Freezes during Gaming - No idea why

[PeterPwned]

Hello,
my rig freezes during gaming after some time. Sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes one hour. There are no artifacts or the like.
I ran memtest for 7 hours - no errors. My gpus are completely new - dual palit gtx 580s and are running at stock. They max out at 83 degrees. For the purpose of testing whether my 24 hours Prime 95 stable CPU OC caused the problems I reset bios cpu settings, but that made no difference. My PSU is a Corsair HX1000, so my components should be getting enough power.
If it isn't CPU, GPU or RAM, then what else could it be? The mobo? Can I test that?
Cheers,
Mark

 

[Theocnoob]

Please list all parts- CPU, mobo make and model, ie Asus p8p67 pro rev B3, etc
Do you get blue screen? Or the system simply locks up? Or the display driver crashes?

Are these GPUs overclocked? What version of the Nvidia driver are you using?

If you only run with 1 GPU does this happen? Have you tried testing with one card individually, then the other card?

Have you tried a different SLI bridge to see if your bridge is defective? Do you have the cards in the suggested slots? (Some manufacturers want you to use slot 1 and 3 for two cards, not slot 1 and 2)

 

[PeterPwned]

Core i7 930 with CM V8 @ 4 Ghz; Dual Palit GTX 580 3GB; Dual Caviar Black 1TB R0; Corsair Force 120GB running Win 7 x64; Corsair 12 GB DDR3-1600 XMS3; Gigabyte EX58-Extreme; Corsair HX1000 PSU; 3 x 24" monitors; CM HAF-X Case

No, no blue screen. The system locks up, the screen freezes. That's it. Can't do anything and have to restart.

Drivers are 270.61

Yeah I tried testing with individual GPUs, didn't make any difference. Why would it anyway? These GPUs are brand new got them last thursday.

First I had my cards in slots 1 and 2 with an Asus 2-way SLI bridge. The first GPU would get 100 degrees hot so I move the second card to an x8 PCI-E and now they are in 1 and 3, maxing at 80 degrees. Now they're connecting with an Asus 2-way SLI bridge that is longer and flexible. I could also give the gigabyte solid 3-way SLI bridge a try if you think that might help, but I actually thought SLI bridge manufacturer was irrelevant.

 

[PeterPwned]

Okay tried the 3-way gigabyte bridge as well now - didn't change anything. I am now also getting some sort of artifacting in Crysis 2 - rarely smoke just becomes a large hexagon and large surfaces flicker occasionaly. Its still very restricted though - most of the time the image quality is perfect. On top of that windows will only use 8 of my 12gb ram, although all 12 have passed memtest overnight: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=675699
I read that that might have to do with bent CPU socket pins - I was extremely careful, but never say never. Also games worked just fine when the GPUs were in slots 1 and 2. The problem was temp so I moved one card to slot 3. The card did not click upon inserting it into the slot and I had to manually move the switch to make windows recognize the card. That is why I think the PCI-E slot might be defective as well. All in all I think I will have to switch mobos. Do you agree with my analysis?
If yes, then what do you think of the Rampage III Extreme? I'd like a board that is more reliable than this one and that has both slot 1 and 3 running full speed x16.
If no, then how should I proceed?

 

[TollhouseFrank]

does your board let you use just 1 gpu in the possibly defective PCIE slot alone as a single card? If so, do that and test.

Also, try doing a clean reinstall of your video drivers. It has happened to me in the past, as it has also happened to others, that the drivers themselves did something screwy during install that caused issues and a clean reinstall of the drivers fixed it.

 

[PeterPwned]

does your board let you use just 1 gpu in the possibly defective PCIE slot alone as a single card? If so, do that and test.

Also, try doing a clean reinstall of your video drivers. It has happened to me in the past, as it has also happened to others, that the drivers themselves did something screwy during install that caused issues and a clean reinstall of the drivers fixed it.

I have now tried that. Yes it works, but I am getting the same glitches in games that I get in SLI and games crash after little time. I have also tried moving both cards to x16 slots and I have experienced no graphical issues or crashes - I had to shutdown the computer after 5 minutes for thermal reasons though, but the errors I experienced in Crysis 2 disappeared (hexagonal smoke, flickering surfaces). Running either of the cards alone in an x16 slot also worked fine, so I am very much inclined to verify my earlier assumptions.

Although I've only had the cards for a week and performed a fresh windows installation on arrival, I did give this option a shot, sadly without much luck. That did not adress issues.

So to conclude:
- No crashing when there is no card in x8 slot
- Therefore x8 slot is the reason why my pc crashes
- That means I need a new mobo

 

[TollhouseFrank]

good deductive reasoning. hope you can get a good replacement board

 

[kommanderkodiak]

get the msi Big bang Xpower so you can run those cards in x16/x16 and in the future if you wanted to add accelero extreme plus to each you could without any issues

 

[PeterPwned]

get the msi Big bang Xpower so you can run those cards in x16/x16 and in the future if you wanted to add accelero extreme plus to each you could without any issues

Why get the big bang though? I am actually looking at a Gigabyte UD5 or the new Gigabyte X58A OC board.

 

[kommanderkodiak]

Why get the big bang though? I am actually looking at a Gigabyte UD5 or the new Gigabyte X58A OC board.

because you could fit the 580s with 3 slots coolers in SLI without any worries about there not being enough space or them be too close it has all of the same features and more including a dedicated soundcard has more features and is only 10 dolalrs more features including 6 PCIE ports


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...28-422^13-128-422-TS,13-130-289^13-130-289-TS heres the comparison of the 2 boards, its up to you though

 

[PeterPwned]

because you could fit the 580s with 3 slots coolers in SLI without any worries about there not being enough space or them be too close it has all of the same features and more including a dedicated soundcard has more features and is only 10 dolalrs more features including 6 PCIE ports


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...28-422^13-128-422-TS,13-130-289^13-130-289-TS heres the comparison of the 2 boards, its up to you though

Hmm it does look fairly good to me, there is just one thing I don't like - it has no SATA RAID controller according to the comparison. I am running two Caviar Blacks in Raid 0, so the board would require me to buy a raid controller...

And then you only compared it to the UD5. Do you know that this beast is out now?

http://www.gigabyte.us/microsite/265/x58a-oc.html

 

[kommanderkodiak]

Hmm it does look fairly good to me, there is just one thing I don't like - it has no SATA RAID controller according to the comparison. I am running two Caviar Blacks in Raid 0, so the board would require me to buy a raid controller...

And then you only compared it to the UD5. Do you know that this beast is out now?

http://www.gigabyte.us/microsite/265/x58a-oc.html

It supports raid 0 and 1, newegg never seems to get all the specs right. Heres a link to the indepth review of the board so you can compare the 2 yourself but looking at both theyre very similiar. Chances are the BBXP will be significantly cheaper

link: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/MSI-Big-Bang-XPower-Motherboard/1015