m-board or graphic card issue

[dabiggoober]

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

I built the following system for a friend (my boss actually).

GIGABYTE nForce3 150 Motherboard "GA-K8NNXP"
AMD 64 3200+
2 37GB Raptors in Raid Zero (thanks to hardocp users for the help setting up raid)
1 200GB IDE 7200 8mb cache
1.5 GB PC 3200 Kingston
2 52x read CD's
1 8x DVD multi format writer.
1 ATI 9200 PRO

As you can see the weakest link in this system was the old video card we had scrounged from his previous system.

I convinced him the 9600pro was now a great bang for buck card and we bought one made by powercolor that had nearly all positive reviews from newegg purchasers.

Put the card in and install the drivers that come with card and Card hangs on Medal of Honor and Tiger Woods Golf04. Things we've tried:

1) Catalyst drivers on CD
2) Latest Catalyst build from ATI
3) Remove all video drivers and repeat 1 and 2
4) Try running under safe mode
5) Flashed latest bios build from Gigabyte (v12 i think)

All cause machine to hang or get the VPU recovery failure depending on which version of Catalyst drivers we are using.

Finally, I went into the BIOS and changed the AGP settings to 4x from Auto. NO CRASH RUNS GREAT

Changed from 4x to 8x got crash
changed from 8x to auto got crash
changed back to 4x runs great.

Now, I know that nearly all games don't use 8x AGP yet, but still, this seems like something I want to fix.

So, after all that, is there anything else anyone can think of me to do or any advice on whether I should RMA CARD and get different manufacturer or RMA board and replace?

Also, btw, I took the card and put in a p3.0 machine at work to see if I could get it to crash and ran fine with no change in any settings. So it would appear it is either a MB issue or a hardware compatibility issue in general.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Dabiggoober
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Lottery: A tax on those who lack math skills
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[Master [H]]

I'm thinking that heat or not having enough juice might be the problem here...

 

[dabiggoober]

Is that not enough?

Also case is Very well cooled (10 degrees above ambient) and the fan on the card is spinning.

 

[dabiggoober]

The 9200 card had no such issues with the AGP multiplier. Worked fine on Auto.

 

[Myrandex]

Maybe it could be a power issue as previously stated. Install the 9200 again and check and see what AGP mode it runs in? If it runs in 8x, and the 9600 doesn't, yet the 9600 will in another system, I would be extremely confused :-/ And personally I woulda went w/ a Via K8T800 motherboard, but that shouldn't have anything to do with it. If you have another video card (maybe your personal one) you could try it in there also. And you shouldn't have to remove drivers before installing another ATI card just to let you know,
Jason

 

[dabiggoober]

From original post ::

GIGABYTE nForce3 150 Motherboard "GA-K8NNXP"
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Very confused by your post.

 

[dabiggoober]

I gave him my 9600pro to test and it works fine on all AGP bios multiplier settings. Thus he got a bad card from Powercolor and newegg and will be RMAing that one back.