GTX280 Starts but Hard Locks During Games!

[Thorn2008-2]

Bought my Asus GTX280 Last week, bought a new PSU to power it but I am having after-install issues. It booted just fine, I got into Windows, reinstalled the display drivers, used driver sweeper of course, and put on Far Cry 2. Not even 3 mins into the game the PC just hard-locks the Screen is frozen and the only way to restart is powering the machine off. Tried some other games like Crysis Warhead, Oblivion etc, same thing, gets a few mins into the game everything is running smooth and the screen hard-locks again!

I even replaced the GTX280 because I thaught that was the issue, obviously not, still doing it! Both 6 and 8 pin connectors are installed, fan seems to be operating normally, this doesn't make sense! If I put my old 8800GTS in the problem go's away! (hence the reason I thaught it was my GTX280 causing the issues, obviously not!.

Please before I go get a refund or sell my new GTX280 can someone please help me find out what is going wrong? Is it a software thing?

It isn't heat related btw I don't believe, I installed the Asus Smartdoctor software and it is reporting that the GPU is at 48 Celsius degree's while Idle, I can't see it warming up 60 degrees while ingame?

The rest of my specs are in my sig! (and yes I have the latest Motherboard drivers installed)

Any ideas what is causing it to Hard-Lock?

Thanks

[lee63]

Try setting you CPU back to default speeds and see what happens, even though its a small OC Farcry 2 is pretty heavy on the CPU. If your GPU is OCed it wont like that either.

[Thorn2008-2]

Originally Posted by lee63

Try setting you CPU back to default speeds and see what happens, even though its a small OC Farcry 2 is pretty heavy on the CPU. If your GPU is OCed it wont like that either.

Yeah tried doing that, put all speeds back to stock, same thing happened? I also tried the card with a few other games, did the same thing in those too? Trying to figure out if it is a software issue, really don't want to reinstall Windows or anything like that though! It's really weird though, I can browse the internet, watch DVD's, all fine but put a game in and WHAM hard-lock!

Not sure what else to try?

[rage10]

it could be your psu as unlikly as it seems. if you can, try using another one to see if your computer still crashes.

[LurkerLito]

I keep thinking maybe it's your PS or how you connected the power to the card. I ended up buying a 260GTX (216core) card because I didn't want to buy a new PSU.

Are you sure the power connectors going from the PSU to the Video card are from different rails? IIRC BFG says their 280GTX requires a total of 42 amps over 2x12v connectors so if you are just splitting one from a single rail there is a good chance there just isn't enough power when it starts to really work in the games. My PS specs says I can only do 19A over a single rail so I max out a 38A over 2x12v rails, so the 280GTX was out unless I was willing to buy a new PSU.