I bought the GTS in my sig a few weeks ago to replace my 8600 GT; and ever since I installed the card my computer randomly freezes. There is no warning or pattern to when the computer will freeze but it seems like every couple of hours I have to restart my computer again. I was wondering what kind of input everyone had as to what the problem is, whether its overheating or not enough power etc so any input would be appreciated. btw I haven't overclocked the card past the overclocked speeds it came at. and Im using XP SP3 if that has any bearing.
Its an Ultra 600 watt modular. It came with the case, and Im trying to talk myself into buying a new psu and a Lian Li at the same time.
Ultra products aren't the best out there, but they are neither in the same class with Rosewill and Deer. What temperarures are you getting with the card?
Nothing wrong with an Ultra, they might not be top-drawer, but they're pretty damn good. Sounds like a weird driver problem to me - try removing and reinstalling the graphics drivers. After that I'd suggest trying the older drivers - I had to switch back to 169.12 recently because every 3D game just crashes all the time on the new set.
Having encountered similar problems with an 8800gtx, I would agree with mm vr that your card is likely overheating. Download the Nvidia System Monitor, install it and see what it says for your GPU. If it's below 80C, I'd say that there's near zero chance that the card is getting too hot - it should be fine up till ~100C for sure, though it would have a shorter lifespan. Should it show temperatures higher than 80, use rivatuner (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner) to ramp up fan speeds to 100% for a couple of days just to be sure it's not overheating. To answer your question though, go to Start -> All Programs -> Add or Remove Programs, then select NVIDIA Driver (or similar name) and select uninstall. You'll then want to restart the computer [this is vital, and if you didn't do it before when switching gfx cards, it could be the problem] and install the latest drivers from the nvidia website (http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us). If you still have problems, use the NFR (Nasty File Remover, it gets rid of bad driver files, see google) after uninstalling the drivers and when having rebooted in safe mode.
Thanks a ton. and Im pretty sure it isnt overheating, I already used Rivatuner to bump the fan up to 65% (after that its just too loud). But Ill definitely try the drivers because I didnt do that when I switched cards.
