Scoob
New member
Hi all
I'm attempting to assist a friend by testing his faulty GTX 480. I've already gotten further than he'd managed testing-wise.
Here are the symptoms he suffers with and I, largely, have managed to reproduce in one of my rigs.
PC Posts just fine, it's not failed this step yet. I can go into the BIOS without issue.
What usually happens is the screen just goes blank before the logon prompt, before the mode switch to the desktop resolution. Though a couple of times it's done the mode switch then frozen. That's just the display freezing mind, NOT the PC!
Rarely the PC will get to the logon screen and let me log in. But the ONE time that worked I had no mouse! The cursor was there actually, but invisible. Weird.
What I found DID work, though not reliably, was the following:
. Boot the PC to the login screen - if it makes it! Repeated reboots usually get me there eventually.
. Next Remote control the PC to login - working!
. Check all settings remotely - nothing untoward here.
. Switch back to PC directly and login to override remote session.
. IN!!
Once I was IN the machine worked fine. I ran Heaven 2.5, 3D Mark Vantage etc. all without issue. Well, I say without issue but these 480's are BLOODY HOT. I ended up (on my friends advice) setting the fan to run at 90%...BLOODY LOUD! Really, louder than my rather cheap Vacuum cleaner! Lol. Still, this kept the temps to no more than 61c in the tests I was running, they'd hit a high of 85c previously.
So the GPU, when stressed, was perfectly stable. However, as soon as I reboot I start getting the startup issues once again *sigh*
Some additional details:
The "donor" PC I'm testing in usually runs my GTX 275 using 280.26 drivers just fine. I have HDMI audio DISABLED, well, the drivers aren't even installed and never have been.
When I first plugged in the 480 I had a BIOS warning saying the CPU had been changed - usually, for me, a GPU swap just works. Once I finally got into Windows using the remote method, I noticed that the picture quality was...odd... a classic symptom of HDMI audio being enabled...which it was I found out...without a driver being present! I managed to disable it...sort of. I mean, it wasn't set to use HDMI audio, there was NO driver present, yet I still had that odd "high contrast" effect you get with HDMI audio enabled.
I swapped back to my old GTX 275 - no CPU change BIOS warning, it just worked. Perfect picture, not even an option for HDMI audio - basically exactly how the PC was before the 480.
So, in summary, I have a GTX 480 here that rarely let's you boot into Windows, though actually the PC is just fine despite the display being either blank or frozen just prior to the login screen - i.e. screen has got a patterned light-blue windows background, but no password prompt box yet. I can remote to the PC, login and then flip back to it directly and it will usually be fine and bench stable. Yet another reboot / even a logout will see it fail again.
It suggests some weird driver issue, yet the same driver runs my GTX 275 just fine, as well as an 8800GT and a pair of GTX 570's in other machines.
Any ideas? I'd like to get this working for my friend, and was encouraged when it sat there benching for a couple of hours the other day, but it just won't let the PC boot properly without remote help.
I thought it was linked to the Startup mode switch when desktop resolution is first applied, however Vantage switches res (flicks back to desktop for a moment) during it's tests and it was just fine.
Note: my friend suspected some Power issue, in fact the PSU in my test PC (an iCute 1000w) used to be his but he changed it as it wasn't really up to SLI (only 4x 12v rails with 20a each) but it seemed fine during my own benching of a single card.
I'd welcome any input!
Oh, one final thing, this GPU was under water for a while as part of an SLI setup. It always ran cool but the system overall was never really stable. We tried swapping out cards as you do and found THIS card to be the unstable one. My friend got a 3rd 480, popped the block on it etc. and now runs flawless SLI, so this card has definitely been the culprit all along. This 480 has the old air cooler put back on it. I may disassemble once again to inspect things - I wonder if a dry solder joint might be the cause of these woes? Or at least a contributing factor.
Cheers,
Scoob.
P.S. My friend is ALWAYS the one to get weird, quirky issues - stuff for me, generally, just works. Maybe I should call him static boy or something...lol.
I'm attempting to assist a friend by testing his faulty GTX 480. I've already gotten further than he'd managed testing-wise.
Here are the symptoms he suffers with and I, largely, have managed to reproduce in one of my rigs.
PC Posts just fine, it's not failed this step yet. I can go into the BIOS without issue.
What usually happens is the screen just goes blank before the logon prompt, before the mode switch to the desktop resolution. Though a couple of times it's done the mode switch then frozen. That's just the display freezing mind, NOT the PC!
Rarely the PC will get to the logon screen and let me log in. But the ONE time that worked I had no mouse! The cursor was there actually, but invisible. Weird.
What I found DID work, though not reliably, was the following:
. Boot the PC to the login screen - if it makes it! Repeated reboots usually get me there eventually.
. Next Remote control the PC to login - working!
. Check all settings remotely - nothing untoward here.
. Switch back to PC directly and login to override remote session.
. IN!!
Once I was IN the machine worked fine. I ran Heaven 2.5, 3D Mark Vantage etc. all without issue. Well, I say without issue but these 480's are BLOODY HOT. I ended up (on my friends advice) setting the fan to run at 90%...BLOODY LOUD! Really, louder than my rather cheap Vacuum cleaner! Lol. Still, this kept the temps to no more than 61c in the tests I was running, they'd hit a high of 85c previously.
So the GPU, when stressed, was perfectly stable. However, as soon as I reboot I start getting the startup issues once again *sigh*
Some additional details:
The "donor" PC I'm testing in usually runs my GTX 275 using 280.26 drivers just fine. I have HDMI audio DISABLED, well, the drivers aren't even installed and never have been.
When I first plugged in the 480 I had a BIOS warning saying the CPU had been changed - usually, for me, a GPU swap just works. Once I finally got into Windows using the remote method, I noticed that the picture quality was...odd... a classic symptom of HDMI audio being enabled...which it was I found out...without a driver being present! I managed to disable it...sort of. I mean, it wasn't set to use HDMI audio, there was NO driver present, yet I still had that odd "high contrast" effect you get with HDMI audio enabled.
I swapped back to my old GTX 275 - no CPU change BIOS warning, it just worked. Perfect picture, not even an option for HDMI audio - basically exactly how the PC was before the 480.
So, in summary, I have a GTX 480 here that rarely let's you boot into Windows, though actually the PC is just fine despite the display being either blank or frozen just prior to the login screen - i.e. screen has got a patterned light-blue windows background, but no password prompt box yet. I can remote to the PC, login and then flip back to it directly and it will usually be fine and bench stable. Yet another reboot / even a logout will see it fail again.
It suggests some weird driver issue, yet the same driver runs my GTX 275 just fine, as well as an 8800GT and a pair of GTX 570's in other machines.
Any ideas? I'd like to get this working for my friend, and was encouraged when it sat there benching for a couple of hours the other day, but it just won't let the PC boot properly without remote help.
I thought it was linked to the Startup mode switch when desktop resolution is first applied, however Vantage switches res (flicks back to desktop for a moment) during it's tests and it was just fine.
Note: my friend suspected some Power issue, in fact the PSU in my test PC (an iCute 1000w) used to be his but he changed it as it wasn't really up to SLI (only 4x 12v rails with 20a each) but it seemed fine during my own benching of a single card.
I'd welcome any input!
Oh, one final thing, this GPU was under water for a while as part of an SLI setup. It always ran cool but the system overall was never really stable. We tried swapping out cards as you do and found THIS card to be the unstable one. My friend got a 3rd 480, popped the block on it etc. and now runs flawless SLI, so this card has definitely been the culprit all along. This 480 has the old air cooler put back on it. I may disassemble once again to inspect things - I wonder if a dry solder joint might be the cause of these woes? Or at least a contributing factor.
Cheers,
Scoob.
P.S. My friend is ALWAYS the one to get weird, quirky issues - stuff for me, generally, just works. Maybe I should call him static boy or something...lol.
