Hi guys,

 

Need some advice please

 

I got a brand new Gainward GTX970 4G card and installed in my Asus Z-97A motherboard.

 

First flight I made, I got a crash by the Graphics driver, and OpenGL error. P3D screen went black and never recovered.

 

I did some googling and the only thing I saw was ensuring my card was set to Gen3, but there are two different places for this.

 

Under "PCH COnfiguration" I get the option to to configure the PCI Express Slots, but the only options are AUTO, GEN1 and GEN2

 

Under "System Agent Configuration" I get the option "NB PCIe Configuration" to set 16x speed and options are AUTO, GEN1, GEN2 and GEN3

 

Could someone please let me know what the best option is for the card?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

If you are going down to BIOS level to try to sort your problem out I would suggest first flashing to the latest version. It appears that there have been a number of revisions for your board marked "improve system stability" and "improve system performance" which could help, it's also possible Asus may have added the settings you are looking for in a revised BIOS.

 

Personally the BIOS wouldn't be my first port of call though. Prior to installing your new card did you fully uninstall the existing graphics drivers and use a utility such as Driver Cleaner / Driver Sweeper to remove all traces of the old driver before installing the new card and the latest drivers? I also tend to run CCleaners registry check prior to installing new drivers to make sure there are no fragments of uninstalled software / drivers hanging around. I would probably also uninstall and re-install any graphics utilities such as MSI Afterburner to ensure they are working with the correct hardware and make sure that tools such as NVidiaInspector are showing the correct card and details. Apologies if you already covered these bases but a lot these issues are driver related and skipping these steps is usually the cause.

If you are going down to BIOS level to try to sort your problem out I would suggest first flashing to the latest version. It appears that there have been a number of revisions for your board marked "improve system stability" and "improve system performance" which could help, it's also possible Asus may have added the settings you are looking for in a revised BIOS.

Personally the BIOS wouldn't be my first port of call though. Prior to installing your new card did you fully uninstall the existing graphics drivers and use a utility such as Driver Cleaner / Driver Sweeper to remove all traces of the old driver before installing the new card and the latest drivers? I also tend to run CCleaners registry check prior to installing new drivers to make sure there are no fragments of uninstalled software / drivers hanging around. I would probably also uninstall and re-install any graphics utilities such as MSI Afterburner to ensure they are working with the correct hardware and make sure that tools such as NVidiaInspector are showing the correct card and details. Apologies if you already covered these bases but a lot these issues are driver related and skipping these steps is usually the cause.

Appreciate the input. As soon as I installed the card I actually formatted my drives and reinstalled Windows, which needed to be done, so all drivers were flushed and installed clean.

 

The issue may well be the drivers themselves as there are quite a few people with issues, but until then, it is a lottery.

Did you install the proper drivers for the z97 chip set? Don't rely on windows update, use the FD that came with your board or download from Asus. If so, then try scrubbing the drivers with DDU.

Appreciate the input. As soon as I installed the card I actually formatted my drives and reinstalled Windows, which needed to be done, so all drivers were flushed and installed clean.

 

The issue may well be the drivers themselves as there are quite a few people with issues, but until then, it is a lottery.

 

Ah OK, in which case the advice from Rhys regarding chipset and onboard hardware drivers is sound, though I haven't seen a FD for a loooooooooong time.

 

I've read about the NVidia driver issues a lot of people are saying that the 350.12 drivers are the last stable ones that they had, and have gone back to these until NVidia sort the problem out. You could try this if you haven't already.

I just have gone through installing the same.

I had to delete the display driver in windows, leaving the system without one per se, then restart to let windows pick up the driver for the new hardware it finds. Then update to the latest version NVidia.

Regards

Alvaro Escorcia