8800gt issues

[Welshsteel]

Hi there,

My system is as follows:
Gigabyte 965P DS3 rev 3.3
E6600 @ 3.43 + Scythe Ninja
2gig corsair XMS2 800MHz @ 980MHz
600 watt power supply
MSI 8800GT OC edition + HR 03 GT

My 8800gt overclocks to 750/1800/1050 using riva tunner. During stability tests the card is 100% stable - artifact scanner in ATi Tool 3 hours clean. 3D Mark 6 has been run several times and the score averages around 13800. Also tryed other stability tesys such as the Ntune tool which ran fine for 30 mins. Card temps at full load are between 45 - 55.

All that sounds great and my card should be stable. However, within about 5 mins of game play in Crysis, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 the card locks, music freezes and repeats the same sound it stopped at.

If i can run 3D mark 6 and artifact scanner over and over why is my card freezing in games.

I'm fairly new to all this so forgive me if i'm doing something completely stupid.

Can anyone help?

 

[ktr]

Some games are OC sensitive. Does it lock up while running stock?

 

[phanbuey]

I have an 8800GT and it used to 'freeze' when OC'd too much... although i can tell you that BIOSHOCK, in particular, is VERY memory OC sensitive, and i did not know that my card couldnt handle 1000MHz mem untill i played it.

Also, when my GPU clocks were too high, the screen would go blank and the game would either crash or the diver would recover it, but the machine never froze. With shaders set too high (anything above 1836), the screen just corrupted and the machine locked up, and the audio looped on the sound that it was just playing.

ATI tool does not detect when my 8800GT is OC'd too much, and i can run 3dm06 repeatedly with no issues at clocks that would run for a max of 15 mins in a regular game.\ It sounds like a Memory or SHader OC... also i dont think 8800GT's ran at 1800MHz shaders, they run at either 1782 or 1836 or 18XX (whatever next stepping is) use riva tuner hardware monitor (not the OC tab, but the actual Hardware monitor) too see where ur shaders actually are, they may be set too high.

Hope that helps

EDIT: im almost sure its memory, knock your mem down to 990 and try to play, see if that helps. It makes sense since ATI tool stresses GPU but not mem.

 

[Welshsteel]

No the card doesn't freeze at lower clocks.

So is my only option lowering the clocks?

Thats sh*t, might have to solder a resistor on to the phase controller.

 

[Welshsteel]

Or could it just be that my memory is overclocked to much?

Might try lowering it a bit

 

[phanbuey]

yeah man, try the mem first, these cards have crap memory, and alot of 3dm06 and ATI tool and all those GPU proggies are just GPU stressors, theyre too small to use up all 512M of ram, but Crysis and Bioshock use tons of Vidmem, so if thats not stable they will freeze.

Nvidia's drivers recover an overly OC'd GPU, but if the mem goes out your system will crash.

88GT's are known for having trouble at anything at/above 1000MHz, so at 1050 i would put 5 bucks on it.

 

[Welshsteel]

Cheers for the help ill do some testing and post back

 

[Welshsteel]

Ok reducing the memory does work, only tested it on crysis but i managed to play for an hour before getting bored. the card was set at 756/1890/999.

Is there any way of doing a pencil mod on the reference 8800GT's.

I read in another forum that you might be able to pencil between the points 2 and 4 in the photo below. Is this correct?

 

[phanbuey]

I see u started another thread haha...
OK ... so the pencil mod Does NOT work... if you keep reading in that forum (VR-Zone?) they will say that it doesnt work... The Bios flash works marginally.

The best would be to use a hard mod... Which sounds all pain in the a*$ and scary, but its incredibly easy you just need the parts and a volt-ometer, TPU actually has a really great guide (provided by one of our resident badasses).

The volt mod only really works for shaders and GPU, while the vmem mod is virtually useless.. the Qimonda crap chips actually respond LESS to voltage and some get higher clocks by lowering vmem (go figure).

 

[Welshsteel]

I thought the pencil mod was too good to be true.

I have a volt meter, solder iron, 500k, 1000k, 10000k and 50000k ohm resistors.

So i have all the kit but my solder iron is fat as.

Do i need to get a smaller tipped solder iron or some kind of add on tip?

Theres loads of guides on this which i've read so i know the chat.. Roughly

Heres some pics of my solder iron.

 

[Megasty]

PLZ don't try any of those lousy mods on the MSI, you WILL burn it. Don't pencil it, flash it, or hard it. The hard mod works great for the xfx but the MSI uses cheap everything & can't handle the extra volts.

 

[Welshsteel]

Can you expand on that Megasty?

I have just started building pc's and the extra beta would be good.

I never reallised the MSI cards were cheaply constructed all the reviews i read raved about them.

Heres a post with almost the same card volt modded and at 800/2000/950
http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5489277&postcount=41

Will a similar volt mod be a bad idea?

 

[Welshsteel]

Plus. i've done the bios flash!

Before max clock linked with shader was 690, memory 1050.

After max clock 756, shader 1890, memory 999.

Lowered memory cause it was unstable in games.

 

[Megasty]

The two cards I got from MSI were duds. The first wouldn't install right & the second one made my monitor look like a stippling painting. I finally hard modded it to 1.24v & it ran perfect @ 790/1980/1000. I was p'd off to say the least, so I re-modded it to 1.3v & killed it :shadedshu

I didn't even bother to have a funeral for it

 

[Welshsteel]

Well so far this card has been great! Now set at 756/1900/1000

Been playing crysis on high and call of duty 4 with full settings. No probs so far.

score around 13600 now on 3d mark 6.

When you say MSI use cheap everything, what components do they use that are cheaper than other reference 8800gt's? I thought they were all fairly similar.

Did your card die instantly? I've got to admit i am thinking about the volt mod but your recommendation is to leave it?

 

[Megasty]

The MSI I'm referring to is the 4th one from the left:

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=1343&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136

It was more like a pre-release than anything else with an aluminum heatsink & a cheap clear cover. I usually torture test anything I pick up that looks like this. The core & memory was fine but the card just couldn't handle the heat. If your card is fine at those settings I would just leave it. I was trying to get over 800 with 1.3v. It managed to boot into vista but died b4 I could re-flash the bios. My card was made to die :shadedshu

 

[largon]

I have been running voltmodded GT - which I killed with too high VGPU - and a GTS since december.

 

[phanbuey]

Honestly, those are some pretty high clocks with just a bios mod... i dont know about MSI cards but if you do the vmod, keep this thread updated with some pics!

 

[Welshsteel]

Well megasty the card i have is a completely different one.

phanbuey i will update this post if i do the volt mod.

can someone tell me if the solder iron i have is too fat. I posted some pics above.

 

[largon]

Welshsteel,
That solder iron should be small enough. And by the looks of it you have the option to replace to tip with a smaller one.

 

[Welshsteel]

Largon have you experience with the 8800gt volt mod? If so, what card do you have? What are your settings? and is it worth it?

 

[largon]

Got an Asus 8800GTS 512MB atm @ gpu:842MHz shader:2106MHz memDR-2072 totally gaming stable @ 1.42V vGPU and 1.9v vMEM. It gives a very noticeable FPS increase in for example Crysis.

 

[phanbuey]

Got an Asus 8800GTS 512MB atm @ gpu:842MHz shader:2106MHz memDR-2072 totally gaming stable @ 1.42V vGPU and 1.9v vMEM. It gives a very noticeable FPS increase in for example Crysis.

HOLY CRAP ...

Beeeencheees... BEEEENCHEES. por favor

 

[largon]

phanbuey,
These are all on gaming stable settings at 842/2106/2076 @ 1.42v*:
3DMark05: 20425
3DMark06: 15741
FurMark 1.3.0: 3549

I'm horribly CPU bottlenecked in both 3DMarks as my G80GTS 320MB scored 20300 in 05 at much lower clocks...

*edit: Dunno how I thought it needed anywhere near 1.4v to be stable - it's perfectly stable @ 1.28v for 3 hours at these clocks while playing Crysis multiplayer.