Hi there,
 
I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I want to be thorough.
 
About two months ago I purchased an entirely new system with the following specs:
 
Intel Core i7 4770K
EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Dual SC ACX 2GB
8GB G.Skill DDR3-2400
Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87
Seasonic M12II EVO 750W
 
Running Windows 8.1 x64, fully updated.
 
From the very start the video card seemed to be acting up a little. The video card driver would randomly crash when I was running Logitech's software. I looked up this behaviour and it seemed like a pretty common problem. I decided to disable Logitech's crapware and the problem went away for a little. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to resurface. It got worse, too. Where in the past only the video card driver would crash and then recover, I was now beginning to experience system crashes in increasing frequency. This is what the screen looks like when one of these crashes occurs:
 

 
Not a great look.
 
I was observing the task manager and noticed EVGA Precision's CPU usage spiked just before one of these crashes occurred. I looked up this behaviour as well, and apparently it's not unheard of for Precision to cause system instability. I got rid of that as well. Sadly, to no avail. I kept observing my system and started using GPU-Z to monitor the video card. Nothing was out of the ordinary at any point in time but I did notice that, like Precision, GPU-Z would get a CPU usage spike just prior to a crash. It started to look like software that monitors my GPU was crashing my system for some reason. I got rid of GPU-Z. This, again, solved nothing. At this point I couldn't keep the computer stable for more than an hour. 
 
A very weird thing that had been happening over the course of a couple of weeks was that when the system had crashed, games that used to run at 60+ FPS had suddenly slowed to a crawl. Assassin's Creed 4 and even an older game like Just Cause 2 turned into a laggy, unplayable mess that maxed out at about 10 FPS. The solution to this is to uninstall the drivers entirely (I used Display Driver Uninstaller) and reinstall a set of fresh drivers. Needless to say, I've done this a LOT of times now, considering the amount of crashes I'm getting. I've tried a whole bunch of different drivers, including older ones, current ones and betas. Nothing worked, including the latest NVIDIA driver that came out two days ago.
 
To gain some more insight I decided to check my Event Viewer and found out it's absolutely loaded with nvlddmkm errors (2767 at the time of writing). A new one pops up every other minute or so. Sometimes they're a couple of minutes apart and sometimes there are multiple in the timespan of ten seconds. Now obviously they don't all crash my computer, but I've paid some attention and when the system does crash, it's always exactly at the same time one of these errors pops up.
 
So at this point I'm rather lost. I can't determine whether it's a problem with the card or if it's a software issue. Temperatures are not the issue, nor is it instability due to excessive load because, funnily enough, this has only once happened during a game. The game in question is a light indie game that wouldn't even use 20% of my GPU's power if it tried. Demanding games like Assassin's Creed 4 have no problems whatsoever.
 
Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong here? Should I just RMA this card?
 
 
Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks for your reply.
 
All right, I'll go ahead and disconnect the small monitor. Though I feel it's worth mentioning that I've only had a second screen for two weeks, and the problems were also present prior to that.
 
The large monitor has a resolution of 2560x1440 (Dell Ultrasharp U2713HM).
 
I have made only one change in NVCP, and that was changing the dynamic range in video colour settings from Limited (16-235) to Full (0-255). This was due to the fact that video files would have improper blacks which would appear as greys.
 
By "purchased" I meant I purchased the parts. It is in fact a custom build.
 
 
I was not aware that uninstallers for Nvidia drivers on Windows 8.1 were a problem. I'll stop using that method immediately. Do you happen to know why they cause problems (just out of curiosity)?

Extra note, your screenshots appear to show corrupted video memory
This "can" be caused by incorrect System RAM settings or issues
 
You posted that your using-->  8GB G.Skill DDR3-2400
 
You should review the -exact- factory timings and voltage for your system RAM (its on the sticker attached to each stick)
And then check in your BIOS that your settings--> MATCH exactly those numbers
Run your system RAM at its factory suggested DEFAULT timings and voltage for testing
 

All right, maniacvvv, I've followed your instructions to the letter so there should be a clean install on my system right now. However, when I did the reboot, Windows booted up in a really messed up state. Littered with lag spikes, my C drive was at 100% almost the entire time, GPU-Z reported a temperature of 44 degrees celsius (this card runs at 35 degrees when idle) but reported GPU usage of 0% and Windows also gave me the error tooltip saying the driver had crashed and recovered (though this "recovery" had no impact whatsoever). I rebooted a second time and it appears to be running as normal right now. I don't know what this meant but I don't reckon it's a good sign.
 

maniacvvv
Extra note, your screenshots appear to show corrupted video memory
This "can" be caused by incorrect System RAM settings or issues
 
You posted that your using-->  8GB G.Skill DDR3-2400
 
You should review the -exact- factory timings and voltage for your system RAM (its on the sticker attached to each stick)
And then check in your BIOS that your settings--> MATCH exactly those numbers
Run your system RAM at its factory suggested DEFAULT timings and voltage for testing

There was a little thing with my RAM. It was detected as DDR3-1600 instead of 2400, the timings were off and voltage was too low. I thoroughly checked my RAM and the box the sticks came in and everything explicitly states it is in fact DDR3-2400 that's supposed to be running at a higher voltage. So I went into the BIOS and manually adjusted this so my memory settings now exactly match their specifications.
 

Trelor
Just a quick question are you overclocked or have you overclocked the GPU.  Also was the GPU new when you got it or was it a refurb ?

 
I have not manually overclocked the card (or my CPU, for that matter). The only increase in clock speeds came from EVGA themselves (it's one of those Superclocked cards).
 

My primary HD is a Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB 7200RPM. I'm only using about 800GB out of the 1.81TB it has, so it's not even half-full.
 
The RAM was factory sealed, yes. All the information on the sticks themselves corresponds with the information on the package. The timings are 11-13-13-31 at a voltage of 1.65v.
 
Here's a description of everything I have in my computer:
 
CPU: i7 4770K at stock speeds
GPU: GTX 770 2GB Superclocked at stock speeds
RAM: G.Skill PC3-19200 DDR3-2400 2x4GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 
PSU: Seasonic M12II EVO 750W
Cooling: Noctua NH-D14
Hard drives: Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB 7200RPM (Primary)
                  Samsung HD103SJ 1TB 7200RPM
                  Samsung HD753LJ 750GB 5400RPM
                  Hitachi HDT722525DLA380 250GB 5400RPM
                  Western Digital WD10EADS-00P8B0 1TB 5400RPM
Optical drive: LiteOn iHAS124B
Audio: Lexicon Alpha (USB)
 
Other USB devices:
 
Xbox 360 wired controller
M-Audio Axiom 49 MIDI keyboard
ABN Amro e.dentifier 2
Logitech G11 keyboard
Logitech G700s mouse
 
I believe that's all of it.
 
 
What do you mean by what updates and software I have done? Do I need to make a list of all the applications I have installed and all my Windows updates or something?
 
 
Edit: Whoops, didn't see your edit there.
 
I installed Windows using an image off MSDN (full version), burned that on DVD and installed it. No weird practices or anything. The same way I've been installing Windows for ten years now.

Eh? Connecting six devices is a lot? I've never heard of that and I've had a lot more stuff connected on other systems in the past.
 
Anyway, seeing as I work with sound, I can't disconnect the Lexicon Alpha. Besides, I've only had that device for a week, long after these problems started. I've disconnected the rest.
 
 
All right, so something very weird happened this morning. I just got out of bed and was getting ready for a meeting when my computer started...screaming. It was a whiny noise. Not very high-pitched. But very loud. I don't sleep in the same room but I'm certain it would have woken me up if it had happened in the night. I was in a hurry so I couldn't investigate it further but it was definitely coming from inside the case. The computer functioned as normal during this occurrence. I had no choice but to just shut down the system and head for work. I just got back, turned on my machine and it's gone. I've heard of coil whine, but it seemed like it was way too loud for that. Also much lower in pitch. I guess it could have come from the motherboard speaker but I have no idea why it would suddenly start spouting a bunch of racket. It definitely wasn't a fan either. I've heard that sound. This was nothing like it. Besides, all the fans are brand new and there are no cables near that could be touching them.

Well the sound is gone now and it hasn't come back (yet). I'll make a recording if it presents itself again. I don't think it could have been a hard drive. It was too loud for that and it was more whiny than the typical crunches you hear coming from a hard drive (besides, a hard drive making so much noise and still working just fine afterwards? I doubt it). I suppose it could have been the PSU. I really don't know. All I know is that it filled the room and didn't sound anything like your usual coil whine.
 
On another note: The nvlddmkm errors in my event viewer have stopped, so there's at least something good that's happened. I hope it's due to the clean driver install and not because I disconnected my second monitor (I'd like to reconnect that).

Thats the best news possible! Glad it's working now