GeForce GTS-450 problems ..

[psy_commando]

Hi !

 

My video card is doing weird crap.. But I don't know if I should blame the card or the drivers..

 

Here's the worst of it :

 

I got an MSI GeForce GTS-450 (fermi) Cyclone 1 GB GDDR5, and I'm running the 314.22 drivers. I'm avoiding the latest ones, because of all the issues they caused everyone using them.. We've had report of some drivers killing video cards via sending too much voltage to the GPU core.. Not cool.. But funnily enough, I can't seem to find the articles or threads discussing the issue anymore.. I'm wondering if its not the Nvidia PR damage control team at work there..

 

And also, since maybe last month it started smelling very strong, like soldering flux, or white vinegar mixed with cigarette smoke kind of smell.. Even when the card is cold, and unplugged.

I checked the surface, and there aren't any visible physical damages to any parts around the heatsink.. I recently changed mobo, CPU, and PSU, and the smell stayed, so I'm guessing this wasn't the problem..

[psy_commando]

The core i7s are mopping the floor with the FXes and A series APUs. The newest A-series APUs are better, but since tee Core i series CPUs came out, Intel leaped miles ahead of AMD in the benchmarks.

The A-series APUs are showing promise, but they're not there yet. AMD doesn't dare compare them to the i7s yet. But honestly, I don't think AMD cares about the high-end PC market anymore. It's such a dick-measuring contest with Intel, and one they've been struggling in. They are looking at embedded devices now.

With Jaguar, AMD has found their niche. Scoring the CPU contracts for Sony's and Microsoft's next consoles is huge, and some of the jaguar-based tablets coming down the pipeline are looking to be amazing. Intel really has nothing in this market right now, so it is AMD's for the taking. x86 beats the ever-loving shit out of ARM performance-wise. ARM's advantage has been power consumption, but the Jaguars are amazing pieces of work in that area. x86 tablets are coming, and once they come they will dominate. x86 Android tablets will crush the iPad, mark my words. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see x86 phones before too long.

Not to say you can't build a decent gaming machine on AMD. You can. You just can't build a super-high-end gaming machine on AMD.

So I've heard. Except that all the processors that can beat the usefulness of the fx-83xx piledrivers in multithread are $80-100 more than the FX-8320 (which is basically the more expansive FX-8350 underclocked). I really wanted to switch to Intel, but all the i5s that weren't rip offs were in the $300 CAN, without taxes. I was able to get away with a AMD FX-8320 for ~$185 with taxes.

 

And while its not top of the line, it does a fine job, and with the saved cash I got a better mobo and PSU. Its quite an upgrade from a Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2Ghz.

 

To be honest this was pretty much an emergency upgrade, since my computer was barely working between full system freezes anymore. I blame my old gigabyte board ! If I had the choice I'd have waited for the Haswells, or for the steamrollers.

 

As for the AMD APUs I found them vastly disappointing right now, they appear to be only made for low budget pcs right now. Not that its a bad business decision from AMD, but I'd like to have an alternative to the FXs. Especially given how uncertain the bulldozers lineup are now !

 

And yeah, ARMs are not very powerful. But I think there are still a lot of issues with getting an x86 in a tablet, mostly power and heat. But, I remember hearing Intel boasting that its new haswells were aimed at getting low power consumption.

 

But for the sake of the pc industry, I really hope Intel will keep having competition, because, the price are gonna jump, and there won't be much improvement in the cpu field. Hopefully, my guess is that given how Intel is stuck up on old ideas, for example like locking some of its cpus for overclocking, we might have some newcomers that might take on Intel's market, with quantum CPUs in the near future.

 

Speaking of which, given I just don't understand a single thing about quantum entanglement, and the M-theory, and etc.. I hope I'll be able to program on those things without needing a quantum physics degree to do so XD 

 

And I hope you're right about the IPad ! That overpriced piece of plastic really doesn't deserve its cult. But it seems like Apple only need to create some new random thing to get a bunch of people emptying their bank account for them ! Even if, Apple has nothing that doesn't exist on any other devices.

 

Well they had UEFI, but as far as I care, they could have kept it.. Computer manufacturers are trying to bring back hardware DRMs into pcs thanks to that UEFI bs. If you don't get a valid key issued for the OS you use (not the registration key, but an encryption key that identify the manufacturer), it can't be booted on an UEFI equipped computer.. Hopefully, the Linux guys found a way a way to get a key. That's just a very odd idea. I've heard that Microsoft and the NSA had some role in this..

[LoneWolf]

Depending on the cooling you've had in your case, the solder holding some of the components on can crack. Pretty much what causes the Red Ring of Death or the Yellow Light of Death. On a PC GPU visual artifacting/glitches like that can happen sometimes (My old laptop's GPU used to peak at 90C before I cleaned the fan, giving weird artifacts/glitches like that too). Clean out your case's fans and run a temperature utility. Keep an eye on it. Otherwise it might just be fried. Fortunately most of Nvidia's new stuff is relatively cheap.

 

In short, do some spring cleaning and see if that helps. Depending on the cooling system you have hooked up you might want to redo the thermal paste. Otherwise update to the latest drivers you're comfortable with.

[psy_commando]

Well, I checked the temperatures and they're very good. 40c to 55c at max load. I got 3 fans circulating the air in the case, so its definitely not an heat issue.

 

I also cleaned the heatsink when I upgraded the pc 2weeks ago, and it was pretty clean already after 3 years of use. I got filters on my case so it keeps a lot of dust from entering.

 

Here are my specs :
* MS Windows 7 64-bit SP 1
* AMD FX-8320
* 8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz 9-9-9-24 ( 4x sticks of 2 GB )
* Asus M5A99X-EVO R2.0
* MSI GeForce GTS-450 Cyclone
* 1 TB WD WD1001FALS-75J7B0 SATA HDD
* Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1
* SeaSonic M12 II Bronze 620 Watts PSU

 

No overclocks at all. I'm waiting for my warranty to expire for that

[LoneWolf]

I have no clue then. Update your drivers is p much the best advice I have. Also if you're on Win 7 or Win 8 run your games in compatibility mode for XP. That tends to solve some problems related to 3D rendering.

 

Still no clue on the smell though.

[Arashikage]

Drivers are always always always the first thing to look at.  I don't care if you know that your GPU took a hard fall before installing, it's easier to check your drivers and update them first than it is to rip the entire thing out of the computer and scan it for cracks, or missing thermal paste, or test it out elsewhere.  If your drivers are out of date, weird shit happens, I wouldn't expect Fallout New Vegas to look like that because of drivers though.  Does it do it all the time?  I've had a GTS 450 for a year now, and I haven't encountered that issue with any of my games.  

 

Also you said you had an MSI GeForce, the one I have is Nvidia, is there a difference, or is that just what it says on the card?

[Fox-Shot]

While I don't know anything directly, I've seen some less-optimized games have weird visual issues caused by Windows Updates (Red Faction: Guerilla and video cutscenes in several other games). The fix for Red Faction involved deleting Windows Update KB2670838 (An update for IE 10, given that most people use Chrome or Firefox, you're not really making yourself too insecure by deleting this) and the video cutscene glitch involved deleting update KB2803821 (not sure what this one is for).

[psy_commando]

Thanks for the help guys ! However, I digged up my old invoices, and found that my 3 year warranty on the card was expiring next month ! So I contacted the tech support and setup an RMA. I really wonder how its going to end..  Since my card isn't in production anymore, I wonder what they'll send me as replacement..

 

It turns out I still had my old GeForce 9600 GSO laying around in the box for my new card. And it still works ! Its actually more powerful than I remembered, though, the tech is kinda old and it can't run dx11 games.. But it should do nicely meanwhile my RMA is in transit.. (I don't buy mobos with an on-board GPU, since I always use a seperate GPU, its a big wast of money and features IMO )

 

Drivers are always always always the first thing to look at.  I don't care if you know that your GPU took a hard fall before installing, it's easier to check your drivers and update them first than it is to rip the entire thing out of the computer and scan it for cracks, or missing thermal paste, or test it out elsewhere.  If your drivers are out of date, weird shit happens, I wouldn't expect Fallout New Vegas to look like that because of drivers though.  Does it do it all the time?  I've had a GTS 450 for a year now, and I haven't encountered that issue with any of my games.  

 

Also you said you had an MSI GeForce, the one I have is Nvidia, is there a difference, or is that just what it says on the card?

Yep. But I tried several versions of the drivers before coming here. Plus, when I used the GeForce 9600 GSO with the same drivers and everything, all the artifacts were gone, and I played for like 4+ hours unlike the 1-2 hours it took for  the artifacts to popup on the other card. And this card runs much hotter, 75c at load unlike 55c for the gts450.

 

And all gts450 are made by Nvidia, they're the graphics chip manufacturer. They manufacture all the Nvidia chips that the video card manufacturer uses. MSI, EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, etc, uses Nvidia's chip and assemble them on a PCB board, with fans and anything else they want. Nvidia stopped making their own video cards a long while ago if I remember correctly, and that is if they did make video cards..

 

While I don't know anything directly, I've seen some less-optimized games have weird visual issues caused by Windows Updates (Red Faction: Guerilla and video cutscenes in several other games). The fix for Red Faction involved deleting Windows Update KB2670838 (An update for IE 10, given that most people use Chrome or Firefox, you're not really making yourself too insecure by deleting this) and the video cutscene glitch involved deleting update KB2803821 (not sure what this one is for).

I never had any issues with guerrilla, besides it being too short   ( Too bad they decided to scrap all the good from guerrilla and make a bad game after.. They actually said they wouldn't make anymore redfaction games.. )

But now the games works perfectly on my old Geforce 9600 GSO !

[DZComposer]

I remember having a machine back in the 90s that had a card made by Diamond with an nVidia GPU. That was back when the nVidia RIVA GPU was all the rage for not requiring two cards like the 3DFX cards did. Back then PC gaming required one card to draw the screen and a seperate 3D GPU card. Then nVIDIA and ATi came on scene with their integrated cards and destroyed 3DFX.

[Fox-Shot]

I remember having a machine back in the 90s that had a card made by Diamond with an nVidia GPU. That was back when the nVidia RIVA GPU was all the rage for not requiring two cards like the 3DFX cards did. Back then PC gaming required one card to draw the screen and a seperate 3D GPU card. Then nVIDIA and ATi came on scene with their integrated cards and destroyed 3DFX.

That sounds a lot like how the Sega 32x worked, where most of the 3D work was on the 32x and the background layer was done by the Genesis/Megadrive itself.

[psy_commando]

I once had a riva tnt ! And I was really annoyed when it couldn't run Deus Ex properly when it got released in 1999 XD

[AAAA]

You are on an amd rig, I like that I'll always be loyal to amd.

That said.... Ati...

ATI is AMD it out performs nvidiaand is generally cheaper.

Your card sounds fried or well partially anyway it could possibly be drivers but unlikely in today's day and age

Uninstall remove the card boot up off the inboard output. Then reinstall the card and reinstall the drivers.

Be sure you don't have any bad capacitors

A good one will be smooth on top a bad one will be raised

If they are bad you can fix it easily with a solder gun and some caps from RadioShack

But if it's a cooling problem it's likely to reoccur

I always remove the stock cooler add some artic silver and a better heat sink and fan...

Also consider a blower card that takes the place of one of your io shield card expansions

I should of read the other posts to see if this was resolved but eh

Nope

Good luck

Haha ... SFO

GoodLuck....

[psy_commando]

Well, actually, I stick with amd because all the equivalent intel cpus are insanely overpriced and restricted.. And you're paying for a on-cpu video card as well, which I won't ever use..

The only reason I'd ever want an intel cpu is to get faster video encoding, and because some lazy programmers have made tools and libraries that only work properly on intel cpus..

 

And it appears the card was physically damaged.

But it could have been the drivers. Nvidia's drivers are becoming extremely unreliable and actually worst than amd/ati 's own ! You should check the forums over there !

 

And I don't have an on-board video card. Its a waste of board space and money.

 

I didn't have any bad capacitors, besides, the caps on that card are solid-state, so they tend not to blow up as much.

 

And I'm not touching soldering for a while ! My $10 20watts iron doesn't melt solder on its tip properly. Even after 15-30 minutes of letting it heat up. It melts solder, but not on the tip, or it very rarely stays hot after tinning..  Even after cleaning the head in brass shavings and then shocking it on a damp sponge.. And it just constantly makes cold joints, unless I literally melt the pcb.. I tried 3 different tips and all got the same issue.. Plus that damn soldering flux in a felt pen kept leaking out on my desk a the slightess touch, and it took 3 weeks to get rid of the smell.. (and its not even as soluble as they advertised, even isopropyl alcohol doesn't clean the sticky residues.. )

 

It was definitely not a cooling problem unless video cards can overheat under 60c .. I logged the temps the whole time I tried to reproduce the issue.

I don't bother changing the thermal paste on my gpus. First, because it voids your warranty if they notice. And then because, it was reported that they actually put better thermal paste than artic silver in there depending on the brand and model.

 

And I forgot to post an update, but the MSI tech support were actually really helpful ! They expectedly had no more GTS-450 in stocks, and at first said they'd replace it with a GTX-460.. But it turns out that replacement card was not really as capable as mine, it lacked a second dvi output, had a terrible heatsink, and used to be sold for less than what I paid for my GTS-450.. And their policy is to replace the card with something of either the same, or higher value.

 

So, I was pretty pissed and sent them an email, mentioning that. He asked me what model he could get me instead.

I didn't really went overboard though, and instead asked for a GTX-650, which is sold at the exact same price as my old card, and has all the same features including the same cooler. But finally, it seem there was only a GTX-550 available, so I settled for that ! It barely took a day to ship the replacement !

 

The card operates in the same temperature range, 40-60c. Thanks to the cooler.

http://us.msi.com/product/vga/N550GTX-Ti-Cyclone-II-1GD5-OC.html

 

My only worry is those two exposed coils, that look kinda cheap.. Those things tend to whine under load when they're cheap.. The old card had some better quality ones.

But anyways, we'll see how long it will hold together.

 

Here's the old card for reference :

http://us.msi.com/product/vga/N450GTS-Cyclone-1GD5-OC.html

 

It actually makes a huge difference in-game compared to my old card.. And it not longer smells weird around my pc ! So I guess my card was quite broken, given that there's not much differences physically..

 

But the best of all is no more desktop freezing, no more weird artefacts in TF2. And part of the graphic glitch have disapeared in FalloutNV as well. Though, in the case of Fallout NV I found out it was because I left the ENB injector on, and ENB is quite broken with FalloutNV. It does 90% of what was on the pic I posted. It also mess up animations, and so on.. 

I also use the driver that came with the new card, the 280 one. I'm afraid of updating and getting those stupid desktop freezes again..

The only suspicious graphic issue I have now is when running a java desktop app with a gui. The interface gets all messed with random parts rendering at the wrong place..

 

But it could totally be oracle's fault ! Because they suck, like a lot ! XD

(I want SUN back )

[DZComposer]

The core i7s are mopping the floor with the FXes and A series APUs. The newest A-series APUs are better, but since tee Core i series CPUs came out, Intel leaped miles ahead of AMD in the benchmarks.

The A-series APUs are showing promise, but they're not there yet. AMD doesn't dare compare them to the i7s yet. But honestly, I don't think AMD cares about the high-end PC market anymore. It's such a dick-measuring contest with Intel, and one they've been struggling in. They are looking at embedded devices now.

With Jaguar, AMD has found their niche. Scoring the CPU contracts for Sony's and Microsoft's next consoles is huge, and some of the jaguar-based tablets coming down the pipeline are looking to be amazing. Intel really has nothing in this market right now, so it is AMD's for the taking. x86 beats the ever-loving shit out of ARM performance-wise. ARM's advantage has been power consumption, but the Jaguars are amazing pieces of work in that area. x86 tablets are coming, and once they come they will dominate. x86 Android tablets will crush the iPad, mark my words. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see x86 phones before too long.

Not to say you can't build a decent gaming machine on AMD. You can. You just can't build a super-high-end gaming machine on AMD.