GW + 9800 GTX+ = HW crash

Hello! I seem to be having a problem that others have had in this forum.

For Xmas I received a new PNY GeForce 9800 GTX+ and Guild Wars doesn't seem to take kindly to it. I can play Guild Wars from 1 min to several hours before my system black screens and reboots.

I've played Guild Wars for several years now on my old GeForce 7800 GT and the only change I've made to my system before it started crashing was installing the new card.

So far Guild Wars is the only game/program that makes my computer crash with the 9800 GTX+

I've tried the 5 latest drivers for this card, all to no avail; it doesn't seem to be a driver issue.

It can't be a power issue as I'm running a 700W PSU with 4 12V rails and have double checked that I connected the power correctly for my PSU.

It's not a temperature issue because the card never gets over 60C (as well as all the other components) and the crash can occur right after a cold boot.

Doesn't seem to have anything to do with processor affinity either.

I've tried running GW in dx8 mode and it crashed right away.

It seems like GW just doesn't play well with this card. I need to get this fixed soon or I'm going to return the card before the return date is up.

Here are my system specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium w/ latest updates
Intel Core 2 Duo 6700
ASUS P5B-Plus Motherboard
PNY 512MB GeForce 9800 GTX+
2x 1024MB Corsair XM2 RAM DDR2 800Mhz

Current drivers:
Nvidia 177.79 (off of disc that came with card, tried also 178.13, 178.24, 180.48, and 180.84beta)
DirectX 10

Any help/ideas you may have would be very much appreciated.

probably won't matter, considering what you have already done, but dic you try forcing GW to run with one core?

It seems as if the 9800 GTX and GW do not like each other very much, esp. with Vista.

Yeah I changed the affinity settings for one core and it still crashed. This used to be a problem in general with Vista but I have the latest updates.

And as a general update I lowered all graphic settings in GW to the lowest settings and I still crashed.

I'm going to be e-mailing Anet support, PNY, and Nvidia to see if they have any insight on this bug. First (something I neglected to do) I'm going to try to re-install DirectX.

There is no known bug in our database regarding this. I forwarded a description of this to the help desk. They should have something for me tomorrow.

Well I have a BFG 9800GTX OCX and Windows Vista x64 and don't have any kind or problems. That's some weird stuff you got there, no error message, nothing? You can always try installign PNY driver's instead of Nvidia's, most likely it won't do anything but it's worth a try. Also, uninstall the old driver's using DH Driver Cleaner, you'd be surprised the amount of problems I solved using that software.

If nothing works, I say you go for a format and reinstall Windows before returning the card. That's a monster you have there, just because GW doesn't work properly on it you shouldn't return it if you play any other games... But it's your choice.

UPDATE: getting the latest DirectX updates did not resolve the problem.

UPDATE: I played COD4 several hours tonight and at the end I "lagged out" and then my computer crashed, so I guess this is no longer a "guild wars only" problem.

Thanks for everyone's input, I think I may be on the path to the problem:

Earlier today I tried setting thermometers along the card and ran it until it crashed. Now, while the part of the card closer to the back to the computer was cool (which is where the GPU temperature reading is) the part of the card closer to the front of the computer was extremely hot.

For some reason PNY decided it was necessary to change the fan layout so that air is pushed to the front of the case instead of out the back, so the heat gets trapped towards the front of the case and quickly overheats the card (at least this is my hypothesis).

I'm going to try running the card at a lower temperature tomorrow (with increased airflow and a lower clock rate) and see if I run stable all day before affirming that this is the problem.

Have you checked your Hardware Driver, in your Systems Tab?

I have a MSI 9800GTX and the driver on Vista went automaticly to VGA Graphics Driver,
which lets you play for a time and then crashes.. Atleast on my PC that was the problem..

So check if your Computer Recognizes your card as a 9800GTX or just a VGA card.

Thanks for the suggestion. Vista does indeed see it as a 9800 GTX.

Helpdesk emailed me back. After searching through numerous databases, they found absolutely no open cases or known closed cases regarding this. This must be heat/hardware failure related.

You may want to run a software called DriverCleaner. It will erase any known insitance of your video driver on your computer. Then reinstall your video drivers.

Careful though if you have nvdia drivers for things like network and such as it may erase those. Chose your options wisely when using it.

I was going to try DriverCleaner but it now costs $$, and I didn't feel it was worth it.

I'm going to assume at this point that it's a heat/hardware issue and return this card for a different brand that spits heat out of the BACK of the case, and see if that fixes the problem. Kind of odd though as my old card feels hotter and it runs 100% stable on the same drivers.

I'll update this thread with any future development of this issue.

Driver Sweeper = free. Use that.

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Thanks! It doesn't seem to take to kindly to Vista 32-bit in safe mode (it locks up every time I hit "clean") but I used the list and manually deleted all the items.

Re-installed the drivers from the CD and crashed in Guild Wars like it was it's job.

Definitely going to return the card now and try a different one, will update whenever I get this problem fixed in case someone else is in my same boat.

Your problem seems like mine, do you have to reboot or does it reboot by yourself, do you see this on your monitor "No Signal" message? if so there is definately a problem with 9800gtx+ and games cause i get that mistake too.

(
I had a thread in this forum aswell, where i think 3 other users of 9800GTX+ shared the same problem as me.:
http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10337209
)

The screen goes black after some time gaming (CoD,Crysis, Warhammer Online) but in GW the game crashes instantly.

So I got a brand new card (an eVGA) and I'm having the exact same problem. When I was waiting for it to be delivered I was on my 7600GT the whole time with no crashes.

This is getting old.

with the card out of the way (and i'm pretty sure 9800GTX+ have no issues with GW), we'll have to look at other things. software conflict might be it. personally, i'd check which of the four rails you are connecting your card to. your power supply might not be able to dynamically adjust load on the four rails, which would be a problem if you connected everything to one rail.

I would hope it's not a software conflict as my old card (7600 GT) works fine. The only difference between it working fine is adding the 9800 GTX+ (with same drivers that are compatible with both cards).

I have a Thermaltake W0106 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153039) that has 1x 8-pin PCI-E connector that comes out of the PSU and then 2x modular 6-pin PCI-E connections.

Currently I'm just using the 8-pin (has an 8-pin to 6-pin adapter that comes with the PSU), I'm going to try using one of the other 6-pins. Note that the eVGA 9800 GTX+ only requires 1 6-pin PCI-E connection.

Have you actually checked the voltages on your rails to make sure they are stable and high enough under load?

Download EVEREST HOME and make sure they are running ok. Post them here.

I've actually been leaning toward it being my PSU over the last couple of days, I was going to buy a multimeter and check the voltages under load but it looks like I can use Everest instead?

I'll update once I'm home and can run it and if things look bad I plan to go grab a new PSU (I'm fortunate to have a Microcenter nearby with excellent prices on computer parts).

Just in passing, may I suggest a BIOS update?

A heavier solution would be uninstall everything graphics-related in Vista, including DX, and then reinstall. Only as a last resort!

I mention this as it's software-related, thus fairly easy to try, contrary to hardware.

GL.