Downclocking a video card.

GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
edited April 2010 in Hardware
I have a XFX Geforce GTX 260 Black Edition that appears to have an unstable factory overclock. Occasionally during gameplay, Valve games in particular, my screen will turn a solid color sometimes with diagonal lines and my sound will loop, forcing me to manually restart. Just by googling "xfx geforce 260 black edition crash", I get numerous pages of people complaining about the same problem I am having, most people say that downclocking the video card to stock settings fixes the problem. My question is what is the best way of doing so, I would rather not use something like rivatuner or any kind of third party program to downclock my card. Is there anyway that I can downclock my card through my BIOS or something similiar. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Rivatuner is actually the safest, easiest way. Is there any reason why you'd prefer not to use that method?
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    I guess because that I didn't want another program running in the background, if I was able to change something in the bios, then I would be done with it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    In order to change it in the BIOS, you'd need to modify your video card's BIOS with a third-party program, then flash it back in DOS.
  • miragemirage
    edited April 2010
    You will need Nibitor and NVFlash. Nibitor is for extracting/editing the original bios and NVFlash is for flashing the edited bios. You can find the utilities here

    But, I agree with Thrax. Rivatuner is the best way of changing the clocks.

    By the way, GTX260 has a very good stock cooler. Did you try increasing the fan speeds? If you want to try, you can see how I did at the end of this thread.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Gattsu wrote:
    I have a XFX Geforce GTX 260 Black Edition that appears to have an unstable factory overclock. Occasionally during gameplay, Valve games in particular, my screen will turn a solid color sometimes with diagonal lines and my sound will loop, forcing me to manually restart. Just by googling "xfx geforce 260 black edition crash", I get numerous pages of people complaining about the same problem I am having, most people say that downclocking the video card to stock settings fixes the problem. My question is what is the best way of doing so, I would rather not use something like rivatuner or any kind of third party program to downclock my card. Is there anyway that I can downclock my card through my BIOS or something similiar. Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Radeon, thats your solution....




    Sorry, I could not resist. ;D
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Yeah cliff... recommend a Radeon as a downclock of an nvidia card. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    My solution is that I will never buy a factory overclocked card again. I'll be doing the overclocking from now on. It isn't a big deal for me to use Rivatuner, I was just hoping there would be a easy way to change it through my motherboard bios. Thank you everyone for the quick replies.
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    mirage wrote:
    You will need Nibitor and NVFlash. Nibitor is for extracting/editing the original bios and NVFlash is for flashing the edited bios. You can find the utilities here

    But, I agree with Thrax. Rivatuner is the best way of changing the clocks.

    By the way, GTX260 has a very good stock cooler. Did you try increasing the fan speeds? If you want to try, you can see how I did at the end of this thread.

    Oh and yes, I have tried running games with fan speed at 100% and it doesn't crash as often that way, but it still crashes on me.
  • clifford_cooleyclifford_cooley Arkansas, USA Member
    edited April 2010
    ardichoke wrote:
    Yeah cliff... recommend a Radeon as a downclock of an nvidia card. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.
    Sorry I can't resist

    If I read things right, it's not underclocking. It is removing the overclock features in the card. Suggesting a radeon which might even run smoothly with overclocking is not shooting yourself in the foot.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Is there some reason you're not trying to RMA this card? Even if it's clocked beyond factory specs, the fact of the matter is it's not running the speeds you were sold. I'd absolutely RMA.
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    mas0n wrote:
    Is there some reason you're not trying to RMA this card? Even if it's clocked beyond factory specs, the fact of the matter is it's not running the speeds you were sold. I'd absolutely RMA.

    I suppose because crashes didn't happen often enough for me to call the card completly defective. I did send a ticket to XFX customer support around a month ago, the representative told me to downclock the card to stock speeds without mentioning anything about possibly remailing it. However I didn't ask about a RMA either. I don't think XFX is selling the Black Edition anymore either, probably because they noticed how many people were having trouble with it.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    clifford_cooley wrote:
    Sorry I can't resist

    If I read things right, it's not underclocking. It is removing the overclock features in the card. Suggesting a radeon which might even run smoothly with overclocking is not shooting yourself in the foot.

    Plus, Radeon is kinda like 42 - its the answer....
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Gattsu wrote:
    I suppose because crashes didn't happen often enough for me to call the card completly defective. I did send a ticket to XFX customer support around a month ago, the representative told me to downclock the card to stock speeds without mentioning anything about possibly remailing it. However I didn't ask about a RMA either. I don't think XFX is selling the Black Edition anymore either, probably because they noticed how many people were having trouble with it.

    In all seriousness for a moment (I know, hard to believe) but stick with me.

    Are you using the official drivers from Nvidia's site, or are you using the XFX packaged drivers? Does XFX have some kind of proprietary UI in their drivers?
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    I'm using drivers from Nvidia's site, I have probably updated around 6 times with the newest drivers since last April.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Gattsu wrote:
    I'm using drivers from Nvidia's site, I have probably updated around 6 times with the newest drivers since last April.

    I wonder if there is something in the XFX driver (assuming there is one that is mildly different) that might stableize the factory overclock?

    I saw this on some MSI branded Radeon 4850's I put in systems a while back. AMD site drivers worked fine, but when you manually set the over-clock to the advertised specs, it would get unstable, but when I used the MSI drivers with their custom UI, the over-clock was pre set, and it ran fine. I'm not sure what it was doing in the background that was different, but it worked, funny thing is, I could not stand the MSI UI, so I just downloaded ran the standard CCC and ran typical stock clocks for a 4850 instead.

    I wonder if that might be an option here? Maybe download the drivers from XFX site, nuke what you have on the system and install those? They might just be the standard Nvidia package, but I'm not sure, they might have some kind of custom UI built in, or some background stuff specific to their model.
  • miragemirage
    edited April 2010
    They have to support the advertised specs. Downclocking recommendation is not acceptable. I would RMA it.

    My GTX260-216 (base EVGA model) is overclocked at 725/1450/1200 without any artifacts since almost one year using the stock heatsink (25% GPU overclock).
  • GattsuGattsu Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    I'm not really sure if XFX has a custom UI with their drivers, I will have to look into it. I haven't heard anyone who has said that they fixed the crashes using XFX's drivers, but it could be worth a shot.

    @mirage I completely agree, it is unacceptable that the card won't work as advertised. As a result I won't be buying from XFX again. This isn't the first time I have had a problem with an XFX card either.
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