Perplexed by Graphics card and Memory upgrade results

[pilotpierre]

I was running with a GTX 580 1.5G card and 8G of memory. On "High" graphics I was getting a lot of black screens necessitating a pc reboot especially once the scripted campaigns hit the streets.

 

I have upgraded to a GTX 1060 6G card and 16G of memory. I set the graphics to Ultra, HDR, distant grass, 4 x distance, Vsync and 4 x AA and was still randomly getting the dreaded black screen (mostly when selecting the final start to begin a mission)

 

I have played around with the settings and the only one to date that has been black screen free is Ultra, Vsync, HDR, 2 x distance and 4 X AA.

 

My rig details are in the sig box, surely this should be sufficient to run 4 x distance?

 

The 15 -2500 is running at the standard 3.3 htz

 

Note: one one of the recent black screens I was able to Ctrl Alt Delete and got a pop up that said the driver display card has stopped working.

 

[Czar66]

Check if fullscreen or bordeless windowed fixes the issue.

It is quite strange indeed.
I'm running on i5 4590 3.7 ghz with a 2gb Vram GTX670 (stock clocks), 8gb system ram, Windows 10. 1080p resolutions.

I've never had issues running ULTRA + 4x distance + HDR + 4x AA.

Recently got down the settings to HIGH + 4x distance + 4xAA to get constant 60fps just because feels much better. But if not I would keep even higher settings.

Your GPU should be 75% faster at least compared to my 670 on raw gaming performance. Check your temperatures CPU and GPU and CPU usage. Cheers.

Perform a full game reinstall if the problem persists.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Czar66

[=IL2AU=ToknMurican]

I was running with a GTX 580 1.5G card and 8G of memory. On "High" graphics I was getting a lot of black screens necessitating a pc reboot especially once the scripted campaigns hit the streets.

 

I have upgraded to a GTX 1060 6G card and 16G of memory. I set the graphics to Ultra, HDR, distant grass, 4 x distance, Vsync and 4 x AA and was still randomly getting the dreaded black screen (mostly when selecting the final start to begin a mission)

 

I have played around with the settings and the only one to date that has been black screen free is Ultra, Vsync, HDR, 2 x distance and 4 X AA.

 

My rig details are in the sig box, surely this should be sufficient to run 4 x distance?

 

The 15 -2500 is running at the standard 3.3 htz

 

Note: one one of the recent black screens I was able to Ctrl Alt Delete and got a pop up that said the driver display card has stopped working.

 

I'd run DDU from guru3d and do a clean install of your nvidia drivers.  I'd also go and check ALL drivers on your system, also go into task manager and make sure there aren't any faulty drivers or connections causing some crazy cpu/memory usage. 

 

Another thing I'll add is altho I generally avoid attempting to overclock anything.. upon replacing my heatsink/fan like half a year ago I decided to give it a try with my i5-2500k.   Following guides on the internet I was able to get the thing to 4.5ghz  stable on air cooling which provided the biggest performance increase I've seen from any flight sim on the market.  Even more so than upgrading from a 680 4gb to my current 980ti.   The only reason I was willing to attempt it is because I've had the system for about 4-5 years and was contemplating an ugprade.. but the simple overclock pretty much made it feel like a new system.   That being said.. it's still possible to screw up badly when attempting to overclock and do some permanent damage so do so at your own risk.   However I was fairly surprised at how little effort was required to get a stable overclock.   

 

Before trying any of that.. look inside your case and make sure your cpu fan is clean and running smoothly, and not throttling down the speed of your cpu due to overheating. 

[pilotpierre]

The card and extra Ram were installed (in my home) by the local computer guy.

 

He uninstalled all the old card drivers before installing the latest drivers for the new card,

Updated all other drivers

Cleaned out all the not needed crap

Did a complete operating check with regard to temperatures, speeds, cores etc and all was well.

The case sits on the desk and the internals are free from dust.

 

I spoke to him on the phone after my original post and he has suggested trying a HDR? Cable between the computer and monitor.

 

He also mentioned in passing when he was installing the new hard ware that the new card card might be too advanced for the 5 year old BenQ monitor???

 

I will try dropping the graphics back to high and max everything else out and see how that goes.

 

Worse case scenario I will revert to ultra and distance x 2 as that is quite playable for me.

[Mmaruda]

Go into your Nvdia driver settings and into 3D settings and check what you have under "power management mode" - if it says "optimal power", change it to "adaptive". Another thing you can try is having a look at the "help" tab and enabling "debug mode", if it's available.

[coconut]

There's a million various things that could be the problem: faulty motherboard, faulty PSU, bugged BIOS, bad driver installation... It really sucks being in your situation because it can be hard to find, especially if PC hardware isn't your hobby. Personally, I would suspect the PSU. The only way to find out is to remove non-critical components, disconnect as many peripherals as possible and run experiments. If that does not identify the cause of the problem, you need to swap the critical components with other components and see if that changes anything: Replace the PSU, replace the RAM, try with another monitor... Which of course requires to have access to alternative components.

[Brano]

Modern GCs require DVI-D cable to connect to monitor. If using old VGA cable,signal is usually distorted (flickering of the monitor screen).They cost from 5 to 15€ depending on lenght and brand.

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

lol nvidia is not ATI..

To do a Completely clean install of new nvidia drivers
When you install the new drivers (choose custom then tick "Perform Clean Install" )
Now it will remove ALL traces of any old Nvidia drivers (ofcourse those shipped with windows will still be there nothing will remove those)

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

if your using HDMI, Nvidia has not fixed that issue yet I suggest you use D-DVI

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=D-DVI&biw=2539&bih=1279&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVh5-ZqLXRAhUPyWMKHfkIDRwQsAQIXg

[pilotpierre]

Thanks for all the responses guys, you have given me plenty of things to check.

 

I dont think it can be anything too drastic as this is only intermittent, somedays it doesnt happen at all, others it may happen once, twice or three times during a 3 hour session.

 

Will play around with settings some more to see if I can eliminate it, if not will try a new computer to monitor cable next.

[EisenWaffel]

Look up TDR (timeout detection recovery) for the video card, the default is 2 seconds, I made a registry tweak that sets it to 20 seconds. Since then no black screen crashes with gtx 760 using any new nvidia drivers (previously 368.81 drivers were more stable)

 

If you are brave this is where you make the registry tweak just make the values for TdrDdiDelay and TdrDelay 20 and hexadecimal but make a backup of the registry first or be sure you can reverse it if there's no benefit:

 

 

 

 

Edit: Ah crap I had a black screen crash with CS:GO, still it was the first one in a while, gonna have to keep trying other stuff, here's some info about nvlddmkm crashes
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/413110/geforce-drivers/the-nvlddmkm-error-what-is-it-an-fyi-for-those-seeing-this-issue

Edited January 14, 2017 by GreedyPoor

[pilotpierre]

Well the guy who did the card installation ran a hardware test on the complete computer with everything maxed out and it passed.

He is 99.9% sure the occasional black screen is to do with the in game settings (X x distance etc). We have one more day baby sitting grand kids from interstate tomorrow and then I will give it a good workout with the distance 2x and see how that goes.

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

X4 should be fine there is really little difference in the config between it all
There is also a "mod" to further increase this X4 detail

[=IL2AU=ToknMurican]

I'm personally betting against it being a video card issue if it was happening on your older card as well. 

 

If your monitor is completely losing signal (the light on my monitor would change color indicating so or a OSD would pop up saying "no signal")  it could be a bad cable..or in my case on my previous monitor the hdmi connection could come lose just from my foot hitting the ground too hard, and I only used it beacause my dvi-d cable was going to another monitor. 

 

It could also be your power options.  

 

Open Start Menu and open control panel or type control panel in the run box and hit enter. 

 

Click "Power Options" If it's set to balanced or power saver that might be your issue.. computer or monitor might be going to sleep. 

 

I personally set mine to "High performance" as it's not a laptop, and I'm more worried about performance than my electricity bill.  you can also click "change plan settings" and set "Turn off the display" to "Never" (turn it off manually if you plan to leave your pc for an extended period of time" and 

Put the Computer to Sleep to "Never" 

 

 

There's also a power setting somewhere in the nvidia control panel where you can set power settings for your video card. 

You're saying it's not happening at lower settings however so perhaps something else is afoot. 

 

If it's not an issue of signal and rather your computer freezing up personally I'd head over to gigabyte just to make sure there weren't any driver or bios updates you missed out on since the last time you checked them.  (my culprit when my pc performance is finding windows has installed a generic sata controller driver rather than my intel one) 

 

Also try to avoid usb3 ports for your gaming peripherals.   usb2 is the way to go and if you don't have many a powered (with power cable) usb hub is recommended. 

 

If either of the last two are the problem (out of date or uninstalled drivers or usb3 conflicts) generally you will be able to see it having an effect on your memory or cpu usage in the perfomance monitor in task manager.

 

CTRL+ALT+DEL to access task manager. 

 

Sorry if i'm covering steps you're already aware of    Again.. the power options/video cable if the monitor is losing signal.. and if it's the computer just locking up all together I'd check drivers before doing any more trouble shooting that might require money.  

 

Ultimately if all of the above fails, it's time to try a different pci-e slot or start troubleshooting other pieces of hardware.

 

Going to try to emphasize again that the biggest performance increase in any flight sim has come from an increase in CPU speed with the i5-2500k being known as a stable overclocker but it isn't my intention to persuade you to tinker as such without reading up very diligently on the subject.  Overall jumping from the 6804gb to the 980ti was still a good move for me personally and your increase in vram should be pretty nice for you.

 

 

fyi my system specs aren't too terriby off from yours other than video card and my cpu speed. 

 

i5-2500k@4.5ghz

evga z68 sli

8gb ddr3 1600

evga gtx 980Ti

win7/win10 pro 64,

all 3 of my harddrives are SSD. 

Edited January 13, 2017 by headwarp