Hello, as of late I have been having the error message "the display driver has stopped responding and recovered...".  I can play most games after this occurs but if I try to run FSX without first rebooting I'm into low single digit FPS. 

 

I've been dealing with ZOTAC support and they thought it was a driver issue, but after installing the latest drivers, and rolling back to older drivers etc, the issue persists.  Strangely it never occurs while I'm actually playing FSX, only when I'm at the desktop or occasionally loading FSX (it's almost as if the issue occurs more often when the card is under a light load).  ZOTAC support now thinks it's likely a hardware issue; the card is out of warranty.

 

So, my questions are two fold:

 

1) I'm looking for any input on a suitable replacement, both for FSX and potentially P3D 2.0.  I wouldn't say I'm necessarily unhappy with the performance of the GTX470 (other than the high heat/power consumption which are well documented), but if I'm going to buy a new card I'd like something I'll see some improvement from.  Looking at the avsim hw & sw guide, it recommends GTX 760 for a budget system, or a GTX 680 or 780 for a performance system.  It also makes some recommendations about pairing with the GPU...my GPU is OC'd to 4ghz so doesn't quite match the speeds in the guide.  I'm not looking to pay $700 for something top of the line, but something in the $400 or high $300 range might be doable.

 

2) As a last resort before I plunk down a few hundred dollars for a new card, anyone have any last ditch ideas to salvage my video card?

 

My specs:

 

Windows 7 64-bit

i5 2500k 3.30 GHZ oc to 4.00GHZ

4gb RAM

Corsair 650W Power Supply

 

 

Thanks for any help you may be able to provide.

 

Dave

1. i would suggest wait a few days and see how people are doing with p3d v2...if you think you might eventually switch to that, it will be a lot more clear how much card is really needed for it, right now there isn't a lot of concrete info about how it performs. although i think any of the cards you listed will probably be good enough for it and all should be decent for fsx. as you pointed out really its more a question of budget than anything.

 

2. sadly i think there isnt much you can do... i had very similar problems to what you describe with my old card a few months ago... spent hours messing with various driver versions and settings etc and couldn't really solve it. a new card and instantly everything was fixed...

 

cheers

-andy crosby

Thanks for the feedback.  Looks like there's some interesting things coming out of the early stages of the P3D 2.0 launch in terms of video cards, so yes, probably best to wait on the sidelines and see what comes of that.

 

In the meantime I'll keep pulling out my hair trying to figure out if there's something other than the video card at fault here   I'd really hate to drop a lot of money on a new card only to keep having the same issue.

 

One thing I've noticed is that when the error happens, my GPU usage, voltage and I think GPU clock all drop to zero momentarily...

Get 770 card and call it a day. No need to complicate it as gpu do need upgrades with time.