MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC: Graphical Glitches/Corruption

Question

Hello, I bought and installed an MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC video card one week ago. For the last week, it has been running perfectly, but today when I started up a game the 3D graphics began glitching and showing random stretched triangles and distorted models. While the 3D graphics are running, the monitor randomly loses signal from the video card and occasionally the program will crash with a popup bubble stating that the NVIDIA driver has recovered from a problem.
After reading through some posts here, I downloaded the MSI Afterburner program, enabled voltage monitoring, and set everything to defaults.
The defaults are:
Core Voltage: 1000 mV
Core Clock : 880 MHz
Shader Clock : 1760 MHz
Memory Clock : 2100 MHz
When I click the button to run a Kombuster stability test, the 3D has the same graphical glitches that I saw in my games. Here is a screenshot:
http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww333/MP64x2/corrupted_880.jpg
I tried lowering the Core Clock speed and retrying the test. It appears that the level of corruption is proportional to the clock speed. At the minimum clock speed of 440 MHz, the graphics are almost perfect, however a glitch or two will still occasionally show up.
Here is the test at Core Clock = 705 MHz: http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww333/MP64x2/corrupted_705.jpg
and at 440 MHz: http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww333/MP64x2/corrupted_440.jpg
- I've tried bumping up the Core Voltage a little to around 1020 mV, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.
- Lowering the Memory Clock also reduces glitches, but they never go away completely.
- Even at the absolute minimum clock settings, my games still glitch and crash.
- I do not have access to another system that I can try the video card in.
System Info
CPU:   Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66GHz
MoBo:  Abit IP35 Pro - LGA775, Intel P35, FSB1333
RAM:   G.Skill 4x2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel (Total: 8GB)
Video Card: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC
Video S/N: 602-V238-130B1103126135
Video BIOS: 70.24.11.00.00
NVIDIA Driver: 266.66
Hard Disks: 2x 640GB Western Digital WD6401AALS
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Power Supply:
  OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W
  +3.3@36A,+5V@30A,+12V1@18A,+12V2@18A,+12V3@18A,+12V4@18A,[email protected],[email protected]
As I type this I'm starting to get corruption right on my desktop too, with random pixels changing color and black rectangles appearing on applications.
From what I've read in other threads, it seems like my power supply may not be sufficient since it has multiple 12V rails, but before I spend ~$100 on a new one I thought I'd see if anyone had any other thoughts.

Answer 1

Quote from: MP64 on 22-April-11, 03:46:20
I have an interesting update on my original problem.
A week after I reseated the card, the graphical glitches returned. I turned the computer off, reseated the card again, turned it on, and it began working fine.
Another week goes by with no problems, and then a couple days ago the glitches came back. Thinking it strange that the card could somehow take approximately the same amount of time to cause the same kind of bad connection, I wondered if there was something else that was causing the glitches to temporarily disappear.
I tried rebooting my computer, but the glitches remained.
I then completely turned off my computer and pulled out the power cord and left it for a couple minutes. I didn't open the case at all and made sure not to do anything that would bump any components. I turned the computer back on - glitches are gone once again.
So, it would seem that it may in fact have something to do with the power supply and not any bad connections with the card itself - at least, that's the best guess I have at the moment. I leave my computer on 24/7 so it seems like it doesn't like being left on for an entire week with this new video card installed.
Does this sound sensible? Is it possible for a power supply to slowly fail over several days, only to start working again after being powered down for a couple minutes?
Did you ever figure your issue out?  I have the exact same issue.  My system runs fine for almost a week...and then my desktop starts artifacting.  The only way it goes away is to unplug my pc (or flip the switch on PSU).  Then it runs again perfectly for nearly a week again and I start getting artifacts and the message stating that the graphics driver has stopped working and then recovered.
I also run my pc 24/7 and this problem is getting very annoying!  My PSU shouldn't be a problem as I have the PC & Cooling 750W...
Oh...almost forgot.  I've seen the same issue on 2 video cards now.  RMA'd the first one and the second one does the exact same thing...