Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT known problems?

[Teneck]

Any one have graphics issues running this card? My screen washes out with large pixels or goes black, this happens during game and character creation. This doesn't happen all the time however...it seems arbitrary as to when it happens. It has (Graciously) allowed me to create a character and play him enough to want to play more, but the graphics issue has me counfuzled. This setup has run WOW at full res with no issues.

Thanks for any tips or help

[Lundivar]

Any one have graphics issues running this card? My screen washes out with large pixels or goes black, this happens during game and character creation. This doesn't happen all the time however...it seems arbitrary as to when it happens. It has (Graciously) allowed me to create a character and play him enough to want to play more, but the graphics issue has me counfuzled. This setup has run WOW at full res with no issues.

Thanks for any tips or help

I've run with a 9600GT for a couple years, and 2x 9600GT in SLI a few months now with no problems. Check your card temperature while running DDO. For me (and a few others) it's THE application which runs my card(s) the hottest, even bypassing F@H after a few hours. Also pushing any graphics card that hard make sure your PSU is not undersized, even if the card is not a power hog.

Other than that, of course update to latest drivers...


L.

[dasungeheuer]

The symptoms you describe, particularly the "large pixels" one, sound like a hardware issue. Overheating maybe, or possibly the card is overclocked. I think it unlikely that this is a driver issue - driver issues show differently, usually.

Quite a few NVidia cards come factory-overclocked. As they get a little older - a little can be as little as a year! - they can become unstable. My money's on "BumpGate" for that, that's as good an explanation as any.

If you can give us the manufacturer and exact model name of your card, we can have a shufti to see whether it's factory-overclocked.

In the meantime, check temperature and cooling! RivaTuner is a good app to see temperature.

[Uranium_Empobrecido]

I have a 9600 GT and sometimes the temperature goes to 107ºC, no issues even in this high temp.
Latests drivers from Nvidia oficial page.

[Missing_Minds]

I have a 9600 GT and sometimes the temperature goes to 107ºC, no issues even in this high temp.
Latests drivers from Nvidia oficial page.

Expect your card to last maybe 2-4 more months then. You are frying it.

To the OP, Nvidia upper 7000s and most all 8000 and 9000 are plaqued by this due to their manufacturing issues, and poor heat dissipation designs and/or bad dies. They seem to be dead, on average, in about a year. I know I lost two 8800 to this problem.

As for it playing WoW without issue... DDO remains one of the games that is the hardest on video cards. Surprising yes, but it is true. Farcry, Quake, etc... can't hold a candle to the stress DDO puts on these cards.

[dasungeheuer]

I have a 9600 GT and sometimes the temperature goes to 107ºC, no issues even in this high temp.
Latests drivers from Nvidia oficial page.

Great, so we can pretty much rule out "drivers". That's good feedback.

As for hardware: That's very, very specific to each individual card. Did I mention "BumpGate" already? Always keep in mind that a very wide range of NVidia cards are failing across the board because of a terrible choice of underfill. You might get lucky (everything works super), unlucky (complete failure), or somewhere-in-between. We know temperature exacerbates the issue.

Let's hear on the make and model. I had similar issues with a 8800GT - in my case, it could no longer stand the factory overclock. Once I clocked it down to reference, everything was fine.

[Teneck]

The first thing I did was a driver update. Also I reloaded DDO to insure that I got a good download.
This is a replacement card for my original 9600 (that worked fantastic) and I have only had it for 2 weeks or so.
Thank you all for the advice...when I get home tonight I will look into the over clock thing,

As for posting the make and model...um...forgive me for sounding ignorant...but isn't Nvidia 9600GT the make and model ???? Now I am really confuzzled.

[Seelie]

I had similar problems with my EVGA 9600 GT. I have since done two things, and I don't see the problems anymore.

First thing: I went to Options > Troubleshooting > Maximum Frame Rate. I dropped this from "Infinity" to 75. I saw no performance hit, visually.

Second thing: If you have the latest NVidia Drivers, open up the NVidia Control Panel. Under Performance, you can Adjust GPU Settings. It's here that I took direct control of my fan and jacked it up to 70% while in 3D mode. It's very slightly louder, but my card seems to appreciate it

[Missing_Minds]

The first thing I did was a driver update. Also I reloaded DDO to insure that I got a good download.
This is a replacement card for my original 9600 (that worked fantastic) and I have only had it for 2 weeks or so.
Thank you all for the advice...when I get home tonight I will look into the over clock thing,

As for posting the make and model...um...forgive me for sounding ignorant...but isn't Nvidia 9600GT the make and model ???? Now I am really confuzzled.

It is, but if you can give a direct link with the card you got, we can have a better idea.

And just because it is brand new, doesn't mean it isn't messed up. One of my first 8800 GTXs I sent back right away under warrenty. They didn't put the heatsink on flat and/or firmly, so it was overheating in seconds in games.

With how hot these chips are getting, a properly placed heatsink is important.

I've got my ATI fan running at about 40%, but it never breaks 60 C.

[dasungeheuer]

I wasn't entirely clear, I think. Sorry for that. NVidia makes the reference design and the chip on your card. So-called AIBs then produce the actual card from parts - and they may make changes to clock speed and fan design. For example, an "EVGA e-GeForce 9600GT" is a design based on the "NVidia 9600GT" chip. What I'm looking for is the manufacturer of the board you have, and what they call it.

[Lundivar]

Just to add to my previous post concerning my 2x 9600GT & temperatures, I have 1 EVGA 9600GT reference design with Overclocked with a max temperature recorded of 62 C, and a Gigabyte 9600 (same overclock) with a max temperature recorded of 48 C (has a sweet Zalman cooler on it). I do have a VGA cooler fan blowing on both cards, I'm nervous about any temps above 60 C for these cards.

This is after running DDO for 4 to 5 hours straight. And yes it is THE hardest game I know of for a video card. Hope this can help people & card temps, the 9600GT is not a card which should run very hot.

Hope it helps some people these are good cheap cards.

And... 107 C is DEFINITELY too hot for any card.

L.

[Lorichie]

Op, if i may, let me give you my experience with my card:

I have the 8800gt, overclocked from factory, and while it was in a mid sized case with only one fan in back and at factory setting fan speed, that puppy got up to temps as high as you have had...It was about 18 months old at this point.

i knew this was bad and came here as you did and put the issue to the community (albeit i also had another issue that eventually caused me to fix the card issue as well.)

I still have the same card, but i sprung about a hundred bucks on the biggest, nastiest, meanest case i could find and had the techs swap out my system to that case. Someone at that time also recommended that i boost the fan when i knew i was going to play for a while to 70-80 percent, its a bit louder, but it was going to come on anyhow once it got to those hot temps.

So, at the moment, i still play a ton every day, and with the fan at 75 percent i hover around 52ish celc. on my card. about half of what it was, of course that includes new case with two dinner plate size fans, a fan directly below the card blowing hot air out, and a much better air flow than what i had.

Thats just my story, take it for what you will. And as far as DDo being the most taxing on a system, its written in stone...i can play three clients at the same time on eve online and not get my card as hot as i can one client of DDO. This game is far more demanding than any other ive played (certainly there are those moreso that i havent played) and far more than what the min specs say.

Fwiw,

R

[Teneck]

I watched my temp when the errors appeared and the temp was 106 F on the card GPU.

The factory settings are
CORE BUS = 650 MHZ
MEMORY BUS = 950 MHZ

I tried to attach a screen shot into this thread but I am not sure how to go about this.

The control pannel allows me to change these settings but I can't change the
GPU FAN SETTINGS.

Thanks again for all the help guys

[Teneck]

Another quick question.

I am running DirectX 9...should it be Ver 10?

[Lundivar]

I watched my temp when the errors appeared and the temp was 106 F on the card GPU.

The factory settings are
CORE BUS = 650 MHZ
MEMORY BUS = 950 MHZ

I tried to attach a screen shot into this thread but I am not sure how to go about this.

The control pannel allows me to change these settings but I can't change the
GPU FAN SETTINGS.

Thanks again for all the help guys

Hmm Core clock is default,, but Memory Bus seems overclocked, weird, try bringing that down to 900mhz. 104 F is pretty cool, just confirming you didn't mean C.

DX10 adds dynamic shadows, makes the card work harder, looks good, but far from a deal breaker.... Turbine never worked very hard on DX10, guess they just wanted to claim a "DX10 Game". I can only hope DX11 will be more that just a few extra bumps from tessellation...


L.

[Teneck]

Yup I really mean Fahrenheit...thank you for checking though..made me double check.
I just upgraded to Win 7 and am downloading DDO again...I was going to upgrade sooner or later but when I found a virus on my C drive today it just made me do the sooner rather then the later.

So...now have DirectX 11...clean install...and new download...*Crosses fingers*

Found out the clock speeds are the correct factory set (950 seemed high to me too but its what they say is correct).

Hopefully this all fixes it...if not...well there is always the C4 solution

[dasungeheuer]

650 Core is NVidia reference speed for a 9600GT. 950 Memory is a factory overclock from your AIB. NVidia reference speed for a 9600GT is 900 Memory. Your symptoms are in line with a memory issue. I'd definitely bring memory clock down to 900 if you still have issues, and see how it behaves. Shader reference speed, BTW, is 1650. You sometimes see the memory reference speed referred to as 1800: That's because it's DDR (double data rate) - the actual clock is 900, but you get two cycles per clock, one on the upswing and one on the downswing of the wave.

Good luck!