My GTX690 has been my worst Computer experience.

[..VeNoM..]

I would say the odds are like winning the lottery.. But it happens to someone. So it could be two DOA cards. Did you try using another PCIE slot? Also try without your mobo being in the case as it could be an earthing problem. As others have pointed out, update bios to latest version. Default settings everything and if you still got the problem then it's a dud card (again).

[Veteran]

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Yeah if they 3rd replacement and you still have issues, its been a problem with your pc the whole time. FYI ram can cause artifacting.

I still think its your pc, having 2 dud cards in a row is 1 in a million.

Not neccessarily,how can Denial be 100% sure that that the second card he had recieved was brand new and not a refurb or one that had been returned previously....BFG used to ship out refurbed cards in a resealed box so they looked brand new on the occasion,i was told this by the Manager of BFG Wales before they went bump,also OCUK are *Masters* at this dirty tactic which is why i never buy **** from them.

In my experience also refurbed cards normally die within a short period or cause the user problems.

[Agent-A01]

Yes i know bfg did that but im pretty sure evga sends new replacements.

[Denial]

Originally Posted by Wagnard

Try Update motherboard bios + Clear Cmos if you didnt already do it.

Test system memory.

I replaced the motherboard so if it was a motherboard problem I doubt it would happen between two different boards on different chipsets. My BIOS/UEFI or w/e they are calling it these days I updated. I haven't tried screwing around with the configuration much, as far as PCI-E 3 and stuff but I'm getting the same problems I had on my PCI-E 2.0 board so I doubt it's going to fix anything.

As for memory I ran memtest on my 12GB setup back in my old motherboard overnight for 7 passes with no issue. On my new board after about two passes my display will for whatever reason shut off. But i've tried swapping the sticks around as my old board had 6 slots this has 4, and I haven't noticed any difference.

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Yeah if they 3rd replacement and you still have issues, its been a problem with your pc the whole time. FYI ram can cause artifacting.

I still think its your pc, having 2 dud cards in a row is 1 in a million.

It is low, which is why I refused to believe it was the card and instead dropped $700 on a processor and motherboard. I was convinced it was my FTW3 because I had problems in the past with it. Same **** happens, perhaps even worse on my Asus board. Although I will say something at the end of this post about the first card which has me thinking --

Originally Posted by ..VeNoM..

I would say the odds are like winning the lottery.. But it happens to someone. So it could be two DOA cards. Did you try using another PCIE slot? Also try without your mobo being in the case as it could be an earthing problem. As others have pointed out, update bios to latest version. Default settings everything and if you still got the problem then it's a dud card (again).

With my first card I experimented with trying different PCI slots, because at the time I didn't realize that you could put a PCI-1x card in a 16x slot and have it work. It didn't help with the image corruption problems I was having with the first card. I didn't really think of doing it here, mostly because I figured if it was a PCI-E issue it would have been fixed with my new motherboard.

As for the first card keep reading to find out more!

Originally Posted by Veteran

Not neccessarily,how can Denial be 100% sure that that the second card he had recieved was brand new and not a refurb or one that had been returned previously....BFG used to ship out refurbed cards in a resealed box so they looked brand new on the occasion,i was told this by the Manager of BFG Wales before they went bump,also OCUK are *Masters* at this dirty tactic which is why i never buy **** from them.

In my experience also refurbed cards normally die within a short period or cause the user problems.

You're right, I can't be 100% sure. They did send me it in a whole new box with the entire signature package again, I have two shirts and two mousepads and all that crap but the card itself could be refurbished.

Other than that, EVGA has actually treated me well, which is the only reason why I'm going to do this again. I was frustrated with the shipping at first but I think its more me just being frustrated over the whole issue. I don't really think it's their fault.

Anyway, I contacted EVGA via phone tonight and they are going to replace the card again, free shipping. What's interesting though, is the guy told me my first card, the one with the image corruption problems, they couldn't replicate it in their office. The only thing I haven't changed thus far is the RAM, at least technically. My old X58 had 6x sticks of DDR3 1600. My new board only supports 4, so I took four of the six and put them in the board. When I started getting issues it worried me about the ram. When I had my X58 board, during the first card, I did memtest to test the ram and it passed 7 passes with all 6 sticks. I guess I could have run it for longer, but yeah. With this board my monitor shuts off after the second pass, not exactly after, but just about 30-40 minutes or so, I haven't actually timed it (this actually might be a problem in itself). I have tried taking all the sticks out though and trying the 2 I didn't originally plug in, and I still had problems. I think the chances of all the sticks being bad would be rare. But I guess it's possible. To be safe I also ordered new ram that will ship Wednesday. So unless my computer case is the Bermuda Triangle of graphics cards, I'm out of ideas.

But what I do want to say is thanks for suggesting things to me guys and just giving me some clarity. The whole thing was/is frustrating but it makes it easier when I can read other peoples ideas and get a feel as to what I'm missing. I'm going to see if I can get another PC booted and run some memory tests just see, even though I'll have new memory by Wednesday. The whole thing about them not being able to replicate the image corruption problems for my first card kind of has me worried/anxious as to what exactly is going on.

[Brendruis]

Originally Posted by Denial

What's interesting though, is the guy told me my first card, the one with the image corruption problems, they couldn't replicate it in their office.

With this board my monitor shuts off after the second pass

These two things make me think it is possibly your system RAM.

Did the card #2 have a different serial #? Just making sure they didn't send you back the same card. It's pretty statistically unlikely that two different cards in a row are bad unless they were seriously mishandled...even with all the problems 600 series has legitimately had.

This wouldn't be the first time I have seen system RAM cause graphical artifacts.

It is worth looking into this.. a kit of memory is $50 and could well be your problem... try running with two sticks.. try running at DDR3 1333 and loose timings... does it make it through Memtest86+ then?

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

It has become a process of elimination, if it's not the mobo, not the cards and not the PSU then indeed the memory subsystem starts to become fishy.

Do as described by the previous OP. Try two bars and also increase mem volts to 1.6 to see of that makes a difference.

BTW I have a ASUS Maximus 5 still here on the testbench, I'll pop on a GTX 690 and see if I can replicate the issue.

[jbmcmillan]

He cross shipped so he had the new one before he sent the old one.

[maxio]

For "serious" software memory testing I DO recommend GoldMemory v7.xx PRO.
I've seen so many scenarios when Memtest passed, yes passed the tests, but GoldMemory never fail me yet.

[adabiviak]

Dude, that's gnarly. Upgrading from 7 to 8 to see if it works? Buying a new power supply to see if that works? Formatting/reinstalling, replacing CPU, all that other stuff... that's a time and money consuming drag.

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Hey Denial.

I emulated your setup a little. I used a ASUS Maximus 5 Extreme (same DNA as formula), used a GTX 690 ref with latest WHQL driver, heaven 3.0 and running MSI afterBurner in the background to monitor.

Running Windows 7 64-bit.

I did not have your mem available so took the closest thing, I used two DIMMS of GSKILL Trident-X memory. Here's the thing, I OCed this setup to 4.8 GHz and the mem is running 2666 MHz (XMP activated).

Thus far no issues, heaven has been running over 15 mins now.

Your issue definitely is localized and not an incompatibility inbetween NVIDIA or ASUS or something.

BTW also rip out that soundcard that you have sitting on the PCIe bus.

[snowdweller]

So are you saying its the DIMMs or the memory subsystem on the mobo?

[Noisiv]

no, he's saying to rip out all unnecessary $#*&

[Penal Stingray]

Theres Nothing wrong with 690's at all there are just perfectly fine its either ur system or u just having a bad luck.

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Denial,

NVIDIA contacted just me as they noticed the thread as well and would like to try and help out. I handed your current forum email address to them so they can/will be in touch to get your problem sorted out.

Please keep me CCed in the process.

[Fusion_XT]

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Denial,

NVIDIA contacted just me as they noticed the thread as well and would like to try and help out. I handed your current forum email address to them so they can/will be in touch to get your problem sorted out.

Please keep me CCed in the process.

Wow +1 HH for helping the guy out!!! Just awesome, and thank you Nvidia for being active on non-official forums and helping customers out..

Guru3d and Nvidia !!

[dune2]

Originally Posted by Fusion_XT

Guru3d and Nvidia !!

+1

@OP: Good luck getting this sorted.

[Denial]

Originally Posted by Brendruis

These two things make me think it is possibly your system RAM.

Did the card #2 have a different serial #? Just making sure they didn't send you back the same card. It's pretty statistically unlikely that two different cards in a row are bad unless they were seriously mishandled...even with all the problems 600 series has legitimately had.

This wouldn't be the first time I have seen system RAM cause graphical artifacts.

It is worth looking into this.. a kit of memory is $50 and could well be your problem... try running with two sticks.. try running at DDR3 1333 and loose timings... does it make it through Memtest86+ then?

As someone already said I crosshipped the cards so they definitely two different cards. Unless I'm going crazy that is =d

It's definitely a possibility it's the RAM. I already purchased 16GB of DDR3 2133 it should be here tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

It has become a process of elimination, if it's not the mobo, not the cards and not the PSU then indeed the memory subsystem starts to become fishy.

Do as described by the previous OP. Try two bars and also increase mem volts to 1.6 to see of that makes a difference.

BTW I have a ASUS Maximus 5 still here on the testbench, I'll pop on a GTX 690 and see if I can replicate the issue.

Yeah I honestly haven't tried screwing with the voltage. I have tried only running on one stick, and a cycled through a few of the sticks and I still had problems. The Maximus seems to be running the voltages for my memory at around 1.5 in auto if I recall correctly. When I get home from work I'll try screwing with the voltages to see what happens plus cycling the sticks again.

I should be getting my new ram tomorrow. I figure I might as well upgrade everything now since I already did the first half.

Originally Posted by adabiviak

Dude, that's gnarly. Upgrading from 7 to 8 to see if it works? Buying a new power supply to see if that works? Formatting/reinstalling, replacing CPU, all that other stuff... that's a time and money consuming drag.

Well it's not like I can't afford to spend it. I was planning on waiting to Haswell to upgrade everything, but I just couldn't figure out what the hell was going on here and it annoyed me. So I did it now. And I'll probably be doing it again when Haswell drops =d

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Hey Denial.

I emulated your setup a little. I used a ASUS Maximus 5 Extreme (same DNA as formula), used a GTX 690 ref with latest WHQL driver, heaven 3.0 and running MSI afterBurner in the background to monitor.

Running Windows 7 64-bit.

I did not have your mem available so took the closest thing, I used two DIMMS of GSKILL Trident-X memory. Here's the thing, I OCed this setup to 4.8 GHz and the mem is running 2666 MHz (XMP activated).

Thus far no issues, heaven has been running over 15 mins now.

Your issue definitely is localized and not an incompatibility inbetween NVIDIA or ASUS or something.

BTW also rip out that soundcard that you have sitting on the PCIe bus

You know that is actually one thing that's been a constant. My ASUS card in my PCI-E 16x slot. I didn't even think of that until now. ****, now I'm annoyed at myself.

Thanks for trying the test setup. The weird part is though, that I can run Heaven for hours under my new motherboard no problems. I can even watch DOTA 2 via their in game HLTV system for a while without issue. Soon as I start interacting though, for longer period of times, that's when I start getting issues. At least that's what I've noticed.

Like last night I played DOTA 2 for 2-3 hours. I fired up DayZ and I couldn't even get past the load screen before all my displays flickered and the game went invisible. It's really strange. And when I restarted after that, my computer defaulted to like the 800x600 resolution or whatever. I had to reinstall my graphics driver in order to get it detected again.

I still think this is related to my system though, I don't think it's a problem between the Formula 5 and Kepler or anything.

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Denial,

NVIDIA contacted just me as they noticed the thread as well and would like to try and help out. I handed your current forum email address to them so they can/will be in touch to get your problem sorted out.

Please keep me CCed in the process.

Yeah that's no problem. Thanks for doing that. I'm pretty sure it's a problem either with the card, my memory or now after your post my soundcard being in. Either way it's strange so hopefully i'll be able to provide some information for them and if its a configuration problem hopefully we can get it fixed

I started the RMA process for a 3rd card from EVGA but again I'm getting it crosshipped. So I'll have this card for at least another 30-45 days before I send it back.

When I get home I'll update with info about removing the soundcard and playing with the voltages on the memory. Tomorrow I'll be able to rule out the memory entirely.

Anyway, thanks again guys, lots of help <3

[AlmondMan]

Terrible story man I only know the pain too well.

If it's any help, I can say that my Asus brand 680 works beautifully.

[dune2]

The seeming randomness in the timing when the errors occur gave me two other ideas you might want to test:

1) Could this be a temp issue? Not necessarily at the card but maybe on the mobo/memory/PSU? How are your mobo temps when under load? How do you cool your rig? I know the CPU/vidcard is watercooled, but do you have airflow across the mobo? Even with watercooling the 690 will dump more heat into your case than the 480.

2) PSU - I know you replaced your mobo, but this was effectively a like-for-like swap (1000w, single rail). The newer PSU seemed to help somewhat, but the issues came back. So maybe the new PSU is a little bit more effective than the old one but still not powerful enough to run everything you have in your rig? Not sure if you have done this already, but try stripping the rig to its bare minimum. Unplug all drives except the system drive, take out all other cards, drop any overclocks etc. See if the problem still persists.

[Neo Cyrus]

Sorry to hear you've had such a hard time and I'm happy to hear you're getting some help now.

If it makes you feel any better I've got a boring story I've written before and I've probably forgotten and warped the details.

[boringstory] I've gotten multiple dead cards (or cards which died extremely rapidly) in a row from MSI. It wasn't just 2, it was literally something like 3 or 4 (yes it was so long ago I forgot). The 4th or 5th finally worked and remained working for years.

Each time I had to wait 2-4 weeks (actually it may have not been faster than 3 weeks for any) for MSI to ship me a "new" one (lol they weren't new, they were obviously used and beaten up). So I was essentially stuck without a video card for months. I took the cards into their RMA facility in person, the place is a joke. As you can guess to this day I haven't bought another MSI product and I don't know if I ever will again.

Anyway, 3-4 duds beats 2, what do I win?

The only other time I had such bad luck was with Asus motherboards, exploding capacitors left and right. Though they didn't send me any duds as replacements and IIRC it took them 2 weeks to send each replacement, not 4. I haven't bought a single Asus product since then either. For the record I do consider Asus products now, with solid state capacitors I doubt there will be any more exploding.[/boringstory]

Um... I'm sorry I don't have any real advice for you as most of it has already been covered. Good luck.

[Denial]

Originally Posted by dune2

The seeming randomness in the timing when the errors occur gave me two other ideas you might want to test:

1) Could this be a temp issue? Not necessarily at the card but maybe on the mobo/memory/PSU? How are your mobo temps when under load? How do you cool your rig? I know the CPU/vidcard is watercooled, but do you have airflow across the mobo? Even with watercooling the 690 will dump more heat into your case than the 480.

2) PSU - I know you replaced your mobo, but this was effectively a like-for-like swap (1000w, single rail). The newer PSU seemed to help somewhat, but the issues came back. So maybe the new PSU is a little bit more effective than the old one but still not powerful enough to run everything you have in your rig? Not sure if you have done this already, but try stripping the rig to its bare minimum. Unplug all drives except the system drive, take out all other cards, drop any overclocks etc. See if the problem still persists.

I'm always paranoid about my watercooling setup. At the moment I don't think I have enough rads to effectively cool my loop as good as it could be. I have a Corsair 800D with 3 top fans blowing out across a XSPC RX360. I also have a rear fan blowing out across RX120. Intake is through the bottom, there is a single 140mm fan that is raised slightly above the mesh to pull air in. I've been contemplating cutting out two additional fan holes for side intake on the panel or possibly even cutting out the bottom to add an additional RX240.

Either way my CPU temps average about 50/60ish loaded at stock and my GPU temps are about 45-50ish loaded in a game, depending upon the ambient room temp which changes a lot I guess. This is obviously warmer than I wanted, considering I've been reading people getting 30c with 690's loaded, but most of those people also run dedicated loops with much more radiators. As for my motherboard and other components. I've noticed that my memory under my Maximus 5 is much cooler than my X58, X58 I manually put the memory at 1.6 in order for it to achieve the correct timings, I think the Maximus defaults to 1.5 auto, so that should explain that. Nothing else really seems to be hot to the touch, I had the ASUS PC Probe thingy running for a while when I first got the board, nothing looked out of the ordinary but I can check again tonight.

As for the PSU and power, I currently have the following plugged in:

3770K
Asus Maximus 5 Formula
2GB Memory (I've been testing with only one stick past couple days)
GTX690
450 Pump for the WC loop
EssenceSTX Soundcard
2x Vertex 4 256's

My RAID 5 drives aren't even plugged in because I can't run the array on the Formula 5. So I pulled them out and will eventually get a external exclosure or a RAID card.

Either way I don't really feel like there is an overpowering amount of stuff there for the PSU. The Essence eats a Molex, same with the pump. I don't even have my DVD drive plugged in because I simply never got around to doing it.

The more and more I'm thinking about this the more and more I'm thinking it's the EssenceSTX for some reason.

[Wagnard]

I would suggest to run the system as simple as possible. That implies even removing the water cooling and installing stock cpu cooler fans.
Remove the special sound card. remove overclock.
Run this system 100% stock.

I have a GTX 690 too with a Maximus Gene V motherboard with 16gb corsair memory.
And the card is really good. I hope you can benefit of it too.

Also can we have a pic of the inside of your computer ? a clear one if possible just in case we see something. who knows...

[Bentez]

Standard volts for older triple channel X58 memory was 1.65v. If your Ivy Bridge setup is defaulting to 1.5v maybe bump it up to 1.65v.

[Denial]

Originally Posted by Wagnard

I would suggest to run the system as simple as possible. That implies even removing the water cooling and installing stock cpu cooler fans.
Remove the special sound card. remove overclock.
Run this system 100% stock.

I have a GTX 690 too with a Maximus Gene V motherboard with 16gb corsair memory.
And the card is really good. I hope you can benefit of it too.

Also can we have a pic of the inside of your computer ? a clear one if possible just in case we see something. who knows...

http://imgur.com/a/3hEkf

This is my old setup, it's the same card that was giving me problems, just under the X58 setup. It was right after I installed the WC block on it.

When I get home tonight ill take some of my newer ASUS build, 4 more hours or so.

Originally Posted by Bentez

Standard volts for older triple channel X58 memory was 1.65v. If your Ivy Bridge setup is defaulting to 1.5v maybe bump it up to 1.65v.

Yeah this will be something I try tonight. My X58 I had it running at 1.6 I think or maybe it was .65, it was whatever Corsair recommended on the back of the box for it, I don't really remember atm.

[Denial]

So I'm home now and I tried a few things. First thing I did was remove the sound card and all but 2 sticks of ram. I then set my memory to 1.65v. I started DayZ launcher, the launcher is down or whatever so I manually entered an IP. Game launched and stuff, looked ok, server was fill. I ctrl alt deleted and immediately got a BSOD for memory management. Rebooted and set the voltage lower to 1.6. I haven't seen a BSOD yet but as soon as I tried DayZ i got the invisible game flicker thing again.

Here is a pic of the newer stuff - I didn't bother routing some of the cables because I just wanted to see if it fixed the problem at the time.

http://i.imgur.com/a6DCyh.jpg

At this point I guess the only thing I can do is wait till tomorrow and see if the new memory fixes it, dunno.

Nvidia hasn't contacted me yet btw