help with 9800 pro please!

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misfitsfiend

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 18, 2003
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so...i built my buddy a computer last friday the 8th i think, with the following specs:
antec sonata
amd 64 3000+
msi k8t neo2 nforce 3 or whatever
wd 80gb 8mb cache
512mb pc3200 ddr400 ram
9800 pro


now, i have built 3 computers with this graphics card, and i've never seen this problem. i have it in my own computer, and haven't had a problem with it yet. his problem is that whenever he plays games, they crash, a critical error message comes up about 30 minute into hte game simply showing the typical send error/don't send error report, with no explanation as to what happened. so i came to the conclusion that this must be the graphics card because no other programs are crashing.

i've tried doom3 and warcraft 3, each on fairly high settings, similar to mine. on my system, my graphics card is not overclocked and i can play doom 3 at "high" settings, with a resolution of 1024x768. i play warcraft 3 with the highest settings @ like 1280 or whatever.

i tried lowering these settings for both games, same problem.

last night, i told him that maybe something is wrong in the bios, (he's not very computer savvy) so i told him to perhaps try increasing the voltage, so he said he increased the AGP voltage by .1 (i think it was like 1.5-1.6v)

this was late last night, and he said he had only played for like 5 minutes and it hadn't crashed yet, so i don't know if it has been fixed, but if it doesn't can you guys think of any other possible fixes? the only thing i can think of at this point is rma....

he has directx 9.0c, and the lastest catalyst drivers.

thanks in advance!
 
It sounds to me like a heat issue. Did you overclock the card at all? What kind of power supply did you use? Use Ati tool to monitor the temps of the card during use. Also try opening up the case and perhaps aiming a fan at the card and try running the games. If no crashes then you've found your problem. Also, you might try and download new drivers. I personally use the Omega 2.5.90.
 
well, it shouldn't be overclocked because there is no multiplier or anything like that that i know of...it's the antec sonata case with the truepower 380w power supply that i have in my computer.
 
I owned a 9800pro before upgrading and the card itself got quite hot. However I didnt experience any problem with it, perhaps because my case is well ventilated with 5 80mmfans. Your power supply is fine. I would download Ati tool 0.0.22, you can monitor the card temps and even modify the fan speed on the card itself to cool it down better.
 
ok another question, under "advanced chipset features" my card is get to "64m" agp aperture or something like that? and it has other options of 64, 128, 256, and 512. what does this mean? is my graphics card performing less than it should be? mine was set to 64m, and his was set to 128m so i told him to lower it to 64m like mine is.
 
I have the 9800 pro as well, and found that I had to give it it's own lead from the powersupply.

He should give that a try as well.
 
First of all, AGP Aperture memory will not be used until your video card's on-board memory is running low. That means it will usually not impact your gaming performance because developers are trying hard to not exceed the on-board memory limits.
The bigger your video memory, the smaller your Aperture Size could be. However with later games requiring more and more texture memory a good number seems to be 128MB Aperture Size for all cards with 64 MB to 256 MB Video RAM.
Setting the Aperture Size to HUGE values will not increase performance because this merely sets the maximum amount of physical memory that can be used.
 
ok, so i went over to his house yesterday, and it STILL DOESN'T WORK! i've tried everything i can think of. i reinstalled windows xp pro, then installed the latest drivers from a cd we burned in this order: mobo, direct x, catalyst 4.1, sound. and doom 3 and warcraft 3 still crash! the only thing i can think of now is to go over to his house and try out my card in his computer, then try swapping hard drives perhaps, and after that just RMA THE DAMN THING!
 
misfitsfiend said:
ok, so i went over to his house yesterday, and it STILL DOESN'T WORK! i've tried everything i can think of. i reinstalled windows xp pro, then installed the latest drivers from a cd we burned in this order: mobo, direct x, catalyst 4.1, sound. and doom 3 and warcraft 3 still crash! the only thing i can think of now is to go over to his house and try out my card in his computer, then try swapping hard drives perhaps, and after that just RMA THE DAMN THING!
Click to expand...
I noticed in your first post you didn't say what brand the ram is. Is it off brand? Even if it's stuff that's generally good try running memtest86 You might have got some bad ram. Hope you get the problem fixed!

Edit: Saw in you first post that no other apps are crashing. Might not be ram then, but I would still give memtest a try.
 
v1p3r-386- said:
I noticed in your first post you didn't say what brand the ram is. Is it off brand? Even if it's stuff that's generally good try running memtest86 You might have got some bad ram. Hope you get the problem fixed!

Edit: Saw in you first post that no other apps are crashing. Might not be ram then, but I would still give memtest a try.
Click to expand...

actually, i went over today and brought my card over...still crashed. so i left and came back a little bit later and the games were running fine, except he had my memory in along with his, and he told me it hadn't crashed for the last 45 minutes. we both have the game geil pc3200 ddr400 memory. (the kind with the blue heatsink)

i then took mine out, and it played for a while this time, but it still crashed, thus disproving my theory that his memory could be bad or something.

but since when does a computer require 1gb of memory to run as it should?
 
misfitsfiend said:
actually, i went over today and brought my card over...still crashed. so i left and came back a little bit later and the games were running fine, except he had my memory in along with his, and he told me it hadn't crashed for the last 45 minutes. we both have the game geil pc3200 ddr400 memory. (the kind with the blue heatsink)

i then took mine out, and it played for a while this time, but it still crashed, thus disproving my theory that his memory could be bad or something.

but since when does a computer require 1gb of memory to run as it should?
Click to expand...
Try different memory slots. One of them might be bad. Try both slots w/ his ram and report back. Good luck!
 
misfitsfiend said:
i did, i left my memory in his 2nd slot, and it crashed, but not as quickly as usual.
Click to expand...
Hmm.... can't think of anything else except to RMA the motherboard. You don't know anyone who has another motherboard you could test his proc/ram in do you? If you ordered through newegg it should be pretty easy to RMA the mobo. Good luck!
 
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