Hello everyone, recently I bought a new MSi r9 270x from amazon that was MSI Certified and that one didnt work when it arrived (HDMI and DVID ports sent no signal to the monitor) so I rma'd it (which took two weeks in addition to having to pay for the shipping and the one week I waited for it to ship initially when I bought it.) And now I have gotten the new card whether it is the same card repaired or another used card sent as a replacement I dont know.

I hooked this new card up in my computer, and it played normally and I believed it worked. So I oc'd it in the CCC from 1080 GPU clock to 1150 and the memory clock from 1400 to 1500. I then played Skyrim and after a short time (~10 mins) I got the BSOD.

I got the same BSOD as I tried again about 2 more times, then I tried playing a different game, Witcher 2 and there, the FPS permanently dropped from 60 frames after the first few mins to about 30 frames and it would not raise itself back up until i rebooted the computer. It also gave me BSODs with the same error

The funny thing is, when I restored the card to default clocks, the BSOD'ing stopped and the fps actually improved a bit. Can anyone help me with this?

Specs: System Model: Precision WorkStation T7500

Think about it for a sec...

Yes I thought about it. But the overclocks weren't unreasonable, it did this even when I only OC'd the GPU clock by 20. I also have an idea of it being insufficient wattage, but that is unlikely since I have a 1300w PSU. I also had an idea that the card may be overheating and entering a failsafe mode, that idea also doesn't hold up as the cards temp stays well below 75 degrees Celsius. I want to know if this is a hardware problem possibly or a driver problem or something else entirely. Your post doesn't help very much, sorry sir.

That's only because you're not willing to listen. This reminds me of a very old joke:

Patient: "Doctor, my arm hurts when I do this."

Doctor: "Then don't that."

....Yes I know OC caused my issue....the point of the thread is to find out WHY the OC is causing it to happen.....But I'm stupid maybe you could help me and point the problem out and tell me why my OC is causing these BSOD's.

You may be better off posting this question on a technical forum such as MSI, AMD, Microsoft, Overclockers or Tom's Hardware

Well obviously the card can't handle it. Not everything can be overclocked, and frankly nothing should be either. You're just adding wear and tear to a component by forcing it to run at a higher rate than it was designed for. If you're not getting enough power out of something, upgrade it instead. If you consider that Skyrim was originally designed with an Xbox in mind, the stock card you have will be more than enough to run it without any overclocking, and probably at the game's highest settings. I can't say for certain as I'm not familiar with ATI cards, I'm an Nvidia guy myself. IIRC though, the 270 is the latest version from ATI, or close to it, and should have plenty of power for the game as is.

I have, just posting it in more then one place, hoping for more info and answers. Even from here since you guys helped me solve problems in the past

270x is a budget card. Has a surprising amount of power and can easily max Skyrim, but still a budget card when compared to say a 290x or a higher end Graphics card. I bought mine for only $160. and I see no reason the card cant handle it, there is no artifacting or any other signs that show that the OC is pressing the card to hard, but maybe your are right, I simply dont know.

I just noticed this. You're trying to overclock a card that already is overclocked by the manufacturer. It's not surprising that you're having problems. You're probably pushing it past it's capacity.

The thing with AMD's R-series cards is that they'll underclock themselves automatically if they get too hot.

Not really an issue, its a factory OC, the OC the put on it is not very high, and can easily, or should be easily, pushed a little further.

But my card runs so cool never seen it go past 65 Celsius, but I will test this again. This does explain the fps drop in Witcher 2 though I don't know how it could cause a BSOD.

You can't be certain of that, the manufacturer may already be pushing the envelope. Having you compared it to the stock ATI specs to be sure? Going back to what I mentioned about it not being a good idea to overclock anything, it's an even worse idea to overclock something that's already had it done. You're just asking for problems.


That could easily be caused by a conflict with the driver. The card is saying shut down while the driver is trying to keep the hardware going. The conflicting messages might be too much for your system, causing a BSOD.

Moving it since it got absolutely nothing to do with Skyrim.