Hello

Had my 780 for a while now and have recently in the past few weeks been getting a black screen after less than an hour of intensive gaming, the sound carries on in the background but I have to kill the games through task manager. It started on the day V1.1 of Assetto Corsa got released and I thought it was the games fault, now I'm getting it in other games like FC3:Blood Dragon and Max Payne 3.

My card is the 780 SC ACX which tends to run at about 1070MHz if I set the power target to 106%, the temps never go above 70-75c and both fans are spinning fine. I get these crashes regardless of what operating system and drivers are installed and my Win 8.1 Pro install is about a week old - I also get the crashes with or without PrecisionX or the OSD running. 

Could it be a failing gpu? 

Z77 Extreme4 mobo
i5 3570K 4.4GHz
8Gb Vengeance 1600 CL9
840 EVO SSD + WD 1TB Blue
EVGA GTX780 SC ACX
EVGA Supernova 850G2

That's my plan for today, I can use PrecisionX for that can't I? Just add a negative value to the core and memory? 

I'm back on PrecisionX 4.2.1 or whatever it is as 16 is a crashfest on any video player I have installed.

Ok thank you both, I'm at -105 on the core and will see what happens. 

Setting the power target from 106% to 100% last night definitely gave me much longer in between crashes on Max Payne 3.
If the card does turn out to be unstable what would be my next step? This is the first PC I've built in a long time, luckily not added this GPU into my loop yet.

-105MHz core still gives me an Assetto Corsa crash which reads as a graphics driver crash in the logs, I get no notification via windows that the display driver has stopped working though. The developers have read my last few logs and are insisting it is a GPU problem. 

I'll try -105 on memory too and fire up Max Payne 3

Alec01
wouldn't my machine only reboot during an intensive game if the power supply was overstressed? The PSU is only a few months old and is way overkill for my current setup.

Yes, unless that one certain game is causing the issue. Try running Prime95 & Unigine Heaven 4.0 at the same time to see if it causes your system to reboot. Start Small FFT test inside Prime95 first then startup Heaven 4.0. You will notice lag but it's completely normal since you will be putting your entire system under a full load. If your system reboots your PSU has a problem.

Alec01
It isn't likely to go bang if I do that is it? lol I'm a bit nervous at the best of times with anxiety.

Getting 12.197v on the +12 rail at idle according to my mobo but that doesn't really mean anything does it.

No it won't go bang putting the system under full load.

Report back with your results when you can. 

I just tried again for about 20 minutes with them both running and the PSU fan didn't come on once, could that be my issue here? 

I turned it on anyway, will be summer here soon - the blades are spinning. 

Any more ideas? Heaven hasn't crashed the display driver once tonight so far, should I leave them running? Usually if I don't supply enough voltage with even say +50MHz it'll crash on the first pass. 

Probably the first thing I should have thought of if we're honest. 

I hit the UEFI Default button, will probably try some games out tomorrow as I'm sick of it for today.

Thanks for the help so far Sajin. 

No problem. Which graphics driver are you currently running? Have you tried the previous 3 graphics drivers to see if they all produce the same issue you're having?

Alec01
347.88 is the current driver, I just grabbed it from the website again and checked the clean install option but I really need some sleep, I'll play the pants off it tomorrow and post my results.

No problem. Report back when you can. 

DKSang
One of the things I discovered abut BF4 and my GTX 780 ACX SC was that I simply can not overclock any part of my system (CPU, memory, GPU) without BF4 crashing. The error message was the same. The villain was nvlddmkm every time. It's not a driver issue. Solution? No overclocks. I even had the dial the memory back to 1333 Mhz from 2166 and drop the memory voltage to 1.5v. Some games just don't like overclocking and that error is the best symptom of the problem.

I used to be able to overclock the card fine up to about 1170MHz core and it'd be stable in all games, but the results are not really that great considering how much extra stress you're putting on the card so I've left it on the boost clocks for the last few months. 

This issue started a few weeks ago where the black screen occurs but the game is still playing in the background, every time this happens I have to restart the PC in order to play again or I get errors before the games start back up.

I'm a bit confused, I've put my clocks back to standard instead of -105MHz and installed clean drivers so all I can do now is test, CPU and RAM are also at their default values although I'm pretty sure my overclock was totally stable.

I'll find out soon, I rang the retailer who sold me the GPU (scan.co.uk) and they told me to download 3Dmark11 and BF4, if they crash with the same trouble at stock clocks they'll arrange an RMA for me, although it's probably faster if I go direct to EVGA they don't even have a phone number for me to call and don't I have to send the card to California?

Edit, or are you thinking it could be a CPU/mobo issue if it crashes on overclocked CPU?

It only started suddenly one afternoon the other week though, I've had that same 4.4GHz overclock for about 6 months, I'm totally confused lol something is wrong somewhere but I can't figure it out.

I noticed last night that Assetto Corsa crashed the second I plugged my PS3 controller in, but it read in the logs that it is a DX error