[SOLVED] Erratic GTX 680 performace

I have tried for a few days to solve my Galaxy GTX 680 SOC problems, slowly burning my fuse :banghead:

Built PC appx. 6 moths ago, constant crashing under load, i thought it was driver related, but after 6 months i have already upgraded most drivers 2 or 3 times since. the gpu has been updated i think about 5 times. still same problem of crashing under load. It does this on all my games.

Basically what it does is spikes GPU usuage to 99%. I have been trying to play crysis 3 the past 2 days, and on medium or high settings, GPU usuage is still about 99%. I ran some OCCT benchmark for CPU and GPU, both checked out. CPU was getting a bit hot, but nothing insane. GPU got to about 72* after 10 mins, so it didnt really raise any flags.
As soon as crysis goes into game, the fans go to full throttle and performance goes right out the window. today i actually remedied the problem by directly connecting my CPU fan to 12V, although loud, the game played much smoother. But i always end up with a "Nvidia driver stopped working and has receovered" error.
My roomate has a older quad core rig with a gtx 480. In benchmark tests my card destroys every number his puts out, which is expected, but put in a game, and his stays nice and cool and can play smooth for hours (same settings and all). mine ramps up the fans and the game crashes after about 8 minutes. Mine also has double the ram, and much more CPU power.

So for months i thought it was my GPU, but today after "super" cooling my CPU and getting smoother play out of it, im confused :sad: what is this all telling me? is there any other info i can provide to help? Im no computer whiz, but i have done enough on my PC i know my way around quite well.

Any ideas? i called galaxy and they suggested i RMA the card to get checked or replaced. this takes about 2 weeks, which is a bit too long for me to go without a PC.



Thanks for any help.