Need some help Identifying crashing & artifacts problem - Tried it all! (Resolved)

[Megabiv]

Greetings all, I'll cut to the chase here as I'm getting pretty much to me wits end trying to figure this out. (Apologies for the wall of text)

So here goes, yesterday i tried to play Battlefield 3 and it crashed after about 2mins game time (no visual errors, sound continues and PC simply locks up). So I thought strange and tried Crysis 2 after a reboot. Pretty much same thing, so I started becoming more concerned and tried Diablo 3 (which is what i have been playing pretty much consistently over the last few weeks) and it worked fine, no errors or visual artifacts or crashes. So i tried Just Cause 2, instant hard lock up as before, Borderlands 2 no problem.

So this morning I figured it may be my OC, so i removed it and went back to default speeds on CPU & Ram and tried Just Cause 2 again, seemed okay for 5 minutes play. So I when i then tried Diablo 3 i was starting to get artifacts until it locked up. So naturally I'm thinking my GPU is dead which is a shame since I've only had it under 18 months and not done any overclocking on it. So I Try a few the other games again and they start crashing with artifacts present over the whole desktop/screen and not just the game (i have multiple displays and these also show the same artifacts). Okay so i thought I'd try MSI Kombustor to see what temps are doing and if it causes any problems. Ran perfectly fine no trouble for 10 mins and reached 85'c tops with 75% fan speed. So loaded up a game and bang pretty much instant fail. It was then getting to thwe stage where the computer would start to freeze on the desktop with no programs loaded and I guessed its going to be the end of my GPU.

I then proceed to try something else, I take my 570 and put it into another PC (Q6600 680i board with 64bit Vista Premium). Loaded up windows no problem, this PC didn't have any games installed so i downloaded and tried 3D Mark 11. It completed a couple of runs through this. I then tried the MSI Kombustor again and hoped to see something but again it worked fine. So I ended up installing Steam on this PC to try out Just Cause 2 benchmark. It completed about 80% of these runs with the occasional "display driver has stopped responding by recovered" message but never a crash similar to what i was expecting or had before.

I then removed the PSU from this PC and tried it on my original pc with the 570 back in it again. Loaded up JC2 benchmark and it crashed after about 10 seconds. I tired this a couple of times but couldn't get the benchmark to complete but my desktop stability was back (as in it was no longer simply crashing while idle).

So now even more confused I tried an old 9600GT, worked fine through a few tests and no crashes or errors etc.. So I thought perhaps its the PSU then.
Before I was going to spend money i though i'd try my original system again to be sure. To make sure I didn't have anything to doubt i reset my bios to default settings in case I had part of my OC lurking somewhere. Low and behold it now worked, so I thought I'll try a few Just Cause benches to see if anything occured. Nothing, so problem solved and I played Diablo 3 for around 4 hours straight.

I then tried BF3 and it crashed in 2mins again. Just Cause 2 benchmark, which had been working previously crashed near the end of the bench. So I figured I'll have a look at the CPU and try stressing that in case its a cause. Intel Burn Test Very High stress level completed with no problems and highest temp was 65'c. Okay I'll try Kombustor again. worked flawlessly for 15mins. I'll try Memtest then, passed the test with no errors (note i will be running this again all night for a better test but I had to give it a run through before posting this).

So now I'm really stumped as to what the problem is. This seems to have literally developed overnight as up until then i hadn't had any problems with BF3, Just Cause 2 or my PC in general. I haven't changed any hardware, my drivers are the latest Nvidia WHQL 306.23, motherboard drivers & Bios at latest. Im really really stuck for ideas now as to what is going on.

I'll try some more testing and report back.

Deepest thanks to anyone who manages to read all of the above, but I have tried to be clear as to what I've already done so that we're not doing the same things over and over.

*My Hardware*
MSI GTX570 OC Edition
Asus X58 Sabretooth
Geil Ram 6x4gb DDR3 1600Mhz
X-fi Gamer sound card
Tagan easycon 580w PSU - This PSU is the oldest part of my PC and was bought in 2005
Windows 7 64bit SP1

*Hardware tested with*
Inno3D 9600GT
Q6600 2.4 Ghz
Crucial DDR2 4x2gb 800Mhz
XFX Nforce 680i (latest Bios)
Bequiet dark power 530w PSU
Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit SP2


DX Diag - Below

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 10/6/2012, 20:39:03
Machine name: *****
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/02/11 14:36:59 Ver: 08.00.15
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.1GHz
Memory: 24576MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 24568MB RAM
Page File: 3232MB used, 33332MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode

[Megabiv]

Okay to add some more confusion to this. After posting this thread I tried Diablo 3 again, worked without any trouble. I tried Just Cause 2 and ran 3 benchmarks then played about in it for around 15 minutes again with out any problems. BF3 played fine with out any problems, which is the first time I've managed to get it to work without almost instant crashing when in a game. I played a whole round of Caspian border with 64 players for testing. After this i tried loaded Crysis 2 up and it crashed after 5 minutes of gameplay the same as mentioned above (sound continues video locks and PC has to be hard reset).

I took a look at PSU calculator and after filling in the details it recommends a PSU with 584W to run my system, and then with aging it increases beyond the output of my 6+ year old Tagan 580w. Is it possible that its become too old an no longer supplying enough power to my system on the more demanding titles? It just seems odd that some games run fine, others instant crash and yet I can run Intel burn test & Kombutsor at the same time but can't get it crash (which would be CPU & GPU on full load so typically it should be the most demanding).

*Edit: I ran Memtest86 last night for 8/9 hours without any errors and passed all tests 5 times. So im going to rule out the ram as an issue for the moment.*

*Did some Voltage logs using Speedfan*

While doing these i noticed that my 12v rails (1&2) drop but one drops quite a bit more than the other. Below are some results from the log:

Vcore +12V AVcc Vcore +3.3V +5V +12V
0.94 11.3 3.25 0.94 3.22 5.12 12.02 - Idle load
1.26 10.77 3.22 1.26 3.18 5.17 11.46 - Intel burn test & Kombustor
1.26 10.61 3.2 1.26 3.18 5.17 11.29 - Intel burn test & Kombustor
1.26 10.88 3.23 1.26 3.2 5.17 11.57 - Intel burn test & Kombustor
0.94 11.3 3.25 0.94 3.22 5.14 12.02 - Idle load

I'm not sure how reliable the results from Speedfan are but if accurate it shows my first 12v rail drops very low and beyond the 5%-+ stated. The strange thing is that the system still remains operational, no errors or artifacts.

[Savas]

Try deleting your BF3 profile settings in My Documents (save it if you want to restore it later or if Origin cloud is on next time you go online it should restore it). Then try something called Game-Booster 3. It's basically something that tweaks your settings and if BF3 works after using Game Booster then it must be something inside Windows and you might want to try reformatting your OS.

I had a similar problem and I decided rather than thinking my GPU is going out or something is broken, I gave all my components a good clean and tried again, it worked perfectly and started running at lower temperatures too. Try giving it a quick dust removal and see if anything changes. Check your CPU too.

By what you've told us, if it's not temperature issues that's locking things up and it's not the GPU, then it could be your CPU or mobo.

Have you tried resetting your BIOS? Like restoring defaults or better removing the battery and either clearing it or waiting however long to make sure it resets, (usually 30 seconds).

Tried reformatting your PC? The option to work with a fresh install compared to an install you know 100% has worked before is your choice. But personally I will try everything I can possibly think of then try it again with a fresh new OS install.

[Megabiv]

Well today has been a much much more productive day and I think I've found out the reason.

It seems that MSI released a bunch of OC GTX570's with too low a voltage stored on the Bios for the speeds they were setting the cards at. When I came across other users with the same problem it all started to make sense. I had this card as a replacement for a previous MSI card died after a couple of days. When i got this I didn't seem to have any problems but I thought the card was getting hot and as such ran the card with out its default OC speeds. This week I thought I'd revert back to the OC'd speeds as heat was no longer an issue in my new case and I wasn't noticing any problems until i tried to play BF3/Just Cause etc.

So anyway I tired increasing the voltage to around 1.0 from 0.975 and was still having problems although not as sudden. So I increased it again to 1.025 and at present have not had a single issue with it. I've had BF3 running without issues, Just Cause 2 and Crysis 2 ran without incident.

It seems that this maybe the problem all along and one I've always had but had avoided due to previously running at lower clock speeds. I'll keep an eye on this in case its something else but I'm feeling good about this at the moment.

*Thanks for the dusting tip but I had a new case about a month ago and gave every component a good blast of compressed air (used nearly 2 in total )*

I'm just glad i hadn't jumped the gun and started ordering components. Thankfully the PC World store has a bad selection of parts or I'd might have been fitting a 660ti this weekend as a replacement.

[Oswald]

There is a similar problem with ATI 7870 cards. There are a ton of people posting about it online. The graphics hang, the sound loops and the fan goes up. Most people are trying to lower the voltage. Maybe they should up the voltage?
Who knows maybe you have found the solution?

[Megabiv]

Well since I had increased the voltage I've not had a single issue with ym PC and it's back to its former glory. Might have a look at adjusting the bios so that it no longer requires Afterburner to be stable.