GTX 660 Ti 2GB Losing Display After Game

[CodemasterRob]

Hi. I've owned two Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti 2GB's in the past year. One bought from New Egg, and another I got from RMA after my first one died. When I received my new one, games were randomly crashing and even not starting. Now, even after a clean upgrade from Windows 7 to 8.1 and a very long checklist of troubleshooting, a very (apparently) unique and strict problem happens. I no longer experience crashes during a game (at least I haven't after upgrading to 8.1), but every single time I close a game and exit to the desktop, my desktop gradually yet rapidly slows down to complete freeze. After this, my display goes dark. However, since upgrading to 8.1, only just the video freezes and shut off, not the sound (although it does seems to slow as the display cuts off and then go back to normal). So it seems everything is still running in the background, but I can't get video output from my card or onboard graphics without a hard reset after this.

System specs:

Intel i7 3770k
ASRock Extreme 3 LGA 1155 motherboard (recently RMA'd)
GIGABYTE GTX 660 Ti 2GB (recently RMA'd)
2x4 GB GSkill Ripjaws X
RAIDMAX Blackstone 700W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified PSU
500 GB Western Digital HDD

The motherboard, power supply, and graphics card are all relatively new (August of this year), with the GPU and motherboard being RMA'd before.

[Nelly]

Have you tried removing the GTX 660 Ti, and running with onboard Intel GPU, does the problems still occur?

Not got any friends you can test the card in their system?  Could be a number of things, have you run a memtest on the memory? See if it brings up errors?

What happened with the RMA's on the motherboard, and graphics card?

[CodemasterRob]

I've tried running the onboard graphics, and there's no problem. It only happens when using the GPU. I've already run memtest, reset BIOS and reflashed BIOS, etc. I am going to take the card to a shop to be tested next weekend in Georgia.

Last night, something else happened. Now the games force close, crash to the desktop, and then the desktop freezes for a minute. The display shuts off, but any sound (like music in a browser) just distorts and then continues playing normally after the display shuts off. This is far different from the games running normally and crashing after I close them.

Edit: The RMA parts I got back were alright. I think. I was experience freezes as soon as I got the graphics card back though. I hadn't attempted gaming before I got the GPU because the Intel 4k graphics are horrible and won't run any games I own.

[Nelly]

Yeah I would try the graphics card in another system, or if you can aquire another graphics card to try in your system to see if that works.

Also their is the possibility it could be the PSU - RAIDMAX Blackstone 700W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified PSU.

Read this:  http://www.overclock.net/t/1199278/is-this-a-decent-psu-raidmax-blackstone-700w

Best sticking with reputable brands like Corsair, Seasonic, Rosewill, Antec, SuperFlower.

[CodemasterRob]

Well, I'll be having the whole thing tested out next weekend. Motherboard, power supply, graphics card, etc. I'm pretty sure it's the GPU or the motherboard though, because all of the rails have less than a 1% deviation of their rating, and I've really had no problems with power going to other parts. That, and I turned off any sound in the room and listened to the area around the GPU and a whining sound is made whenever it starts playing a game. Specifically when it does. I'm not sure if it's from the PCI bus or the card itself, but it's something worth noting that could be a problem.