NVidia GT240 Down-Clocks on Windows XP

Question

I have a GT240 which I use primarily for BOINC (scientific computing). I run it at 100% all the time (with a tool to keep the temperature below 90 celcius). I've noticed that after some time, the GPU "down-clocks"; the GPU clock reduces from 550 to 135.

This just started recently. Is there a way to prevent this? There's no global setting to enable maximum performance, and I can't do it per executable since I need this primarily for scientific computing.

I've tried:

• Various and numerous NVidia driver versions from 260.x to 280.x
• RivaTuner (doesn't support ForceWare drivers)
• NVTray (doesn't fix the clock speed)
• MSI Afterburner (doesn't fix the clock speed)

Answer 1

The thread Zotac GT240 Problem Driving Me Nuts says that this is a driver bug that is triggered by the screen-saver. The advice is :

Go to Control panel>power options and make sure the power scheme is set to always on
Go to Control panel>display and disable all the screensavers - you can however still have the monitor power off.