Windows 7 9600GT sleep/wake problem

jabbado · *Last edited by jabbado; 11-05-2009 at 02:53.*

Last week I swapped out my crappy 8400GS for an XFX 9600GT that a friend gave me since it wouldn't fit in his case (I was pleased with the deal

). With the 8400, Windows 7 worked fine and so did any driver I threw at it. And it woke from sleep without any issues at all.

But this 9600GT is driving me nuts! About half the time the comp will wake but the screen has artifacts - random dots everywhere. Then after a few seconds the pc reboots. And yet I have it set to not automatically reboot on error. No crash dumps are produced either. This happened with the 191.07 drivers which I tried first, and also a couple of older drivers including the 185.85's.

The comp is OC'ed but the same things happened when I put it back to stock. The PSU isn't the best but I've seen and heard of people running much beefier systems/vid cards on it. Anyway once the system is running it's perfectly fine and the vid card temp isn't anything to worry about. Games run without a hitch. Also the Win7 WDDM drivers don't seem to produce the same problem so I really think this is a driver issue, not a hardware one. But I'm not certain on that. This card has no dedicated PSU connector and I'm wondering if there's an issue with the PCIe slot not giving it enough power when the pc wakes and drives are spinning up etc.

So does anyone have any ideas about this? Can someone recommend some good drivers for the 9600GT (and win 7) so I can attempt to find the actual problem? It's probably not that big an issue since I'm planning on upgrading to an i5/i7 system soon. Still would be great to know what the problem is.

Thanks,
Dave.

Cybermancer · 11-05-2009, 08:08 | posts: 13,206 | Location: Cyberspace | User is Offline

Welcome to Guru3D, jabbado.

Sounds like your card (the 9600 GT) or the VRAM on it is dying. Best indication for this are the artifacts and dots you mention. The reboots aren't nice either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbado

(...) but the screen has artifacts - random dots everywhere. Then after a few seconds the pc reboots. (...)

IDSG89 · 11-05-2009, 08:16 | posts: 28 | Location: Caracas, Venezuela | User is Offline

could be overheating too, check if the fan is working, also check the temps with rivatuner o msi afterburner

jabbado · 11-05-2009, 14:05 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'm pretty sure the card isn't overheating. It idles at around 43 degC and gets to around 65 degC under load. That's good for a 9600GT, IIRC.

I don't understand the vram bit. If it was the ram wouldn't you expect it to crash in games etc?

Anyway I'm now starting to think it is a hardware problem. I've been using hibernate instead of sleep since yesterday as it's almost as quick to resume in Windows 7 and usually works properly compared to S3 sleep. But this morning I turned the comp on, it started resuming - displaying the "resuming windows" screen properly. But when it got into windows all I could see was the circular "busy" mouse cursor and a little square of random colored dots where I think a button should have been. Then it rebooted. Obviously the card wasn't hot at this time.

So any other ideas? And what about some good drivers to try so I can rule that out?

traft · 11-05-2009, 14:43 | posts: 35 | User is Offline

I think it is your video card too cause i've never had those kinds of issues and i'm using a BFG 9600gt on win7. You can try 187.66 drivers those what i've been using and they've been better to me then the 190+, though the power issue could be the problem too without an dedicated power plug the pcie might not be giving enough power during the wake up.

jabbado · 11-05-2009, 15:27 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

I just found a post on another forum where someone was having probs with same motherboard (GA-P35-DS3L) and card as me. Someone replied saying that a few of the PCIe 1.0 slots can't provide enough power for 9000 series cards. I looked up the specs and apparently the slot can only supply 75W, whereas these cards need near 100W don't they?

Why the pluck would they produce a power hungry card without an external power connector, if it's going to use more power than the PCIe slot is supposed to supply? And the box definitely says it can be used in a PCIe or PCIe 2 slot. But I see on their website XFX sell several versions of 9600GT - some with the 6-pin power connector and some without like mine. Maybe the people who aren't having issues with this MB/VidCard combo are using the external power versions?

jabbado · 11-05-2009, 15:45 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

Think I forgot to mention this is 32-bit Win7. I can't find a link to the 32-bit 187.66's. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Cybermancer · 11-06-2009, 17:11 | posts: 13,206 | Location: Cyberspace | User is Offline

I don't think it's the driver, but here you go:

NVIDIA driver v187.66 for Windows 7/Vista 32bit
http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/top...ta-32bit-acer/

Your best option to test your graphic card would be to try it in a different PC.

jabbado · 11-06-2009, 18:42 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

Thanks for that Cybermancer. I'll give it a go but yeah, I don't think that's the problem. I'm wondering now if it's one of those rare PCIe gen 1 compatibility problems? But there are heaps of people running 9600GT's on the same mobo as me without apparent issues.

Also, I've been looking at what bios's are around for this card and found one at techpowerup that is newer than what's on the card but don't think I'll risk a reflash just yet. But I heard some gpu makers released bios updates to make their cards more compatible with PCIe gen1 boards. Is this true?

exaslave · **Memory**: 4GB DDR2 800mhz 5-5-5-15

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbado

Why the pluck would they produce a power hungry card without an external power connector, if it's going to use more power than the PCIe slot is supposed to supply? And the box definitely says it can be used in a PCIe or PCIe 2 slot. But I see on their website XFX sell several versions of 9600GT - some with the 6-pin power connector and some without like mine. Maybe the people who aren't having issues with this MB/VidCard combo are using the external power versions?

I have the xfx card with external power connector and it does need it or else it wont start at all so I doubt that's your problem if it starts, mine has "the black screen" problem tho

jabbado · 11-13-2009, 03:42 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

So I finally got the parts to upgrade to an i5. Got a GA-P55-UD3R mobo, Zalman ZM600-HP PSU and 4gig of Corsair ram, plus the cpu.

And guess what? Win7 will not install with the 9600GT. It goes through the main part of setup, but after the first reboot it shows the "Updating Registry Settings", and then the pc just resets. Then shows the "Windows did not start..." screen.

I tried everything - taking a ram stick out, swapping them, disconnecting second HD, clearing cmos. Still didn't help. So I tried installing XP and got a similar issue - almost finishes setup then resets after installing devices.

So I put the old 8400GS back in and installation completed perfectly.

So does this mean the card is rooted?

Cybermancer · 11-13-2009, 14:32 | posts: 13,206 | Location: Cyberspace | User is Offline

I still think so, yes.

Black_ice_Spain · **Memory**: 4gb Kingston 900 5-5-5-10

9600gt was a pretty faulty card at least at early stages

i had one which in vista/7 was freezing after 5min playing, i blew it with bios-flashing trying to do the impossible, luckily ASUS RMAed it, and i sold to a friend

i suggest you try to live with it... or try reflashing, there was a good bios version around i think, altho it didnt work for me.

PD: If you are so desesperate, dont change cpu ID (name)

.

jabbado · 11-17-2009, 15:04 | posts: 9 | User is Offline

Well I was finally able to install win7 with the 9600GT. But to do so requires choosing vga mode from the boot options screen every time the setup reboots. Otherwise it just resets the comp at certain times (like the "updating Registry Settings" screen mentioned above).

It certainly seems to me it happens when the drivers are being loaded. The reason I think this is the reboots occur at about the time the fan is usually throttled down from full.

Still don't understand what's going on with this card.