HI all,
Just to make things a little clearer... old card is EVGA 660 2GB. New card is 760 4GB. apologise for any inconvenience. my fault I should have been more clear on the old card.
The Description
I purchased an upgrade from my previous GFX card last week and it was delivered on Wednesday. Because I was busy I placed the box in a dry and cool place mainly because it's so fricking hot at the moment. Yesterday I installed the card for the first time and then immediately I noticed there were problems, my system froze and I had to restart my rig. I restarted and looked at the event logs to see what could have caused my rig to freeze but I couldn't find anything related to the timeline when it stopped responding. Then it happened 4 time within a spate of 45 minutes. Again I couldn't find anything within Event logs that could have caused the system to freeze apart from the Event id 41 which is a standard message when your system is closed down without going through the correct process of shutting down.
I also had two occasions where the monitor screen went blank and the fan on the GFX card was on full blast like it was over heating. Which is wasn't because I was monitoring the temperature and it was only at 37C which is basically idle temperature. Because the NVidia 700 series is new the only drivers available are 320.49 which at first I thought was the cause of the problem...I put my other GFX card which I purchased in December 2012 and everything is working fine, Temperature on the GPU was hovering between 38C and 40C because it's very hot at the moment.
The Issue
I ran some tests on my other GFX card and it was fine, not once did I encounter a problem. I am using the same drivers 320.49 as with the 700 series and the system has been on solid for over 2 hours and not once did it freeze or crash. In fact this card has been awesome from day one out of the box and it was working fine and never once encountered any problems. As soon as I installed the new card it basically started playing up within the first 45 minutes of use. I have read on the net there are a few users complaining about the 32.49 drivers being very buggy and causing the GFX card to freeze.
What worries me the most is a statement from NVidia saying that doggy drivers could cause problems with your GPU or even cause serious damage. A brave statement from the #1 GPU organisation saying that their own drivers could potentially ruin your GFX card, especially when you have just put out £238.00 for a new GFX card.
The fact of the matter is this is my second EVGA NVidia Geforce GTX GFX card in 7 months, not because it was faulty, I just wanted to upgrade to the 700 series, but now I am wondering if I have made a grave mistake because in less that 7 days this card has produced a problem. Is there a problem with the 700 series? Or is the problem both GPU and the 320.49 drivers? Combined together would be lethal to say the least. The fact of the matter is that, my other cards with the same drivers works absolutely fine without any freezing or crashing. The new card is freezing and crashing my rig.
Although, I will stress, this is my first 4GB GFX card. I would guess my PSU is more than powerful enough to handle a 4GB GFX card. It's 1200W 1.2KW of power, The entire system is air cooled with high performance Corsair fans throughout the rig which keeps my system nice an cool.
I hate intermittent problems because it's sods law that I could RMA this back to EVGA and they'd test it and find no problem which makes me look a right ****.