Hello, I am having a lot of problems with my new GTX 680 SC. This is my first gaming PC build and I fear my card may be faulty. First I'll start off by telling you my specs atm:
Asus Sabertooth z77 mb
i5 3570k at stock with stock fan *upgrading cooling once I get paid on nov. 7th*
EVGA GTX 680 SC
8gb corsair xms3 1600 mhz cl9, running at 1333mhz atm
XFX Pro Series 850w silver plus semi-modular psu
wd 250gb hdd *will upgrade this soon too
okay, so I built the pc, installed windows and downloaded all the drivers I needed. The drivers I downloaded for the card were 306.97. The card at first would randomly cut out and flicker, but was solved after replacing the HDMI cable. After this, the card ran absolutely fine for the rest of the night. Next day, card was okay.. then during team fortress 2 I noticed the game would be running at 200+ fps and would randomly stutter, the audio would loop ect. I thought nothing of it. Checked cards temps and they were fine (around 55-60 during gaming, 30-37 idle). Next, the game start minimizing on it's own, the sound would keep playing but the game would not open back up. About an hour after that, the cards drivers started crashing, this said exactly: "Display driver stopped responding and recovered. Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 306.97 stopped responing and has successfully recovered." It wasn't frequent at the time but then became very frequent (Around every 15-30 seconds). So I started searching for solutions. I uninstalled the 306.97 drivers and installed earlier drivers (301.42) This made no difference, I also installed the 310.33 beta drivers and it actually made it worse. I disabled HD Audio as I read that fixed other peoples, didn't work. I also read that having XMP enabled fixed it, but mines was already enabled so wasn't a fix. I re-installed the original 306.97 drivers and when I reboot my PC It would get to the "Starting Windows" screen then after would display "No Video Available", the cursor would appear and then it would blue screen. This is the current position, the PC will not load up windows whilst the drivers are being used. The only way I can gain access is by entering safe mode and uninstalling the drivers. Oh, I've also taken the card out and re-seated it in the PCI slot to ensure that wasn't the problem. I've read that you can update your cards BIOS as a fix, but I didn't want to try that because I read it can also void your warranty. I've never encountered problems like this and I have no idea what to do.. Will I need to RMA the card? Sorry about the lengthy post, I may have missed out other things I tried but I'd appreciate any advice given.
Thank you :)