Hi Crytek & Community

I need help with a stability problem in Crysis 2 please.

I bought a second GTX 580 3GB 2 weeks ago and thus far the game has been running perfectly fine with Direct X11 and the high resolution textures. I usually played 2-3 hours straight every day, single player campaign only.

Yesterday I got my hands on a new OCZ Vertex 3 120GB and reinstalled Windows 7
(my old SSD from 2009 was pretty much worn out). I installed Crysis 2 again through the Origin/EA download tool and now I have nothing but trouble with the game, it is crashing randomly within 1-3 hours. I find myself back on the desktop and get an error message related to the nvidia driver:

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

I read up about this message and it often indicates a TDR error which is usually caused by a hardware problem. I have no other games at the moment but ran 3DMark11 many times as well as Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark for many hours without any problem.

My temperatures were monitored with EVGA Precision before and at the moment of the crash and never exceeded 68°C. GPU load wasn't high either.

My detailed system specifications:

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
Intel i5-2500k OC at 4,4Ghz
G.Skill DDR3-1600 2x 4GB
EVGA Nvidia GTX 580 3GB 2x SLI, stock frequencys, no OC.
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB
Be-Quiet Dark Power Pro 900W PSU
Windows 7 x64 Home Premium

This is a very basic installation with nothing but the latest windows updates, chipset, lan, intel rst and nvidia drivers (latest whql 275.33).

Any suggestions ?

Thanks in advance and best regards

Hi, Many of these problems are caused by hardware failure, I had a ram problem that caused me many similar mistakes.

TDR errors can be caused by so many issues, it is vital to do the diagnostics to try and isolate the problem component.

Check the link, someone solved the problem. Good luck!

http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/127718-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-responding-help.html

Raise your voltage .25

Thanks for the replys

A tad more voltage might help i'll give this a try, ty. I need to install afterburner again, evga's precision has no voltage control for some reason.
I played for a bit with SLI disabled and no crashes. I will also install any other demanding DX11 game now and see how it works, probably Metro. I'm somewhat new to the whole SLI thing I had a single 580 1,5GB for 6 months and recently upgraded to the two 3GB 580's....really don't hope i got a faulty one.

I see you are not over clocking. I had that error when I overclocked by too much. Just a thought in case something is getting applied at startup.

Do you see much improvement performance wise by having the 2 cards? I'm just curious, I only have 1 580.

Do you see much improvement performance wise by having the 2 cards? I'm just curious, I only have 1 580.
Yeah it was worth it, with one 580 I had an average framerate of ~45 and occasionally drops below 30 in very demanding areas. With 2 cards I can maintain 60 fps almost everywhere its really neat i just hope crytek/nvidia will work on future improvements.

One thing I have noticed about my cards is that one runs 4-5°C hotter regardless in which slot I installed it.
My case is a Silverstone FT-02 so since they are mounted vertically it shouldn't be related to that. Maybe bad factory TIM on one, idk. Eventually I will get those backplates from EVGA and replace the TIM as well.

Second card gives you an average of 20-25 more FPS and will get your out of the FPS drop faster also.

Check the link, there is a person with a similar problem and has a similar setup. EVGA GTX-580 in Tri-SLI 3GB.

http://www.pchelpforum.com/win-7-vista-bsod/114246-blue-screen-death-very-often-please-help.html

luck!

Thanks again, i'll check it out
I don't hope one of the cards is broken as i'm just through all the sandy bridge recall drama, upgraded to Z68, bought the EVGA 580's etc. and would like to not open my case again for a year or so, lol.

I increased the voltage from 1,013 stock to 1,050V and no more crashing. Thanks a lot