[Mika]

Alright, I admit, this got me baffled

I bought a Nvidia GTX1050 Ti a couple of months ago after going with GTX460 since like '09. The change was necessitated by modern games that started to lag a bit too much with the venerable GTX460.

So, I switched the cards, and off it went, quite evenly actually. I also increased the RAM capacity from 4 gigs to 16 gigs in my computer which is built with 2009ish stuff. But that's not the weird part. After a couple of uneventful months since the change to GTX1050, I'm starting to get really weird BSODing, mostly related to watching YouTube, but in the more recent developments, not necessarily limited to it. The computer can crash already at the Windows start up. Most of the time WhoCrashed lists the fault at Video Timeout Error, and the faulting module is named NVLDDMKM.SYS, which I believe is part of Nvidia's drivers. I did a short search of this and found out it's actually quite a common problem with NVidia cards.

However, this was not yet too alarming for me two weeks ago as the crashes happened once in a while, mostly with the internet browser and not that much in graphical heavy stuff such as gaming. (Take notes, never assume anything about the stability based on the current rate of crashes). So I went and bought a Samsung 4K monitor U28E570D to enjoy photoshopping closer to the actual camera resolution. My former monitor is a 24" display by Samsung too, at 1080p. So, the 4K monitor required me to use the DisplayPort in GTX1050, and there I plugged it.

Of course, I was quite fond of the 4K display on the desktop. But the surprise came when starting Street Fighter 5, at 4K the menu of the game was already very laggy. At that point I thought hur hur, GTX1050 not able to handle moving 4K stuff (no biggie for me, I can edit photos at 4K and play at 1080p), and I reduced the game resolution back to 1080p. Unfortunately, the lag didn't go away, and what formerly worked at 1080p and 60 fps is likely now far lower. Setting Windows 7 back to 1080p with the 4K display did not help either.

I have never seen before that changing a monitor could downgrade the performance of the graphics card that bad, so I tried to update the drivers. It didn't work, and the crashing became more frequent. Then I tried to revert back to the old drivers, but that doesn't help either. I've been running FurMark tests here, and I'm not getting anywhere near the performance of the card I think it should be able to do, 1280x720p at 4xAA is like 5-7 fps. I tried a burn in test for the CPU, and found the CPU cores around 50C after a minute, and stable. I've been using the computer for ray-tracing before and the CPU temperatures were never a problem there (this kind of work is also 100% load to the CPU). I'm also seeing a steady increase in the temperature of the GPU, but so far the highest I've seen is around 50 C. The card seems to stick around 66% power levels TDP.

Before attaching the 4K monitor to the computer, I was able to get steady 60 fps frame rates at 1080p with near max settings from Street Fighter 5 (don't ask for my CFN, I'm probably quitting the game) and a nice performance boost for Blood Bowl 2. So attaching the older the 1080p 24" monitor, the GTX1050 is suddenly not able to do anymore what it could before even with this display. I'm thinking two options, either Nvidia's new drivers are faulty, or the card is faulty, and this is some kind of cascading failure mode. The situation did not improve with downgrading the drivers to the GTX1050 release drivers, so I'm inclined to think it's a hardware problem. I think my MB is PCI-E 2.0 and GTX1050 is PCI-E 3.0, but even that shouldn't be a problem since the PCI-E buses should be backwards compatible? (Besides, it did work well enough before wandering to the 4K)

Anybody have any ideas about this? I think I'll try reverting back to GTX460 that I still happen to have around to get rid of the BSODing at least.

My specs:
Windows 7 64bit SP1
Processor: Intel i7 860 @ 2.8 GHz (no OC)
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D
Memory: 4 X 4 GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 CL 10 240 (I think they are operating at 1333 MHz, would need to check that from BIOS)
2xHDD (400Gb and 1Tb, no SSD)
1xDVD
PSU:ChiefTec CTF-700-14CS (have not opened the computer case to verify but that's the empty PSU case lying in my closet)
USB keyboard and a mouse.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well I mean you should stop using FurMark for a start, it's useless as a benchmark. I think Unigine Heaven is the standard these days but don't quote me on that.

[Herra Tohtori]

From your description I would say it's either:

1. Hardware failure (previous instability could be an indication of this, the worsening of performance with switch to 4K may be related or a separate issue)

2. Windows having something between its teeth that's preventing proper graphics performance at high resolution and remaining problem even after switching back to 1080p. Stability issues can also be caused by something wonky in the Windows installation.


What I would suggest is testing the card with a fresh install of the OS, or even with another OS. If you have a spare HDD or some other media large enough, install fresh Windows (or some Linux distro if you want to test if non-windows drivers make it work) on it just to test if the card works properly in a fresh environment. If it's still not achieving the pre-4K performance, something's gone wrong with the GPU and you should look into getting it replaced. If it's still crashing on Windows, it might be because of bad drivers or the card itself, it's hard to say which it would be.

If it's crashing on Linux it might not mean anything except that nvidia's linux driver blob is questionable at best. But if it doesn't crash, then a test on Linux might still reveal if the card itself is not performing up to specification.

[Mika]

Alright, guessing Windows was the culprit turned out to be true this time.

Just when I was about to remove the display card to take it to service, I just got an idea of just taking it out from the PCI-E bus and putting it back in.

I installed the older Nvidia 375.70 drivers and went to Windows, and became utterly flabbergasted: everything worked as it should. Furmark is now showing a constant 35 fps at 1080p (haven't bothered with 4K), and Street Fighter 5 is fluent at 1080p and with 4K monitor. Also, why is Furmark not recommended?

I don't know what caused the issue, but the computer has not BSOD'd either. Perhaps the card had became loose in the PCI-E socket, I think the clamp gave away a bit too easily? I may have to check for that periodically, could there be some kind of natural frequency in the casing that over time makes the clamp more loose? I'm pretty sure I used sufficient force to lock the clamp when I inserted the card there.

Anyways, this was weird. I have never seen anything like this happen before. Now configuring Windows 7 for 4K viewing. (Note to myself: ask Cyanide to provide actual support for Blood Bowl 2 full screen at the requested resolution...)

[Herra Tohtori]

It was probably a bad PCI-e connection then, these things can develop if the card is not properly in its socket and there's some tiny amount of wiggling that gradually works its way loose until some contact becomes loose enough to cause issues. PCI-e probably has some internal error correcting code, but if the quality of signal gets low enough it will start degrading performance (which you've seen) or eventually there's too much errors and the thing hangs (causing a video crash, which might still be recoverable by the system without BSOD) or the GPU just goes offline which will cause the computer to BSOD.

Good reminder to always check the connections - plugs and sockets - first when you're having issues. A low level version of "turn it off, then turn it back on again"...

[Mika]

Actually, I'm starting to think that pulling the card off from the slot may have done something else too. I don't know how long BIOS batteries the graphic cards might have or if they have at all, but removing the card cuts off the power from the card for sure. That actually may have been necessary if the card was in some kind of weird state. Then again, I may have to start checking for the possibility of a loose graphics card periodically.

The only thing fubar'd right now is my sound. It only comes from the left side. I need to reinstall the audio drivers tomorrow and hope like hell nothing happens to 4K display. It shouldn't, but at this point I'm not putting this past it.

[Herra Tohtori]

Reinstalling drivers only works if the problem is actually in the drivers... which it might not be, in which case you're just wasting your time.

Did you already do it and did it work?

If not, canI assume you've checked out the obvious culprits like balance settings in Windows playback device settings?

If that's checked, then in most cases sound coming from left side only sounds like a cable/jack issue, if you're using analog outputs from the computer. If you use digital sound output like HDMI or S/PDIF optical into an external amp, then there are a few more possibilities, but *generally* when there's sound only coming from left speaker/phone it's either a broken cable or a bad/worn out audio jack.

To test it, get a pair of headphones that you know work properly and check if you're getting sound on both channels with them first with rear audio jack, then with front panel jack if you use one. If both work with headphones that you know to be working, then the problem is with your speaker cable. If one jack works but the other doesn't, you got a busted jack. If neither work, then the sound card is for some reason not generating signal for the right channel, and that could be either a hardware fault or a software fault with the drivers.

[Mika]

Sorry, I was on a trip to China.

Nvidia 1050 GTX Ti also has a HDMI sound output what my former GTX460 didn't. I figured there might be a conflict of interest between the on-board sound card and NVidia's sound card drivers.

Removing both and re-installing the sound drivers solved the issue.

For headphone jack to be faulty, I'd expect changes in the channels as I gently move the plug in the jack. That didn't happen, which pointed me towards the drivers.