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Lockups Galore? Please help!

M

mr_greedy

n00b
Joined
May 23, 2005
Messages
5
Hey everyone.

Been a longtime ATi fan. Recently upgraded my ancient Radeon 7200 class graphics card (R100 based! :D ). She served me well..

Anyway, I bought a Sapphire x700 AGP card.

Installed the card with no trouble and updated the unified ATi drivers to the latest versions.

This is where my problems began. Firstly I would get crashes as soon as ANY 3d graphics started up (including the graphics in the Catalyst control centre). I fiddled around and finally determined that my mobo-graphicscard combo didn't like AGP x8. Dropping this down to x4 made that initial problem go away.

I still get random lockups when 3d graphics are running. They are by no means frequent, but it's mighty annoying.

I've also noticed that the lockups DO occur more frequently if I have any form on AA on. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 for example runs without too much trouble with AA off, but when you enable it, you can bet your life it'll crash at some random interval within the next five minutes.

The crashes usually consist of the picture freezing - sometimes the mouse still moves, sometimes not - then after a few seconds the machine resets but will not boot again.

On occasion, the crashes have been 'recovered' by ATi's VPU recover thingy, but that doesn't happen often.

Have any of you guys heard of this before? Is it a power issue? I've tried disconnecting the power to everything I don't need and it still occurs.

I've tried with Fast Writes OFF in the BIOS.

I've tried with the case open and closed. It's not a heat issue.

I've tried with the integrated LAN, SATA, Firewire - you name it - off.

I've tried pretty much everything.

So I'm at a loss.

Specs, then:

Abit NF7-S v2.0
AthlonXP 2300M
Seagate Barracuda 40 gig - IDE
Seagate Barracuda 200 gig - SATA
Antex Sonata case, with its standard 380w PSU

Any help would be glady appreciated!

Thanks,
paul
 
Thanks for the speedy reply.

I'm downloading the things you suggest as we speak (type?)..

I've also been fiddling with ATiTool this evening. Underclocking and putting the GPU fan on 100% continuously made no difference. It'd still lock up with AA on within 5 mins and without it on in around 10 minutes... :(

Gonna try what you suggest here and get back to you.

Thanks again.
 
Ahh well.

It didn't work. 5 or so minutes in, I got the freeze as usual.

Gonna try in a different machine tomorrow. That's got an ASUS mobo - but it's an nForce2 chipset again, so I'm not sure if the result will be any different.

Could it be my (fairly decent, as it's made by Antec) 380w PSU that's the problem?
 
You _shouldn't_ have to try another PSU, but if you can, you may as well. The Antec PSU's are generally quite good, but I suppose it is entirely possible that you may just have got a dud. Give it a shot anyway.
Also, the nForce chipsets are really not known for running cool. Blisteringly Hot, or maybe even Nuclear Aftermath are probably better words to describe the amount of heat they can push out. I doubt it is a problem with your chipset, but point an industrial fan in the side of your case and see if that helps :D
Just as a test, can you use your second hard drive to set up a dual-boot Windows environment? Like, just rip out your boot drive (which I assume is the smaller one) and do a fresh install of Windows complete with drivers and a game you have trouble with on the second hard drive. This could be an entirely Windows-related problem. It's not known for stability either... :rolleyes:
 
Sounds like a temp issue all the way (to me at least.) You sure that heatsink's making good contact?
 
It could also just plain be a defective card. Does your system work with a similar, but different card?
 
Turns out it was the inboard nForce2 chipset sound. Turning Hardware Acceleration down from "Full" to "Stardard" fixed my problems. Gonna get a cheapo soundcard sometime in the week.

Thanks again everyone.
 
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