the only way you can tell I messed with it is the lack of thermal pads. They should call them thermal blankets instead of pads. I think they actually hold the heat in :p

The instructions above are perfect. But you should know your warranty will be toast so do this at your own risk. But it is easy. Don't over tighten when you re-assemble and be sure there is on light between the chips and the heatsink and you should be fine. I just use an old credit card to put a smooth thin and even layer of AS5 on the chip and you should get a good contact. Worked for me I now have zero issues playing Doom3, farcry, painkiller, and Neverwinter. and I'm playing doom3 at 1280X1024 with 4xaa and Ultra quality. No stutters no tears no crashes. and running 61.77 drivers.

[salehz]

Hi there all,

I am new to this forum and would just like to say I am experiencing very wierd issues with my Gainward Ultra/2600 PowerPack Golden Sample Geforce 6800 Ultra.

Firstly My PC specs :

Athlon64 3200+ @ default 2.2GHz
ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe Motherboard
2 x 512Mb Kingston HyperX PC3700 (466MHz DDR ) @ 400MHz
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra Golden Sample ( 430MHz GPU/ 1200MHz Memory)
2 x 74Gb Western Digital Raptors in RAID 0 array
Plextor Premium 52/32/52 CD/RW
ASUS 16X DVD-Drive
Enermax 465W PSU with 33A on the 12V rail
GigaByte 3D CPU Cooler


The problem experienced with the card is "stuttering/jittering frame rates" which appear to occur in the following games with the following effects enabled :

1. Toca Pro Race Driver 2 (Lens flares effects enabled)
2. Colin McRae Rally from versions 3 to the demo of Colin McRae 5 (Lens flare effects enabled)
3. RalliSport Challenge (Lens flares effects enabled)
4. Xpand Rally Demo
5. Need for Speed Underground (No matter what settings)

As you can see it seems to be in driving games whenever lens-flare effects are used. I switched off these effects to check it was this and the stuttering went away.

I am very suspicious that this is a driver issue as this does not happen with games like Far Cry & Doom 3 and both 3DMark 2001 & 2003 work fine with no stutters.

I have tried the following things to remedy the problem :

1. Gone through every Nvidia driver available on Guru3D site offficial & Beta
2. Tried the card in 2 other different spec PC's one of which was an AthlonXP 3200+ on an Nforce 2 Ultra ASUS motherboard with 512Mb mathed Corsair PC3200 memory / the other a P4 3.2GHz 800FSB on an MSI 865PE with 512Mb mathed Corsair PC3200 memory.
3. Fast-Writes On & Off (through BIOS & RivaTuner)
4. Fresh installations of both Windows 2000 and XP with latest drivers and service packs and BIOSes. I even tried not installing the sound to see if that was it.
5. Flashed the card with latest BIOS from Gainward .. no good .. other manufacturers BIOSes didn't Help either.
6. Last night I thought to hell with it and tried what one of your posts suggested and tightened the screws on the heatsink of the card. they were indeed loose but after tightening them the problem was still there. The temperature of the card did go down though.


As you can see I am at my witts end and I now what I'm doing.

None of this happens when I have my Sapphire 9800 Pro in any of the above mentioned rigs with any of the above games.

Does anyone own any of the above mentioned games & a Geforce 6800 that can test and see if they experience the same problem with these games. If so it must be a driver issue and if so are NVidia aware of it..


PLEASE HEEEEEELLLLLPPPP!!!!!!