GTX 295 keeps rebooting my PC

Guys.

this is not really related to wow. But I've been having this problem for a while now. When I run a graphics intensive games like FF14 (bad code maybe), or Call of Duty Black Ops (again, maybe bad code). My system keeps rebooting as if my graphic card runs too hot. Especially with the COD BO, there are certain scenes that would restart my PC every time when I hit it. But somehow the after burner (GPU monitoring tool) showed the temps are fine with the GPUs.

So my question is, how should I approach this problem. Would one of those GPU coolers help ? or there are some throttling utilities (or settings) that I can use .Maybe throttle the card everytime it runs too hot instead of rebooting it. The reboot will eventually kill my system if I keep this on.

Are you measuring temps on the GPUs after the reboot or before? Temps can fluctuate wildly within 10 seconds of stopping a CPU/GPU stress test. You might try running the game in a window while watching GPU temps via your tool and CPU temps in CoreTemp. See if one of them goes over the manufacturer's specs or close to it. If that doesn't yield anything, you might try running a memory test app like BurnTest, Prime98, etc. to see if you are rebooting from a memory corruption error instead of a temp issue.

Most CPUs these days will self-throttle their performance rather than rebooting spontaneously. I think the same thing applies to modern GPUs but I haven't verified that.

In my experience, usually reboots are caused by faulty hardware or faulty software drivers. Bad code generally does not cause a reboot, unless its in windows (drivers) and then you get a blue screen of death.

You might like to turn off automatically restart on system failure as well (or check your event logs after the reboot) to see if Windows bluescreened or just plain rebooted. (Right-click my computer -> properties -> advanced system settings -> startup and recovery -> settings -> uncheck automatically restart).

Somethings to check:

1) Motherboard firmware - I like to get the most recent even if the release notes do not have a fix for my issue.

2) Motherboard chipset drivers.

3) Nivida GFX drivers.

4) Sound drivers - weird I know, but you might like to disable sound while you are playing a game and see if you still get reboots (this links back to dodgy mobo firmware / drivers).

5) Check your mobo manufacturer's forums for others with similar complaints.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Thanks for the reply good tip.

Ultimately, it is mobo that can determine whether to restart or not, not the GPU card. So the root might be in mobo. I've never upgraded my firmware. I guess it is time to do that.

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Originally Posted by remanz

Thanks for the reply good tip.

Ultimately, it is mobo that can determine whether to restart or not, not the GPU card. So the root might be in mobo. I've never upgraded my firmware. I guess it is time to do that.

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Not true at all. The motherboard is only one of many players in the stability game. If the GPU stops responding to a driver thread, the driver will detect that and fault, which may cause Windows to bugcheck depending on the severity and which version of Windows you're running (Win7 has much better video driver crash recovery than Vista/XP).

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Originally Posted by Jafula

In my experience, usually reboots are caused by faulty hardware or faulty software drivers. Bad code generally does not cause a reboot, unless its in windows (drivers) and then you get a blue screen of death.

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The caveat here is that if you leave Windows settings to default, it automatically reboots the PC when it bugchecks, so the BSOD may flash by so fast that you don't even realize it was a bugcheck. If that happens, the only way to find out what happened is to check the system event logs and/or the MEMORY.DMP if you configured it to dump anything and if the fault isn't in the disk subsystem. :p

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

The caveat here is that if you leave Windows settings to default, it automatically reboots the PC when it bugchecks, so the BSOD may flash by so fast that you don't even realize it was a bugcheck. If that happens, the only way to find out what happened is to check the system event logs and/or the MEMORY.DMP if you configured it to dump anything and if the fault isn't in the disk subsystem. :p

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Aren't PC's PITA's? Grrr. Hey, I could make money from this! :D

I have the settings for "restart when encounter fatal error" unchecked in windows 7 though. I think that merely takes care of blue screen of death and it will halt the blue screen there instead of restarting the machine right away. It did not stop my system from restarting in this case.

I am not expert on this. But if windows is restarting, it can certainly halt the process and log the error somewhere instead of just cut my power directly. This looks like mobo or my power supply are restarting.

I have latest nvidia driver. The reason I said the GPU over heat was that when I OCed my GPU (Goddamn ff14), say from 590 hz to 700hz core clock, I get this restart the moment I open any game. I then set it back to stock clock. It is ok to play SC2/wow etc.

Well, in that case, you may be onto something. I'd suggest not OC'ing your GPU. ;)

oh I did not OC in this case.

The OC for ff14 was before. I set it back to stock it still restart for Call of Duty Black Ops. I guess if upgrade bios no work. Time to get a single card GTX 580 maybe.


Dual GPU (GTX 295 in particular) is kinda fail. Two cards too closed to each other (unlike a normal SLI) and too much heat.

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Originally Posted by remanz

oh I did not OC in this case.

The OC for ff14 was before. I set it back to stock it still restart for Call of Duty Black Ops. I guess if upgrade bios no work. Time to get a single card GTX 580 maybe.


Duel GPU (GTX 295 in particular) is kinda fail. Two cards too closed to each other (unlike a normal SLI) and too much heat.

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It's a trade off.


Long shot but...power supply issue? What's your PSU and do you have another you could possibly switch out?

Jafula nails it.

I upgrade the BIOS. The problem went away.

the upgrade merely says "increase stability of the system." and my system does not reboot anymore when I play COD Black Ops.


Thanks for the help

Glad you got it sorted.