I got through the stress tests, it looks like there's a little more after that, including a RAM and hard drive check. I don't think the RAM is bad since I just got it replaced, but I'll run the checker on both that and the HDD as well. Then I'll do what the EVGA rep suggested and I'll post back with results.
Alright, final update. I basically tried everything under the sun to troubleshoot this issue myself and after a lot of help from everyone here and RMAing about half my build. I finally just took my PC in to my local computer shop and was prepared to pay them to diagnose it. They got to work on it, but because of how random the crashes are, they were having difficulty replicating the problem, the machine does just fine through high intensity stress tests, but can experience a graphics driver crash during a process as simple as me typing in this browser text field with nothing else open right now. They worked on it yesterday and today and were stumped until one of them did a bunch of research to see if he could find anyone with similar issues on the web. Based on what he told me, this is a known issue for some owners of the card that I have and it's basically an issue that just is--I'm not alone in experiencing this issue. For a lot of other owners of the GTX 460 2Win, they're having issues with the same thing and it seems to be due to Nvidia not really giving too much of a crap about their users and fixing driver issues.
It's supposed to have been fixed, Nvidia has claimed that they've gotten it taken care if, but the fact of the matter--based on what the tech at my local PC repair store said he'd seen online--is that they clearly haven't fixed the issue across the board. So I guess my next step is to call Nvidia and give them a piece of my mind about it, but chances are that I'll likely have to deal with it until [hopefully] Nvidia actually puts some effort into working on the problem once and for all. I know it's just an inconvenience in the scope of things, but it's one of those things that you'd think they'd be more on top of, it does prevent a user from getting the fullest experience out of their card. So anyway, thanks for all of the assistance you all provided me with, I'm going to go ahead and mark this as solved, hopefully Nvidia will eventually release a driver that will finally fix this issue. Cheers!
Last edited by AndySitz; 05 Feb 2013 at 00:43.
I also hope so.
"Display driver stopped working and now recovered" is not a driver fault but a hardware fault in my experience. My earlier graphics card used to produce this error, irrespective of the driver versions. From when I got it changed. I have not faced a single driver crash.
So you think it could just be the GTX 460 2Win card as a general card, rather than it being the specific physical card I have in my system or a driver installed on my system? The PC repair tech I talked to told me his advice in terms of fixing the problem would be to ditch the Nvidia card and go with an ATI card. I'm seriously considering it, based on what I've seen in terms of ATI - Nvidia comparison charts and price contrast, though the only frustrating part is that I still have a lengthy period of time left on this 460's warranty as I bought it in October '11 and I believe it came with a three year warranty. I'm debating how much of that warranty period I should wait out and also I don't immediately have the funds to buy a new card, but I might sometime here in the near future.
Do you have any recommendations for a card to potentially replace my GTX 460 currently out on the market, Arc? Preferably something priced beneath $500, 500 would even be pushing it a bit, I'd have to save a little bit for that, and save quite a bit more for anything priced higher than that. Also, what's your personal take on Nvidia versus ATI?
Mate I guess best you start a new thread in the graphics card section of our forum.... it will pull a nice number of alternative suggestions and compairisons.
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