Display Driver Not Responding

[Natalia]

I have a new issue that seems to have crept up on me pretty bad. It used to only happen every once in a while, like 2-3 months apart. So prior to the last few weeks, it happened maybe a max of 4 times before.

Here what I experience: I load up a game, play it for about 10 minutes, then the game freezes, then about 10 seconds later, the game minimizes and the resolution and color settings go all the way down to 640x480 8 bit color depth.

Now this happens almost every time I start a game. If I am lucky, and it never does it, I can play all I want. However, once I restart my computer, it all goes back to the same crash-tastic mayhem.

I think it started happening more recently, but I can’t quite remember if it was doing it this bad few days before I water cooled my computer (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2332405#post2332405) a few weeks ago, or if it started after.

But here are a list of suspects:

1- Water cooling (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2332405#post2332405)the two 7900 GTX’s
2- My weird mother board issue post water cooling (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=152086)
3- The fact that the 7900’s are factory over clocked quite a bit and getting tired
4- The fact that I am using hacked 85.94 Forceware Drivers to do SLI on a Intel chipset (although it worked fine for about 10 months)
5- Demon monsters in my case

Also, in case you are curious, it does this in many games, old and new, and I have re-installed my ‘hacked’ drivers 4 times now (from two different zip files).


Here is a list of my hardware:


Asus P5WDG2-WS PRO @ 1.70V

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ FSB 400 8X Multiplier 1.40V

G.Skill DDR2-800 RAM @ 800 MHz 2.30V

Coolermaster Stacker 830

2x Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache

Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W

7x Vantec Stealth 120mm Fan

2x XFX GeForce 7900 GTX @ 690MHz / 875Mhz Memory in SLI Mode

Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality

[nitteo]

The first 4 are plausible, the 5th one not likely.

But, did you happen to install the Monitor Drivers? If so un-install and just have your OS give your monitor a generic driver. That was a problem of mine for a-bit.

[Natalia]

The first 4 are plausible, the 5th one not likely.

But, did you happen to install the Monitor Drivers? If so un-install and just have your OS give your monitor a generic driver. That was a problem of mine for a-bit.

Hmm, I could give that a whirl.

So far another thing I have tested is installing the current nVidia Forceware drivers from their website (162.18). So far no issues.

Oh, and for kicks I tested my AquaMark 3 score before and after the change in drivers.

Before: 176,000
After: 160,000

I thought it would drop more now that SLI is not enabled. Weird.

I will keep running these drivers and see if the issue creeps up.

[Natalia]

Update:

Now instead of the display driver not responding and game minimizing and the resolution and color settings go all the way down to 640x480 8 bit color depth, I get a new can of worms.

the game locks for 15 seconds, then the whole computer reboots. Fun...

[Windog]

Personally I think its No. 5 !:eek:

Could you try clocking the GFX cards back a bit & see if this makes any difference?

[Emerica]

Have you checked the load temps on your GFX cards?

[ColonelCain]

Have you checked the load temps on your GFX cards?

Unless you've got a bad mount, they should be pretty cool. If you do have a bad mount, even giving idle temps would pinpoint it.

[Natalia]

Have you checked the load temps on your GFX cards?

Idle they are arounf 35C, load I think they hit 53C.


Also, I did fix my creepy motherboard issue where it was 'shorting' or 'grounding' out. Seems there was a skiwampus screw messing things up. (Geeze, took 3 hours to track it down too!)

I will now try and test some more games and see if the issue is resolved.

[njkid32]

Natalia, are you running Vista using Aero?

[Natalia]

Nope, XP pro SP2

[njkid32]

I've had this same problem a few times on my laptop but I changed the windows theme and it went away.

[Natalia]

I ran a signle card now for about a week with no problem.

When I went back to the old Modded driver for SLI on Intel, I got horrific results. Now it seems that the driver doesn't work what so ever.

I tried installing it twice, first cleaning with Driver Cleaner Pro, then installing the drivers. As soon as I switch on SLI and launch a 3D appication, the screen has dozens and dozens of lines of smear racing vertically up and down the screen.

Now I guess I will never have SLI again... what did I do?!?

[njkid32]

Natalia, did you test each card separately to see if its one of the cards thats gone bad.. Or even one of the PCI-E slots..

[Natalia]

Natalia, did you test each card separately to see if its one of the cards thats gone bad.. Or even one of the PCI-E slots..

Sorta... I swapped the order of the cards the same time I fixed my motherboard short. Then I ran the 'new' primary one for about the last week all by itself.

I am not too inclined to swap them again given the fact that they have all the watercooling stuff attached to them and the top waterblock doesn't reach down to the second PCI slot.

[Natalia]

But I still shouldn't have this drastic of a change from my previous orrientation.

I mean, before after extended play there would be textures and verticies creating artifacts, but nothing like what it is doing now.

Now as soon as a 3D app runs, there are dozens to hundreds of lines racing up and down the screen.

/cry

[generalpetres]

dont feel bad i personally think its the card. i have a 7900 gt and i also have artifacting and fragmenting on games and every where else. best case scenario is to contact your card supplyer and see if its still under warrenty and rma it for new ones. and make shure your running the 168 driver which is the most current driver out from nvidia.

[Natalia]

Okay, I did some more testing, and it looks like both cards run fine by themselves. Both have same good image quality and same FPS readout.

When I turn on SLI without a bridge connector, the performace of the game drops in half. When I enable SLI with the bridge, the screen goes crazy.

Could the bridge some how have gone bad?

[nitteo]

By the sound of it, it is #4 and #5. Sorry.

Might be a good time to sell your cards and get a "newer" one.

[Natalia]

Okay, more results.

When I have the bridge in, the display of the second card's SLI portion is crazy, without it, no visual problems. If I flip the bridge around, the visual problems look different (thicker solid colors moving slowing instead of lots of thin colors racing up and down).

Here are some numbers too:

With SLI Bridge and SLI enabled:
Stalker 45 FPS
WoW 145 FPS
Aquamark 165 K
Need for Speed 43 FPS

Without SLI bridge and SLI enabled:
Stalker 35 FPS
WoW 77 FPS
Aquamark 171 K
Need for Speed 39 FPS

No SLI enabled at all:
Stalker 28 FPS
WoW 77 FPS
Aquamark 146 K
Need for Speed 24 FPS


I think I need to buy a new bridge...

Which leads me to two questions:

1- Why would the bridge break?
2- Is there a propper orientation for the bridge? i.e. does it matter which end connects to which card?

[Natalia]

Bought a new Bridge, fixed everything nice nice.

All things back to normal and working (though I am sure no one cares).

[njkid32]

Wow, I cant believe your bridge actually went bad.. Glad to hear your all back to normal:up: