Need Tech Help - GPU Problems
Dream9Studios
Posts: 125
I don't know where else to ask this so I'll ask here since it's related to 3D work. :)
My video card keeps crashing while I'm working. At first it was just while I was working in Poser and now it crashed while in Photoshop. What happens is the screen goes dark (my monitor goes into standby mode when nothing is being transmitted to it and this is what I mean by going dark) and then about 15 - 60 seconds later the screen comes back to life and I get an error message #3 that says the GPU has crashed. I click okay and then my program (either Poser or Photoshop so far) will immediately close.
I've never had anything like this happen before so I don't know what to do. Is my card giving out on me? It's only just over a year old! Is there something I can do to check the health of my GPU or figure out what the real problem is?
Specs: I'm running Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit. I've updated to the very latest Nvidia drivers for my GPU. My GPU is a GeForce GT 430 2GB 128-bit DDR3. I also have 16GB of RAM and a 3.2Ghz x6 processor.
Please help if you can. I'll listen to any and all suggestions!
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Comments
I had that problem with the ATI card I originally put in this machine (I would have gone with nVidia, but at the time they were just pre-Fermi and the available models were much more power hungry). Anyway, I took that as an excuse to swap to an nVidia card and it's been behaving since. It could be adeveloping hardware fault, or it could just be that the card is working loose in the slot - you might, if you are happy doing work in the case, try removing it (be careful to release the clip at the inner end) and reseating it, see if that helps. Also check that the fan is working.
The first thing to check is whether your card heat sink is still doing it's job. So download gpu-Z here, install it and fire it up and check your fan speed which shouldn't be at 0 and your gpu temp
You can log the monitoring to a file so that you can check the log later
According to Nvidia the GT 430 max temperature is 98°C but I doubt it should go so high.
If the fan is the problem then you can change it for a few bucks
Did as Takeo.Kensei suggested. The program says my fan is running at 52% and my temperature is 39C. Too bad, the fan would have been a lot cheaper to replace than the entire card.
I'll try what Richard suggested next and remove then reinsert the card. Sometimes the contacts get messed up and that can be just the trick to correct them. I hope that works...
Only problem is these crashes are so random. I never know when they are going to happen until they do so I won't know if this works until if and when it crashes again. This really has me confounded.
Okay, just had another crash (this time Photoshop was the victim). Here are two screenshots of the errors I'm getting. The windows error (which I almost didn't screenshot in time) pops up first. A few seconds later the next error message pops up and that's when the program crashes. I've searched Google like crazy but can't seem to find an answer for this. I hope someone can make sense of this!
A few other things to try / investigate
- Make sure you have the latest drivers from the nvidia web site for you particular GPU, and update / re-install.
- If re-installing the drivers fixes the problem it wouldn't hurt to do a hard disk scan to determine if there are problems such as bad sectors. "Drivers" after all are just files in the hard disk - if there is a problem that could be the cause of file corruption
- Have you added any hardware recently which could be drawing extra power from the power supply?
- Also inspect the card visually: if you can see the electronic components soldered on the board look for the ones that look like cylinders (these are capacitors). Look for bulges and/or leaking (brown stuff). If this is the case then your card is toast or on it's way. If still under warranty you may be able to have it replaced through the manufacturer
Thanks for the reply!
I had the latest drivers when things started messing up so now I have the very latest beta drivers (released August 27, 2012). I did a clean install of that driver a couple days ago.
I ran a disk scan last week with no problems but I'll do another right now just to be sure.
No, I haven't added any new hardware at all.
As soon as I the disk scan finishes, I'll shut my PC down and inspect the card. Sadly, I think it had a one year warranty and I bought it in August 2011 so it just ran out. I could still try getting someone to call the card's manufacturer; maybe they'll take pity on me. Just need to find out who exactly made the card or call Nvidia.
If it has only started since you updated the drivers then I'd suggest rolling back to the previous driver version (you could try this anyway, newer isn't always better) and judging by the screenshot of the error message it looks like its the driver rather than the card itself.
It would seem that the OpenGL driver and the nVidia drivers aren't working together all that well and is causing a conflict which is causing the driver itself to crash and causing the symptoms you're experiencing.
@spannah
Once my PC cooled down, I disconnected everything and opened up the tower. The card seemed to come out way too easy but that could be my imagination. I inspected the card but didn't see anything leaking or any bulges. It still looks like a brand new card.
From the old installation files, it seems I installed the first set of drivers (the newest official release) back on July 30, 2012. This seems like that's when I started to have problems but I'm not completely sure. I've tried installing the newest beta drivers and they haven't helped. I'll try you're suggestion and roll back to the pre-July 30th drivers.
I think I'll try again to email Nvidia and let them know about this. Maybe they will fix the next set of drivers for this problem in case it is the drivers causing it.
I don't know if this will help of not. I had updated my Nivida GTX460 graphic cards driver the beginning of Aug, and it too kept crashing my card on renders and game play. ... I ended up rolling back the driver to what it was before the update and the crashes stopped.
you may want to try rolling back your driver to see if that helps and then if it still crashes i would contact Nivida.
I get something like this every once in a while and found that dust had clogged the fan intake port. Now when this happens I have a little nozzel that fits my vacuum cleaner and I just suck it clean.
Yeah, while I had my tower open and unplugged, I used one of those air can things to blow all the dust out of the fans. (I think I've got like five fans in this thing because it once got overheated and destroyed a hard drive; NEVER AGAIN!!) The power supply's fan was the worst but it's all clean now.
So far, I haven't had any crashes since I took the card out and put it back in. Sometimes doing that small act will clean the contacts which may have gotten a little dirty or whatever. If it was loose, it's not now. I'll keep hoping this has done the trick. If I get another crash, I'll start updating drivers. Nvidia told me to update my motherboard drivers (I don't mean flash the BIOS). I downloaded the updated drivers but I'm going to wait and see if I need them. For some reason, the thought of updating the motherboard chipset bothers me.
If it was working before you'd better try rolling back your Nvidia drivers. And that's not a good idea to use beta drivers it's usually better to use whql certified drivers
Once you get working drivers, don't change them. As your card is rather old there shouldn't be anything new that could ive you some benefit
I was doing some trouble shooting for a error code at work today on one of our servers and i seen this artical on code 3 errors and i thought of this thread i seen this morning, its give a brief description of what causes the error and few cues how to resolve it.
I hope it helps good luck
http://www.almuseo.com/nvidia-error-code-3.php
edited for spelling 1x times
I was getting ready to rollback my drivers when I thought I would do a system restore in case it was something else I had messed up. One problem; there are no system restore points! I don't understand that one bit. It says that system restore is turned on for the Windows drive and I've seen several programs that I've either installed or uninstalled save restore points before their operations since forever. Where have all my restore points gone to?! This is starting to weird me out. I did a full virus scan a couple weeks ago but I think it's time for another with the in depth settings checked. :(
I doubt that is a virus. You can configure each of your drive to use a certain amount of space for restore points. Check that config to be sure it's not at 0
Right click on "my computer" -> Properties -> System protection
It may also not work if you don't have enough space. I'm not sure cause I don't use that feature
Nope, I checked that and it was at 5% and I have 341GB of 465GB free on my Windows drive so it can't be that. This is all so strange because I usually have no problems figuring out and fixing what ails my PC. This is one time where I'm at a loss. Anyway, I upped the amount of space for system restore to 10% on each drive (since I've got plenty of room to spare) and now it's saved restore points three times so it's working... for now.
On the up side though, I haven't had any crashes (yet) since I took out and reinserted the GPU so maybe it was loose after all. I think I'll still roll back the drivers once my render finishes though. I never did like the idea of having beta drivers on my machine but I did that as a last resort.
Good to hear that is working out better after re-inserting the video card.
Actually one of my first steps in fixing freezes / crashes, video or otherwise, is to re-insert the "expansion" cards and memory sticks, and check cable connections.