The Realm of Jinan

Possible Fix for nVidia Crashing – RevisedFiled Under: General

Revised 6/29/2008:

1…. Manufacturer over clocked video cards:
2…. Underpowered Video Cards

1 – Manufacture over clocked video cards:

Some companies like BFGTech, eVGA, XFX over clock their video cards from the default core and sell them for tens of dollars more. Which for everyday general use is no problem, but if you throw a graphic intensive game at it (Oblivion, EverQuest2) the over clocked card will start to have problems.

Some of the problems that can occur are instant crashing of the game to the desktop, blue screen of death, textures that seem to disappear, or stretch across the screen.

This happened quite frequently with my XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme (The GPU Clock frequency is 50 mhz higher than a non Extreme edition). This was getting a little frustrating so I went searching on the ol’ Google and typed in 7900 GT issues. This came back with 200,000 or so results. After doing some research found out that the fault of the card was it being over clocked by default. So I downloaded coolbits and decided to under clock the video card to see if that worked, and it did. I under clocked the card by 15 MHz GPU and 15 MHz Memory and haven’t had any problems sense then.

Alternatively you can re-flash your video card with a lower clock firmware, which is not covered here. If you would like more information, please go here http://www.mvktech.net

Below you can view how to under clock the nVidia video cards. First you will need coolbits which you can download using the link below.

Get Coolbits!

When you download it, you will see a registry file. Double click on coolbits.reg and it will install a registry key and it will allow you to access the “Clock Frequency Settings” in the nvidia control panel.

To access the nVidia control panel in Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista:

1. Click on start then goto control panel.

2. Under the control panel click the icon that says Display or Apperance and Themes then display at the bottom.

3. On the display window click in the settings tab then click advanced at the bottom.

4. Another window will come up that will have the nVidia logo and your video card name, click on that and a side window will appear.

5. On the side window you should see a “Clock Frequency Settings” select it and you should see three options on the window. No Overclock (manufacturer default), Auto Overclock (Overclocks when needed but will underclock when video card gets hot) and Manual Overclock (set the timings manually).

6. Select the third options, then lower the sliders on the CPU and Memory by about 5 – 25 MHz, then click test settings and when it is finished click the option to load settings on start up at the bottom then click apply and OK.

7. Repeat step #6 if you are still having problems. Also if you update the nvidia drivers you will need to redownload coolbits.


To access the nVidia control panel in Windows 98/ME:

1. Click on start then goto settings and control panel.

2. Under the control panel click the icon that says Display.

3. On the display window click in the settings tab then click advanced at the bottom.

4. Another window will come up that will have the nVidia logo and your video card name, click on that and a side window will appear.

5. On the side window you should see a “Clock Frequency Settings” select it and you should see three options on the window. No Overclock (manufacturer default), Auto Overclock (Overclocks when needed but will underclock when video card gets hot) and Manual Overclock (set the timings manually).

6. Select the third options, then lower the sliders on the CPU and Memory by about 5 – 25 MHz, then click test settings and when it is finished click the option to load settings on start up at the bottom then click apply and OK.

7. Repeat step #6 if you are still having problems. Also if you update the nvidia drivers you will need to redownload coolbits

2 – Underpowered Video Cards

If you are experiencing the above problems as in the over clocked video cards crashing and your video card is not over clocked. It could be due to the video card not receiving enough power. If you notice when the card gets warmed up and textures start misbehaving it may be due to the power supply.

Tags: Crashing, Fix, nVidia, overheating