Over clocking my BFG 6800GT

[Vengeance]

I hope this is the right forum to post this. But I have a question about OCing my BFG 6800GT OC. :p I have the reference design BFG 6800GT and I installed coolbits overclocking tool. And I have the newest set of drivers from nvidia. I let the coolbits check to see what my maximum OC is and it set my card to 434 on the core and set the memory to 1.12GHz. I've left it set there and ran some benchmarks, and a few games and it's a BEAST! So far so good, no artifacts, and it seems real stable. I try to check the temp as fast as I can after say running 3DMark2K5 and the highest I have seen it was 72c. but it was dropping. This card more than doubled my score in 2K5 with my old 9800Pro. But what my question is this. Is it safe to leave my card at this speed? Or should I set it back to say Ultra speeds?

[Vengeance]

:scarey: I just clocked it back to 399 on the core and 1.10 on the memory. I was playing the far cry demo from PC Gamer. I was playing it at 1600x1200 and the textures would set them selfs back to Med. And then in game I started getting some messed up textures. And then it froze up. and then it rebooted my PC..... :eek:
Windows told me that my system just recovered from a serious problem. So I submitted the error report and got this back.....

Error Caused by Graphics Device Driver

Thank you for submitting an error report. Microsoft is unable to determine what specifically caused the problem you reported. To troubleshoot the problem, please see the information listed below.

Analysis

A device driver installed on your computer caused the problem, but we cannot determine the precise cause. Depending on which situation is applicable to you, please do one of the following:

If you are running Windows Server 2003 you may experience crashes if you have adjusted the Hardware Acceleration setting. Microsoft recommends that you set the Hardware Acceleration setting to None for server systems. To check your Hardware Acceleration setting, go to the Advanced section of the display properties dialog box.
If you know the manufacturer of the device, contact the manufacturer's product support service for assistance.
If you don't know the driver's manufacturer and need help diagnosing and resolving this problem, contact your computer manufacturer's product support service.
Updated drivers might be available on the Microsoft Windows Update website. At Windows Update, you can have your computer scanned and, if there are updated drivers available, Windows Update will offer a selection of drivers that you might be able to use. To learn more about updated drivers that might be available, visit Microsoft Windows Update.
For information about Microsoft support options, visit Microsoft Product Support Services.
Additional Technical Information

Error Message: STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078)

:thumbdwn: I'm hoping it was just the demo.

[crayzboost]

you might have a problem with the seating of the heatsink, checking the temps quickly after a benchmark is done is not the best way, because temps drop a substantial amount extremely quick.. do a search for a program called RTHDRIBL it is free and well worth it, it will tell you your true load temps if you go over around 75c then i would check your seating..

get that and let us know how you make out..

[Ninjaman09]

Far Cry is very prone to crash on an overclock, and tends to tax your system more than any other game out there. Like crayzboost said, try checking the heatsink seating, and run rthdribl. You may find that only FarCry gives you trouble.

[Marcos]

ditch yer stock cooling Veng.

Zalman! Zalman! Zalman!

[CaptNKILL]

Try unscrewing the plate on the top of the heatsink (the side with the fan on it) and clean out any dust thats in it. My temps raised a lot over the past few months and killed the OCability of my card. I cleaned out a huge hunk of dust and now im running at 420\1.17 with no problems at all.

Theres no guarantee that your card will OC well, but its worth a try. Just be gentle with the screws, dont strip them when taking them out and putting them in.

[Vengeance]

Try unscrewing the plate on the top of the heatsink (the side with the fan on it) and clean out any dust thats in it. My temps raised a lot over the past few months and killed the OCability of my card. I cleaned out a huge hunk of dust and now im running at 420\1.17 with no problems at all.

Theres no guarantee that your card will OC well, but its worth a try. Just be gentle with the screws, dont strip them when taking them out and putting them in.

The card is brand new so I don't think it could be dust. (But the inside of my case is a mess :o ) But my card OC's fine. Up to 434MHz on the core. But I leave it at 400MHz core and 1.10GHz on the memory. This FarCry demo is the only problem I have had so far. I just chalk it up to being a demo. So far everything else runs beautifully! And my card seems rock solid at 400/1.10!
I love nVidia again. :thumbsup:

[CKTurbo128]

:scarey: I just clocked it back to 399 on the core and 1.10 on the memory. I was playing the far cry demo from PC Gamer. I was playing it at 1600x1200 and the textures would set them selfs back to Med. And then in game I started getting some messed up textures. And then it froze up. and then it rebooted my PC..... :eek:
Windows told me that my system just recovered from a serious problem. So I submitted the error report and got this back.....

Error Caused by Graphics Device Driver

Thank you for submitting an error report. Microsoft is unable to determine what specifically caused the problem you reported. To troubleshoot the problem, please see the information listed below.

Analysis

A device driver installed on your computer caused the problem, but we cannot determine the precise cause. Depending on which situation is applicable to you, please do one of the following:

If you are running Windows Server 2003 you may experience crashes if you have adjusted the Hardware Acceleration setting. Microsoft recommends that you set the Hardware Acceleration setting to None for server systems. To check your Hardware Acceleration setting, go to the Advanced section of the display properties dialog box.
If you know the manufacturer of the device, contact the manufacturer's product support service for assistance.
If you don't know the driver's manufacturer and need help diagnosing and resolving this problem, contact your computer manufacturer's product support service.
Updated drivers might be available on the Microsoft Windows Update website. At Windows Update, you can have your computer scanned and, if there are updated drivers available, Windows Update will offer a selection of drivers that you might be able to use. To learn more about updated drivers that might be available, visit Microsoft Windows Update.
For information about Microsoft support options, visit Microsoft Product Support Services.
Additional Technical Information

Error Message: STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078)

:thumbdwn: I'm hoping it was just the demo.

It's most likely that it's the demo, not your overclocking. The Far Cry demo & Far Cry retail version came out before the GeForce 6 series did and is known to display graphic glitches/issues with thos cards. Patch the retail version to the latest version for it to display proper graphics for GeForce 6 series cards.

[saturnotaku]

It's not most likely, it is the demo - for exactly the reason you stated. It has not been updated, and if it hasn't been to this point, it likely never will be.

[technews]

woa I should have gone for the BFG !

I've got an Asus 6800GT, it's ok but nothing special. The problem is that I couldn't find any BFGs here in UK. Does anyone know any store that sells those 6800s ?

[BornAgainPagan]

My BFG 6800 GT OC runs fine at 425 core, Mem at 1.1 Ghz. Great Vid card. Stomps the crap out of my old ATI 9800. Benchemall -All on high detail, Far Cry 1024x768 59.99 FPS, Call Of Duty 1024x768 170.3 FPS, Doom 3 1024x768 87.6 FPS. Haven't run the Half-Life 2 or PainKiller or others yet, but I'm expecting good results from them too. Those were run at 370 core 1.0 Ghz mem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
P4 3.4 Ghz Prescott, BFG 6800GT OC 256 MB, Gigabyte GA-8KNXP, 2 Gb Kingston HyperX PC 3200 Memory @ 2,3,3,7, Audigy 2 ZS sound, Logitech Z-640 speakers, 720 Gb of storage on 6 harddrives - 4 on RAID controllers, Lite-on SOHW 1633S DVD/CD Burner, LG DVD drive, 550 watt PSU, Viewsonic G220f 21 in. Monitor @1600x1200

[Mr_LoL]

A bit off topic but my ultra is smoking crack. Its running comfortably at 475, 1250 on stock cooling and it still wants to go futher. i'm happy :p

[joshuamcdo]

Fear not, as this is a "Far Cry" related issue as none of my other games do this, and I can keep far cry from doing this everytime so far.

If I start a new game, this rebooting problem and the then following " STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078) " windows alert never occurs. When I load a "Saved" game Far Cry loads, and about 5 seconds after the progress bar reaches 100% the machine just re-boots and upon rebooting completion windows comes up with the usual " STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (Q293078) " message. Every once in a while, loading a game just works. I beleive it's after some other application has both initialized and released the video hardware.
If you would like to play your game withOUT the rebooting. So far it hasn't happened to me again if I follow the following steps..

Start a new game, once that game loads, load your game you want to play.. Works for me EVERYTIME. (So far) I get the message that it will overwrite check points and such but if you don't even play the game and load your saved game you will be ok.
Hope this helps...

Joshua McDowell

Linux Networx FE (nana2)

[joshuamcdo]

My above mentioned method failed only 10 seconds after making that last post. Which made me look deeper..
Hence ..
(nana2)
I am not sure how many people this will work for, I know after days of fine tuning and memory dumps and combing over things I finally found a solution to the problem and it works 100% for me.

While looking at one of the dumps I generated, I noticed the last thing I saw was 3 letters that could have been easily overlooked. However, having owned a creative MP3 player, I knew what these three little letters mean. E.A.X. I also knew that this is a function of a "Creative" device, and I also knew I didn't have one in this new system.

So I fired up "Configure Far Cry" and got to looking around... Under sound options, there it was bigger than anything. EAX enabled.. Among a few other things like hardware mixer and such. So I turned everything but the first option off. Fired up Far Cry and it worked.. I thought to myself, this must be one of "Those times" that it works for no good reason.. So I rebooted the machine and fired up Far Cry and again it worked, and has worked over 50 times since then. So as it turns out, MS is blaming a video device driver because it's "the most likely cause" when in fact it is sound related.

Hope this helps someone..

Joshua McDowell

Linux FE