Looking for help M17xR3 580m Blackscreen with looped sound.

Hi I have had my M17xR3 for about 18 months now and have had 0 issues with it till now and maintained it fully. I will start off by saying I have completely scoured these forums as well as the internet searching for fixes to this issue. I have re pasted my card, checked for any burns/damage on it as well as done all of the throttle fixes. I have the correct bios, vbios and drivers for everything to run smoothly currently yet I am still getting these. My latest one was while watching a video on youtube with the card running at a scorching 41c! I am at a loss as to what to do at this point to save it and am just considering getting a 7970m because all of these 580m issues have left a bad taste in my mouth with nvidia after being a lifetime ati/amd desktop builder and this machine my first fore into intel/nvidia. I don't think it's relevant to post specs seeing as it is fairly obvious the card is the culprit with how many others are having the same exact issues but here they are anyway.

Core i7 2760 QM
8 gigs ram
Nvidia 580m
256 gb ssd x2 raid 0

 

Is this issue on boot up and does it give you beeping noises or is this when you get into the OS and the screen goes black?

 

Boot up is fine as is the OS itself, the occurrence is completely random as well. I thought it could of been a voltage issue as that can be a culprit of these but being on battery/off doesn't seem to make any difference nor does forcing P states with tools like nvidia inspector. I have played games for hours without it happening and at others times like just now it will happen while surfing.

 

That is strange. Just checking, which driver version are you using?

 

Currently 320.49, running 314.21 from Dell's website results in no change although can't verify if the frequency is any different it does seem to be worse/more often on 320.49 but that just might be my imagination. Have tried true clean installs of both as well as windows installs on some previous versions. Since going to 320.49 I have not had any crashes whatsoever when I am running on just battery alone, as soon as I plug in it will occur withing 5-10 mins. So I'm back at the voltage theory for when it's switching states maybe? I really just am at a loss at this point to what EXACTLY the issue is. Will try forcing my idle state while plugged in and see if that does anything sigh.

 

Well, as you say while on battery the clock is only 75mhz. That driver is still not a good one. Did you at any stage install 320.18 and was this around the time the problem started. It sounds like the card is faulty and that driver burned a lot of people.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/721878-nvidia-320-18-driver-warning.html

 

Never did the 320.18 drivers but just went back 314.21 for now, at least I am not blackscreening the second I plug in on this one. I thought the whole lure of nvidia over ati was the fact of stable drivers? Also reading through your large thread a bit more I did notice that while on 320.49 I magically had .92v at times as well when messing with states in inspector. I would jump to .92 from 8 or .85 while switching settings even though I did not change this value and it was doing it while switching states from idle to gaming.

 

This is a driver bug (that NV refuse to acknowledge) introduced with the 3xx series. I noticed that voltage jump but on my 675, which is just a rebadged 580m, it only happens for a couple of seconds at game start.

My theory is that the 'boost' feature used by later cards is causing this. Clocks are not boosting but voltages are.

Now why just lately and not as soon as 3xx were introduced? As they have released later versions older cards are being pushed over the limit. This is the second time in a couple of weeks that a 580m owner has it stuck at 0.92v. Even vbios flash and full reinstall of win did not cure.

The correct voltages is 0.87 at max and 0.80 at the first throttle point. This .0.92 voltage was already known to wreck 580m's when people tried modded vbios's.

Seems like luck of the draw as to whether your card can cope with the overvolt.

Edit: Just a thought, if you try a pre-3xx driver then the higher voltage is not in the code, so if you still see 0.92 I'd have to say the card is bad

 

I went back to the 296.10 that you linked in your other thread and am crash free for the past 4 hours and sitting at .87 and .8 when I should be. Have not seen a jump to .92 at any time like I had been and am just hoping that my card wasn't permanently damaged. I really appreciate all the help Micky even if it's not fixed it is nice to know what the issue is finally and that was bugging me the most haha. Really cannot believe that nvidia is not doing more or even acknowledging the problem.

 

That is good information. at least you have a working machine again and a way to go if a newer driver does the same - which seems likely.

Nvidia have not even commented in 2 weeks on the driver forum - dropped out of sight. If you still have waranty and using the dell driver version causes this permanent voltage boost (with BSOD) then you should be able to get it replaced. It does sound like the card has a fault otherwise there would be a lot more than two 580's having problems like this...

 

Still getting it, looks like the damage was permanent . Am out of warranty with dell too so will probably have to buy a card at this point really a shame...

 

Think you're right - that sucks. Looks like the 580 is getting overloaded by the latest drivers, along with an out-of-spec voltage (0.92v) some are giving up. I think this is the third one with with serious issues I've seen in recent weeks

ATI time my friend, NV have completely blown any credibility with me - bad drivers happen but to ignore and refuse to acknowledge cards dying all over the place is unacceptable.

 

Yep no matter what drivers or vBios I use at some point one of the p states lock into .92v followed shortly by the crash. It will even do it on p12 and p8 occasionally. Oh well anyone selling some 6990's or a 7970? :\

 

Probably not going to help but the latest beta released a couple of days ago (326.19) seems to have fixed the overvolt. I never see 0.92v and another 580 user also said he no longer is seeing the spikes.

It may be too late now but just possibly...

 

It is slightly more stable? I have my own batch clocks with inspector for idle/gaming p1 custom etc. and when I boot up it is always at .92v no matter what state now, even p12, but if I run my p8 idle than p8 gaming than p1 video/recording THAN p1 gaming it magically stays at .87v for quite a while. So far 9 and 12 hours before .92v randomly kicks in and I immediately crash with black screen/looping sound. Really wish I was getting actual bsod's as I can fix those lol. This is just a major pain in the and I'll be getting an ATI when cash allows regardless and probably never buying nvidia again unless they come out with a fix for this. My card isn't dead but when their own software makes it practically as such I think faith is lost at that point.

 

I wasn't that hopeful since yours is the worst .92v issue I've seen and really does look like the card may be damaged .

I also have lost a lot of faith in NV; good, easy drivers was their selling point. If you want the best bang for buck and don't mind a little work then ATI are the choice of enthusiast IMO. Now the playing field has been levelled in driver issues, and with ATI being considerably cheaper they are looking the way to go right now...

 

Yep will be ordering one when I have the money most likely. In the meantime since I have nothing better to do but tinker with it I have been trying a bevy of solutions. At this point I have gotten the p8/p12 states stable enough. Forcing .8v in p8 is the only short term solution to work and I must be fast to do so before I black screen when logging it, even when on battery and p8 is the current state it's at .92v.

List of things tried and failed in the past day

Clean installs of drivers/windows(gotta add it I suppose lol)

Disabling of audio drivers/in bios

Disabling of video drivers than a complete manual wipe of anything nvidia followed by a clean install of the 326/314/296 drivers



Fresh HDD/windows followed by Modded Drivers and inf followed by a msi(tried dell awhile ago)vbios flash to 675m. Though I must note here that this was BY FAR the most stable solution I have tried yet allowing me to stay in p0/p1 for hours with .92v kicking in very rarely while doing mundane tasks. Even some gaming or stress tests without immediate crashing but seeing as it still happened I just put my stock hdd back in.

My current is all of the dell site recommended drivers etc. which interestingly/hilariously is the opposite and least stable as .92v runs in all p states at all times until I force .8v in p12/p8, doing so with .85v in p1 or .87v in p0 produces no results. I don't have a damn clue what they did to their chipset but until the card is actually burned out and doesn't work I know it is fine and works when at the correct voltage. What I can actually do to accomplish that is the real question if anything at all. I might add that even though I have dabbled with vbios and modded drivers etc. at this point I did not when this first started happening, nor might I add ever a .92v vbios, as I really didn't have that much of a clue to begin doing these things. If anything I can thank the card in the end for bringing me here and teaching me a hell of a lot more about how computers work, and how many problems they can have lol.

 

So is it possible that this is what happened to my R3 as well? I originally only have CPU temp issues but when Dell replaced my sinks and fans, they upgraded my GPU driver from 300.XX (cant remember exact version) to 320.49. And since then, I started to have looping BSODs, and random BSODs. They replaced my 580m with another 580m and they installed the same driver again and its still the same.

Just thought of sharing if this new driver is really breaking the 580Ms.

 

Sure you are right, this is the third one I've seen and I reckon that a lot of the reports of problems still remaining are down to damaged cards caused by ovevolt. On the desktop cards factory overclocked cards were the most affected since they were already running higher voltages. NV are happy to let people struggle trying to track down the issues since they will not even acknowledge a voltage boost on cards that should not do it - expletive deleted

Strange you are seeing it on a new card with that driver though, have you checked your voltages? Also try 314.22, a lot of people having success with that one...

 

A possibility it could be the system RAM, not necessarily the GPU. You could check if the system RAM has any errors by using a program called Memtest+86. (If you google that it should take you to the website & the instructions). It happened to me, I was getting random BSODs, and Memtest+86 found multiple errors, I replaced my RAM and all is well! (This could all relevant for the OP too.)

 

It could be my HDD, Onboard sound and any other driver/hardware conflict too, but the fact it no longer starts now and I get 6 beeps tells me what it is finally. The death of the card has arrived no longer able to boot the system with 6 beeps meaning video card failure. Not that I am surprised by it but oh well thanks for all the help everyone onto ATI I go!