Quote Originally Posted by jumper2high View Post
So I have one of these cards installed in an overclocked i5-2500K based system. The old GPU was an overclocked (and water cooled) GTX460 that's been running stable for over 2 years (since Oct 2010).

I started noticing, after about 20 minutes of gaming (in Battlefield 3 or Anno 2070) that artifacts start appearing on screen. Initially, I assumed it was the drivers since I had the same issue on the GTX460 and BF Bad Company 2 about two years previously, so I waited a bit and tried a few other driver versions.

Having seen artifacts on any driver version I tried, and returning back to the latest WHQL drivers, I set about testing a bit more in Unigine Heaven.

It turns out that if I leave the fans on AUTO - artifacts start appearing on Unigine after a few minutes when the GPU reaches 65?C or so.
After setting the fan to 50% (which ensures the max temps stay around 60?C) I get absolutely no artifacts in Unigine, even after 40 minutes of running it.
Returning the fan back to auto and testing Unigine again shows artifacts once the GPU reaches around 65?C.



I am guessing it's some boost-related throttling going on but I don't really have enough knowledge about this new BOOST technology to deduce what the issue might be. From what I gathered, 70C is the first limit at which the firmware starts throttling, not 65C?

I plan on water cooling the card but I'm hesitant to install the water block on a card that might be faulty only to have to take it all apart once more when it turns out the card is definitely faulty.


Any advice or suggestions are welcome.

Sorry to hear the buddy
Since the gtx570 sli that i had then 580 and now tri sli of gtx680 i NEVER had artifacts even with high OC and modded bioses...i guess the issue comes from ur memory but u can try to unlock kore volts on the bios with KGB editor

I u dont know just open gpuz and dump the bios will be gk104.rom send me a link to it and i will be glad to mod it frok u

Cheers !
Sergio