caught blindsided

[wevsspot]

Beating my head................

 

I don't know of any game that can "overclock" a video card past the pre-programmed vga bios values. Sure you can do that with a 3rd party application like those noted in the previous posts above............ but a game that does it? Maybe I'm behind the times, but someone please educate me on how this would happen?

 

If it were me I'd uninstall the video card drivers and all 3rd party volt/clocking software for right now. After uninstalling the drivers, use DriverSweeper to zap any remnant files, folders, .dlls etc. and also do a manual search of your hard drive and registry for nVidia related entries and delete those. Reboot and let Windows load the default VGA driver.

 

Then, instead of using the very latest nVidia driver I'd scour the nVidia archives and download the last known good driver package for the 9800. Install that one instead and see if your problems have cleared up. Was this a factory overclocked video card to begin with? Did you flash any custom BIOS onto the card when you had it in your rig?

 

[slick2500]

I agree with Wev that sounds like the best thing to do.

[Il_napoletano]

Stonerboy,

Please forgive me for the "fat chunk" ascii binary file, often read as text in a blog. More often, there is a limit to how many characters can be input to a blog file, I think it is only 160 characters maximum on cell phone, & twitter messages.

 

I am a speed typist. I can easily keep up with a 150 word per minute dictation, while I can transcribe from hand written text, to keyboard copy, up to, & exceeding 200 wpm. However, I am a slow speaker! Why? Because I formulate my spoken words, & thoughts, not once, but more than once, before I speak my peace verbally. I do not have to pre-plan my words ahead of time, what I want to say, sort of like "not" memorizing a speech.

 

On the other hand, Stonerboy, I have all of these various limitations, such as the 160 character text limits, that cause me to run together many thoughts, to keep the idea in focus, with as much detail possible, in the shortest text space. The objective is to give the reader all available information to make a judgement on what I am asking, or telling.

 

Stonerboy, when I am dictating from my thoughts directly to the keyboard, most often my mind bypasses the second, or even third, formulation of thought. The input to the keyboard, then contain' fragmented thought, as well as, incorrect "Punctuation, spaces, paragraphs", for the sake of continuity of thought VS character space.

 

Since I actually think slower in mental text, than I physically type, there are times when I actually type the next thought from mentally composing it, before I complete the previous thought in typed text, purely because I have already typed the fore thought, but was already formulating the next thought, resulting in a cross type of text expression. This is a problem, to the untrained reader, but not that much of a problem to a subjective reader. However, there is still a problem with the assembly of the thought, even to the subjective reader.

 

Most outstandingly educated subjective readers, have no problem assembling the text expressions, into processed information that can be used to reach a plausible answer to a question, based on, fragmented information. That is, if the fragmented information contains enough fragmented information to come to an acceptable conclusion.

 

Stonerboy? Are you with me? Do you understand, that I did not intentionally overload your' thought processes with my previously posted text, yesterday?

 

If that be the case, I am not sorry, but I will in the future, consider your' request to place all text into a proper diction state. Not just for you, but for everyone reading my text. Ok? Is that a deal?

 

Stonerboy, I have decided tonight, not to reply to all of the other blog'.

 

While they all have merit, I can not answer every blog for one reason. I have already answered most of the questions asked last night, & as well, the answers were gifted to me by those blog' with out a doubt sent me on the path of the correct discovery. I am only answering your' blog tonight, with the answer to all of the questions you want answered. I found out just what I need to know, to come to a ratified conclusion, to my question' last night. I intend to keep the text answer in context so everyone reading this blog reaches the same understanding.

 

Last night I stated, that I took a #2 single wide gt9800 out of my race car FX machine, & installed it in my child' near FX machine, so she could play games faster in her PC. The gt9800 cards were factory installed in my FX, as SLI bridged 2x512mb. The FX came with settings in the Nvidia control pannel default allow the program (game) to control the video card. I use the FX only for surfing the web cloud, not for gaming! I removed the #2 card, & installed it into my child' PC, say one year ago, so she could play higher graphic level games on her PC. I clean all of the PC' in the house somewhat every 2 months for dust collecting in the heat transfer sinks.

 

Aug. 2012 is the last recent cleaning.

 

A few weeks ago, I gifted her with a high res game, maybe high enough res to cause an overheat of the GPU? Ok.

 

Last night, I requested information from anyone, to tell me the name of the software used to access the Nvidia GPU, thinking the card was overclocked somehow by the game my child was playing when all of this happened. Thank' to this website, someone gave me the software name Evga Precision, along with a bench marking app., ?Ko?, don't remember the name. Without those two app., I would not only have never figured it out what happened, but I could not have reached an answer what to do, so this failure never happens again.

 

The first fragmented answer was? Is the fan 'ramping up'? I noted throughout the history of cards installed in my FX, the fans 'never 'ramped up' so to speak, except when the system was powered up for boot. At this power up level, the fans in the system went to maximum speed for some short period of time. My conclusion was the system was testing the cooling fans by way of bios install hardware state at time of power up. Surely I am correct! My future text in this blog might explain exactly why!

 

The Evga precision told me first, right up front.... The gt9800 video card was set to "manual fan speed". This fan speed was set to 30% speed. Checking the Nvidia control panel, I found the default settings to be controlled by the game program. I went into my FX machine with the same downloaded Evga program, & found the video card #1 set to the same 30% manual fan speed. Both cards came from the factory installed in my FX, with this hidden manual fan setting. So the "ramp up" was not possible under the default factory settings......? Well maybe the 30% on the first card, & the 30% on the second card, might have been good for the games, or programs as a SLI bridged group state, but alone, the #2 GPU was overheated from the manual settings of 30%, & subjected to game overclock, without any control of the cooling fan!

 

That means, if someone used a game fast enough to overclock the GPU while playing the game, the fan would not "ramp up", causing an overheat of the GPU!

 

Any questions Stonedboy?

 

While I thought the card was overclocked at first post to this website, I found out that my child had already benchmarked the card in vista, resulting in a 7.2, while she was playing the game. She paused the game, then ran the vista benchmark, where I originally found the card to be 5.6 or 5.9, on previous vista test. She said she paused the game because it started to lock up, so to speak, how she described it. She knows what a lockup of the video is! She knows how to recognize an impending video failure, as she has 15 years of experience on a hardware computer using every OS. She was telling me it started refreshing, is the right word, or flashing to blank screen, then back to the game screen, over & over again. When it stopped flashing from blank screen to game desktop, the game minimized with a popup from the system tray, stating there was a Nvidia driver update. Click on the update to install. She said, 'she clicked on the install' then after a time spell, the system said the install was successful. Within 5 minutes or less after that point, the PC blue screened. She had not even started to play the game again. It was still minimized.

 

When I tested the card after downloading the Evga app. late last night, I found the card default 30% fan speed on manual, not automatic, or so to speak, ramp up. I then went to my race car, FX, downloaded the app. & tested the #1 video card. I found the first card also set to manual 30% fan speed.

 

No question in my mind, the prog. app. controlled the clock speed, ramping up the GPU & memory clocks, but by factory default of the fan control as in manual setting of 30%, was not able to 'ramp up' the cooling fan to match the GPU load. Am I using the correct terms, so everyone can understand my text'?

 

Stonerboy, I do not want to leave you out of this conversation text. So I want to address you directly with this question, if you would gift me an answer? Are you having any problem with my text, where I am not using the best of the best language, needed to understand my diction, here in this post? Don't be shy. If I am over your' clock speed, please tell me, along with everyone else reading this post.

 

I did not realize the implication in the name I chose to log on to this website, at the time I registered. Underclock is an understatement to behold by the reader.

 

With that said, everybody not in the know, should either go south for the winter, or read this text more than once. I will start with the clock, a divide by 'N' PLL. The divide by 'N', is the key to the whole ball of wax. The PLL is possibly the least understood digital circuit, & is the reason why video cards fail!

 

In the case of my video card failure, it was not necessarily as a result of the fan not being game controlled to 'ramp up', as most games are low profile graphics, but on the other hand, high res games that reset the GPU clock on the fly, called programed game over clocking, that is the second reason behind, failures of a video card of any manufacture.

 

To understand how the PLL divide by 'N' works, one must understand exactly what the relationship between the master clock & the multiplier really means. Master clock, multiplier x = operating clock of the processor. Example: master clock = 6mhz x 12 multiplier = 72mhz GPU. or CPU, a given state. How far can the PLL control this 72mhz state through the divide by 'N' ? 1%? 5%? What is 5% of 72mhz? That is a lot of control at that low frequency! Not impossible? In digital control, this would be just another day, or is it? There still needs to be a a relationship to the output, in this case, the video card, say 1680x1050. Not every clock times x, memory times x throughput bus ratio, will divide to the 1680x1050 with the highest graphic' speed possible. Not only that fact, but this GPU clock/memory frequency must be recorded in a type of flash memory on the video card circuit for it to function in a game controlled environment. The game needs to revert to default after the game is terminated. The Evga program needs to be set by clicking on save. That is if you click to save, then progress to the game for play, the video card is overclocked by the game over the preset of the Evga program, but when the game exits, the video card reverts back to the preset clock saved in Evga.

 

So to speak, if the clock/memory frequencies are not close enough to be locked onto by the PLL, the PLL will try to lock onto the next nearest combination, while running under it's current phase lock. So long as the system video driver does not totally stop, (crash), this close match in the clock/memory of the video configuration will remain somewhat, but not totally stable, under some, but not under all load conditions. This is what causes instability in the video card. Also,the extreme ratio's will fail the GPU from restarting the video driver, but not necessarily cause the GPU to stop functioning while it is running in service before restart. There are times when the video driver will recover from these conditions. The key is restarting. If the PLL is at the wrong phase lock frequency saved in Evga when the PC is shut down, or the system experiences a blue screen crash during a game overclock, the GPU may not start when you reboot the Pc. This likely results in a failed video card. General recovery may not be possible.

 

This is likely what happened to the #2 gt9800 card, as when it blue screened, the GPU was scaled to an overclock condition by the game, & never recovered after the blue screen.

 

 

Underclocking the GPU is more dangerous than overclocking, because the PLL can lock on a smaller margin of frequency, (spectrum bandwidth) as the frequency of clock is reduced. Therefore, underclocking is likely to kill the video card more often than overclocking, given the range of the PLL, if the PLL can not lock while the video card is booting during PC startup.

 

Are you with me Smokeboy?

 

Moral of the story.... If you overclock to play a game? Well that is ok. If you go too far and the card crashes, well that might not be so good. So long as the system does not crash during the overclock, well that is good. But, however, after playing the game under a saved clock frequency in Evga, you need to use the Evga program to reset the video card back to default, before you shut down the PC. This is really the rule to follow.

 

If you do not do that, you risk the possibility of the video card not restarting the next time you boot the system. Most especially if the card was down clocked, but not without the good probability of the card failing on a restart from overclock.

 

Trust me. I am not telling you the wrong information. Those of you that think I am wrong, maybe you think you know more? Do it to it. See for yourself if I am giving you the wrong information. Do a max overclock & save it with Evga, or for that matter, a minimum underclock of slightly better than 8% or more of the default GPU frequency, & see if your' card will reboot, after it has cooled off.

 

From this point on in all of this text, I am issuing a warning to all 'Overclockers', as well as, 'Underclockers'.

 

Do not shut down your' PC without reseting the GPU to default with the Evga control program first and for most. A game could be crashed upon exit, & leave the GPU overclocked without your' knowing it.

 

To do so, as in shutting down the PC with the video card in an overclock state, can risk permanent failure, of the video card, & this is more than just some prank possibility.

 

Any questions Stoned?Blood?

 

your' to prove wrong,

underclocker1

 

not to be rude...but after this I think OCC should start putting character limits on posts..

 

and +1 at Wev

Edited October 25, 2012 by Il_napoletano

[sword_fish]

i remember something during my 9800gt days; could it be something like this?

[Hyper]

i remember something during my 9800gt days; could it be something like this?

 

 

Could be.. You might try (like someone else mentioned) rolling the driver back to an older version I know Guru3d has an arcive of older drivers you could try.

[wevsspot]

Archived drivers can also be downloaded directly from nVidia. It's just kind of hidden in their navigation.................