new graphics card - interesting choppy framerate problem!

[Deadlight]

Last week, I upgraded from an nVidia 580 to a GTX 660 Ti (using 320.49 drivers, used 320.18 to the same effect). Everything seems to be fine, until a few minutes in - 'in' meaning during a game or a video. I then get EXTREMELY choppy video. The thing is though, as soon as I move the mouse, the framerates go back to the normal - after a few minutes, and I'm back to choppy-land.

If I'm playing a gamepad-controlled game, I'd get the above symptom. If it's a mouse game, I don't. But then I don't have to use the mouse to counter the framerate issue, because the mouse is being used constantly.

BTW video of any format, being fullscreen or windowed.

Asus P8Z68-V PRO
Intel i5 2500k (Thermaltake Frio cooler)
8Gb Patriot RAM
GTX 660 Ti
Asus Xonar DGX
Samsung 840 SSD
2 x WD drives (NOT Raid)

help!

[Octodog]

Have you tried anything thus far (besides different drivers)?
What PSU do you have?
If you drop the old card back in, does the problem persist?
If you haven't already, you could try doing a clean install of the drivers (completely remove the existing ones, then reinstall the new drivers).

[dangel]

For info I wrote a small program to workaround the problem by clicking RCTRL automatically every two minutes for deadlight. This fixes it. Weird.

Not one i've seen before and still no root cause..

[Deadlight]

Indeed It does! Although, as we said, this is no 'fix', rather a 'workaround'.

[dangel]

My guess is it's some kind of idle state kicking in - probably a bug whereby it only monitors the kb/mouse and not other devices. Could well be the video card driver at a wild guess..

[kalniel]

My guess is it's some kind of idle state kicking in - probably a bug whereby it only monitors the kb/mouse and not other devices. Could well be the video card driver at a wild guess..

Good call. Could check by watching clock speeds with GPUz or control panel while watching a video and seeing if there's a correlation with choppiness.

[dangel]

You could use something like EVGA precision to enable an OSD of key factors - GPU clock, GPU usage, FPS, (temp) - if both of these drop off massively at the 4 minute like it would point at the video card (which is the only thing you changed recently aside from the soundcard). I used sw like this for years till I got a LCD with a 40x4 char display which i leave under my monitor to show me the two gpus and cpus stats. Very handy - I still find it useful to know if SLI has cut out or a game isn't supporting it properly (COH2 doesn't currently for example so one GPU sits on 1%).

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/53...ecision-x.html

MSI Afterburner is the same thing too. I've used both.

[Deadlight]

Cheers bud - I'll have a play...

[Deadlight]

Well I can confirm that at 4 minutes, the GPU clock goes up significantly (as does the voltage, but not quite so much). There's your, or mine, loss of framerate. Bizarre!

[Deadlight]

Actually, the GPU does this whenever you leave it alone for 4 minutes, even just in Windows.

[kalniel]

Actually, the GPU does this whenever you leave it alone for 4 minutes, even just in Windows.

And does GPU load go up at the same time (ie, is a background process requesting something from the GPU? Desktop background change?)

[Deadlight]

Nope, not at al. I was monitoring the GPU on an empty desktop.

[dangel]

Driver bug? Post on nvidia's forums and see what gets said..

[stilkun]

Not sure if this relates to you regarding the nVidia 320.18 drivers you have installed: http://modcrash.com/nvidia-display-d...damaging-gpus/

[shaithis]

As dangel says, it's most certainly a power state issue. I'd try the 326.01 drivers to see if they have fixed it.

[Deadlight]

As dangel says, it's most certainly a power state issue. I'd try the 326.01 drivers to see if they have fixed it.

But the latest version to support my GPU is 320.49?