Various Problems since upgrading to GTX 560 Ti.. :(

[Deleted]

Hi, since upgrading my graphics card from 8800 GTS to GTX 560 Ti I have been experiencing annoying and various issues which make me want to return the damn card and use my old one again.

First off is in games: Games feel sluggish, choppy, fps drops and general poor performance. I play at 1920 x 1080 with 60 hertz monitor on Win 7 64bit. Games I play are Skyrim, Metro 2033, DC universe Online, Minecraft, few others and recently Kingdoms of Amalur. In KoA I get 60 fps with Vsync ON, yet it's still stuttering, with Vsync off I'm over 100 and still feels sluggish at times, also the card gets very loud. DCUO I could run fine on my 8800, now I have to reduce setting to low/medium, same with Skyrim though 1.4 patch could be cause of that. Yet on my old card it was smooth with various performance mods.

I'v now started having system freezes at random, in games or just browsing the net. Had a BSOD for first time the other day. Sometimes when I turn machine on I get "A disk read error has occured, press ctrl + alt + delete to restart". Had none of these issues before.

I'm tearing my hair out though I have done alot of forum reading and so have a theory. I think it's either my crap PSU (can psu affect game performance?) or my cpu is bottlenecking the card, or both! Yet games should still run at LEAST the same as they did on my 8800, not worse!!

Specs: AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2 ghz
Asrock M3A-UCC M/B
4GB G.skill 1600Mhz
550w Powercool High Efficiency PSU with 2x 16 amp 12v rails.
Asus GTX 560 Ti with dual fan

Your knowledgable advice would be welcome. Cheers.

[GG you got me]

One thing you can do to quell microstutters on a single-card that is running constantly above 60 fps, is increase the cpu pre-rendered frames from 3 to 5 in NVCP. This helped me reduce all inexplicable micro-stutters in Deus Ex: Human Revolutions, on a system that was running it at a constant 90+ fps. The BSOD and freezes point to deeper problems but this is my offering for the 60+ fps microstutters.

I can't find specifics on your PSU, @ what voltage is that 16amp rating? 12v? Can't be right.

[googz]

Both 6 pins connected to the GPU? Have you tried re-seating the GPU?

[Deleted]

Yep got both 6 pins in.

[Pooutine]

did you wipe your system of the old drivers before installing the new ones?

[DeltrusDisc]

did you wipe your system of the old drivers before installing the new ones?

^THIS.

Also, what kind of power supply (i.e. how many watts) do you have?

I have a 560 Ti and it works perfectly well, trust me when I say, I upgraded from a 9800 GT (which is in fact better than the 8800 of course) and it is seriously a huge improvement. Crap ton more steam processors, usually more VRAM, faster VRAM, runs much cooler, AND DX11 support. It's definitely worth it for you to make sure this is fixed, it might just be that your 560 Ti is a DOA though. In that case a simple return for another would fix that, but let's rule out PSU and drivers.

[Deleted]

Wipe the drivers, first of all.

You will run into a LOT more driver issues if you go from NVIDIA -> NVIDIA or AMD -> AMD than if you go NVIDIA <-> AMD, because the drivers will get incorrectly applied to the new card. Does not happen when you mix manufacturers.

This makes driver removal prior to installation of the card critical.

[Deleted]

Yeah I wiped the drivers, used Drivesweeper and then installed the 285.62 drivers. Urgh system just froze again >< Anyway tried upping the cpu pre-rendered frames to 5 and had same fps drops every 3 seconds, gonna try increasing it and trying it.

PSU is 550w Powercool High Efficiency PSU with 2x 16 amp 12v rails, its a cheap one.

[DeltrusDisc]

Yeah cheap power supplies never did anything good for anyone...

[Deleted]

Upped the Pre rendered frames to 8 for KoA and it ran smoother, then it froze lol, restarted and now have disk read errors. Think I'm gonna put my 8800 back in and see how it goes, then invest In a new psu.

[DeltrusDisc]

What is this "pre-rendered frames" stuff anyways?

[Deleted]

It's in the nvidia control panel. It limits the amount of frames the CPU renders, so the GPU does most of the work. Or something like that.

[GG you got me]

What is this "pre-rendered frames" stuff anyways?

You can think of it much like buffered frames on the GPU's mem for instance, however it is performed on the CPU usually at 3 frames. Essentially the lowest input lag comes at 0 pre-rendered frames, but that increases your chance for stutters and such as there is the least amount of buffer between image pre-rendering. You can set it higher (3 is default) to occasionally reduce very small microstutters that happen on single-card systems where there should be no issue (for instance my computer running deus ex at 90 fps and having weird hitches constantly for no reason).

For serious FPS play people set it at 0 because that does alleviate any remaining feeling of mouse input lag after you've toggled all other controllable settings to reduce the mouse input lag on their end. 3 is fine in almost everything. 5 is as high as I ever go on games where I have plenty of fps (meaning 60+ constantly) but am not receiving a smooth appearance. Some games where I do this are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Bioshock 2, Alice: Madness Returns.

Edit: It goes without saying that if your GPU is substantially better than your CPU (an AMD 6970 on a system with an old dual core athlon ii x2 for instance) this solution isn't going to get you terribly far and might make things worse.

[Deleted]

Quick update. I put my 8800 gts back in and the games run better. I don't think I really needed to upgrade right now, won't get a refund now anyway. I'm putting it down to my psu still, I'll get a better one and update if it makes a difference. So annoying!

[Deleted]

I've had my 560Ti for a while, nevr had any real issues with it...
I agree with deltrus here, your PSU seems rather weak for this card. I don't know how much is recommended anymore, but the fact that it's a cheap one makes me think that's your issue...

[Deleted]

Your processor is bottlenecking your graphics card.

Overclock to 3.8ghz and you should be ok. You'll ideally want to upgrade tho.

Keep in mind also that the 560 ti is limited to 1GB of Vram.

One of the games you mentioned, metro 2033, uses more than 1gb of video memory at max settings so this will cause micro-stutterings also.

[DarkBlade6]

Quick update. I put my 8800 gts back in and the games run better. I don't think I really needed to upgrade right now, won't get a refund now anyway. I'm putting it down to my psu still, I'll get a better one and update if it makes a difference. So annoying!

You need atleast 30 Free Amps on the 12v rail (or combined 12v rail). So you actually have 32A but your CPU already use some of that, you are way too borderline, you need a better PSU!

[DeltrusDisc]

Your processor is bottlenecking your graphics card.

Overclock to 3.8ghz and you should be ok. You'll ideally want to upgrade tho.

While it is bottlenecking his GPU, it would not do what it is doing. He should still have a better gaming experience with his Phenom II x2 and the 560 Ti than the Phenom II x2 + 8800.

Keep in mind also that the 560 ti is limited to 1GB of Vram.

One of the games you mentioned, metro 2033, uses more than 1gb of video memory at max settings so this will cause micro-stutterings also.

Once again, while this is true, I doubt he is just cranking up the graphics automatically without first testing and making sure, if he can run stuff fine with his 8800 but not the 560 Ti, then there's a bigger issue. The 560 Ti *would* handle Metro 2033 MUCH better, in any case.