Thanks for the info, its very interesting.

In regards to you & Willum, my issue doesn't sound quite as serious as either of yours, However the ratio of my issues occured over the total number of days still is seemingly random, for eg. I could have the "Display Driver" crash on a ratio of 1:7 , 1:14, 1:24, 1:30, sometimes twice on the same day etc etc... so its random in that respect.

However what has been totally consistent is the "Windows Desktop Manager" crash while working in Cubase 7.5 or 8, the strange thing is that it tends to happen in moments where for eg. I may be draging samples around with the mouse cursor, or scrolling through the playlist & during these moments I get the Desktop Manager crashes.

Trying a new PCIE slot, a new Nvidia graphic card & new RAM is about all I can do before I need to do a new system build. Im very disapointed with Cubase Pro 8 though.

 

from the manual 2-21

if you run 2 x16 cards in sli or cross fire you put them in the first 2 slots then the third runs at 1x

if you put a x16 card in the first slot a device with less that x8 link in the second and a device with thats faster than x4 link in the third
then the the pcie slots will run at x16 x8 x8

if your just running one card you can put it in the first or second slot for it to run at full x16

rtfm :-P

normally if you have installed the drivers next time you boot windows will pick up the driver you installed for the card if you change the card to a different slot
its only if you install a card that is not supported buy the driver
ie if you have a legacy driver as the latest causes high dcp latency for example and then you drop a newer card in that was not supported by the driver.

then you would have to change the driver to a newer one.

on a side note the only times i get a flicker on my screen like you said is if i dynamicly change the memory and clock speeds of my gpu but i use nvidia
as i have had many issues with ati gpu's in the past cause of the catalyst drivers hate them
but nvidia did a cock-up during this year where there driver for 2-3 revisions caused issues with pro audio interfaces so just held back on the older drivers till they sorted it out.

 

Yea I figured as much, its not rocket science, I used a quick google search & got my answer during the down time , didnt feel like r'ingtfm so don't be a hater thanks anyway

 

no hater

but i say the same to my nice or my new one fgi (f google it)lol

on a side note the only times i get a flicker on my screen like you said is if i dynamicly change the memory and clock speeds of my gpu but i use nvidia
as i have had many issues with ati gpu's in the past cause of the catalyst drivers hate them
but nvidia did a cock-up during this year where there driver for 2-3 revisions caused issues with pro audio interfaces so just held back on the older drivers till they sorted it out.

 

Whats the current status with that Nvidia Driver / Audio Interface situation then ? Has it been fixed ? or are you still using a older revision driver ?

 

on the current version at the moment and its fine
but also i know many audio systems that have ati cards in that run fine
the nvidia thing is just my preference.

 

UPDATE:

I have tested the different PCIE slot & the same problems are still occurring.

I have purchased a nvidia gtx 970 as I personally feel its more of a graphic related issue rather than RAM. If the new graphic card doesn't fix the issues then im looking at a new PC build as its not worth investing into more DDR3 Triple Channel RAM to potentially still have the same issue (potential bad motherboard etc...)

I will post back updates once I have tested the new nvidia gtx970 graphic card.

 

UPDATE:

The new Nvidia GTX970 has been working good, I have not had the windows desktop manager crash on me yet during a test period which is now reaching upto 30 hours.

So im not sure whether my previous AMD 7970 card was faulty or the driver specifically was conflicting with something while working in cubase im not quite sure, just glad the problem is fixed