Computer acting strange since I purchased GTX 670

[Chaoss]

A few things have happened since putting the Gainward GTX 670 into my computer. The first is there was some very VERY slight artifacting on the desktop on Windows with my desktop at 114hz (my monitor will do 114hz max), it went away once I lowered the refresh rate.

My friend was using my computer while I was asleep and I'm not sure what he did but the computer went into a loop of rebooting itself and making 3 beep noises, turning off then starting up this happened 6 or 7 times before I climbed out of bed to see what was the matter, I have a suspicion he was trying to shut it down as he wanted to get some sleep and tried to put it into sleep mode but I'm not sure :/. Anyway after unplugging it and promptly plugging it back in the thing booted up fine. It's been running ok apart from the next problem.

In Source based games (Counter-Strike Source, Garry's Mod etc) when moving, I have some strange tearing artifacts, now you can hardly notice them but they are there if you look for them. it's like a vsync issue but worsened, I will provide a screenshot of what I mean below (obviously this will be photoshopped as I can't grab a shot of it). This only happened in Source games and Arma 2, Heaven Benchmark etc are fine.

I figured I can live with that, and was happily browsing around on the internet today, then all of a sudden without warning the computer hard froze. I wasn't doing anything stressful just reading a forum and listening to dark ambient.

I restarted the computer and so far it's been fine. I have gone into the bios and set the ram to "auto". the bios puts incorrect settings on the 'auto' selection, the timings for the ram are 9-9-9-11 running at 1600Mhz, but the bios auto-configures it to 9-9-11-11 at 1333Mhz.

Also I only just noticed but the bios had my cpu running at 4Ghz so I manually put it back down to it's rated speed - 3.20Ghz. The computer has been running fine 24/7 for the last 2 months without issues. These problems only started when I put this card in.

Anyway so far so good, I was playing some Garry's Mod and for about 30 seconds the sorting order of the map messed up, I could see bits of the map through other bits, there were no other artifacts and no slowdowns. The computer has so far otherwise been running fine. This COULD be a buggy Garry's Mod (for those of you who play it here you know how buggy it is). and in Single Player when I launch the default map it looks full bright (no lightmaps). Again I'm not sure if this is Garry's Mod or me.

I have kept the box and stuff for the graphics card, however the ram since it has been working well for close to 2 months now I have discarded the boxes for the ram. I have very very limited space and simply do not have the room to keep boxes lying around.

Something else I've just tried is Portal 2, I was not getting the vsync issues, I was however getting quite bad framerate.

I could really really use some input on this one because It has me well and truly stumped.


My specs are...

Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i3/i5/i7 @ 3.20GHz 37 °C i7 3930k
Sandy Bridge-E/EP 32nm Technology
RAM
31.9 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-11-24) Corsair Vengeance Black (2 x 16GB packs, so that's 8 x 4GB sticks)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. X79-UD5 (SOCKET 0) 32 °C
Graphics
Standard Monitor (2560x1440@100Hz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Hard Drives
234GB ATA Corsair Force 3 SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
59GB ATA Corsair Force 3 SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
977GB FUJITSU MARVELL Raid VD 0 SCSI Disk Device (SATA) Raid 1
Optical Drives
PIONEER BD-RW BDR-206 SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio





edit: The problem with low fps in some games was adaptive sync half refresh rate in the control panel. that's one problem solved

[kalniel]

So from the above, you basically have problems with just one game - garry's mod? My initial suspicions would lie with software - either the game, or drivers for your computer. Verify steam cache to check the game files, and try the latest drivers from nVidia. The card is very new, so drivers might take a while to catch up/fix problems.

If you want to rule out hardware then try to reproduce problems with other games and/or benchmark suites such as 3dmark11.

[Chaoss]

So from the above, you basically have problems with just one game - garry's mod? My initial suspicions would lie with software - either the game, or drivers for your computer. Verify steam cache to check the game files, and try the latest drivers from nVidia. The card is very new, so drivers might take a while to catch up/fix problems.

If you want to rule out hardware then try to reproduce problems with other games and/or benchmark suites such as 3dmark11.

I have figured out the vsync issues, I am now more worried about the freeze I had earlier, I'd like to find out what the source of it was, It's not frozen yet and I've been on the pc for a few hours

I also ran memtest for a few hours didn't get any errors

[blueball]

did your friend OC your PC?

[Demonwar]

You haven't said what you are using to power this. Possibly that it's a power issue.
Did the Memtest complete?, otherwise it's no point it running it as the problems could lie on any one of the sticks. Best to run it on pairs at a time to start with as well.

[Chaoss]

You haven't said what you are using to power this. Possibly that it's a power issue.
Did the Memtest complete?, otherwise it's no point it running it as the problems could lie on any one of the sticks. Best to run it on pairs at a time to start with as well.

Yes it completed without trouble, and the power supply in some unheard of brand gaming power supply I bought from PC World HOWEVER it is modular, 1000w and is very very reliable. Think it was built by a reliable manufactor but rebranded for sell at PC World. The brand name is not on the power supply. This thing has lasted me 2 years now and given me no trouble what so ever.

[eagle123]

check the psu is providing enough juice to the graphic card, i wold suspect the psu is not up to task, i wouldnt trust a genereic psu to power up components that are worth more

[holygamer]

You could always format your hard drive and re-install Windows or restore a backup image when everything was working fine. Sometimes you get problems without even doing anything wrong and a re-install fixes everything.

[blueball]

did your friend OC your PC?

bump?

[Disturbedguy]

You could always format your hard drive and re-install Windows or restore a backup image when everything was working fine. Sometimes you get problems without even doing anything wrong and a re-install fixes everything.

Well no, in this case the user added the GTX670 / his friend did something and the PC is acting strange.

[Demonwar]

Yes it completed without trouble, and the power supply in some unheard of brand gaming power supply I bought from PC World HOWEVER it is modular, 1000w and is very very reliable. Think it was built by a reliable manufactor but rebranded for sell at PC World. The brand name is not on the power supply. This thing has lasted me 2 years now and given me no trouble what so ever.

Trouble is without a brand/model number you can't really judge on the quality of the PSU, it might be from a good supplier but you are sort of picking that out of the air. Even from a good supplier they have probably cut back on the quality as they aren't supporting it afterwards and their reputation isn't going to get damaged.

Yeah no trouble until you have ramped up the pull on the PSU, which probably can't pull the required and stable power. What graphics card did you have before?

Maybe if you still have the old one run it in for a week to see if the problems reoccur.

[Chaoss]

Trouble is without a brand/model number you can't really judge on the quality of the PSU, it might be from a good supplier but you are sort of picking that out of the air. Even from a good supplier they have probably cut back on the quality as they aren't supporting it afterwards and their reputation isn't going to get damaged.

Yeah no trouble until you have ramped up the pull on the PSU, which probably can't pull the required and stable power. What graphics card did you have before?

Maybe if you still have the old one run it in for a week to see if the problems reoccur.

The problem has NOT reoccured since.... however I did 'nudge' my pc quite hard the other day and it froze up when I nudged it. Also no my friend knows how to go on Facebook and that's pretty much it. I do believe he MAY have put my computer into 'sleep' mode rather than shutting it down and that may have caused the no post

[pc_monkey]

check the following:
PSU
Undo overclock on your graphics card if you have
Overclock your cpu
Just use x2 RAM modules (dual channel) - this is what solved atuttering for me when I had the Windforce 670

[royalpasion]

Also try to benchmark you card and compare, if there is a significant difference between other gtx 670.
it may be your card and get a RMA.

If not do as the guy above me said.