Mobo and Video issues + advice

[TITAN24]

Its been along time since I posted on this board but everyone was very helpful last time I was here.

So here is my problem. I recently upgraded some of the components on my pc and have been having trouble since.

My new parts are as follows:
EVGA GeForce 9600GT
BIOSTAR P4M900M4
Crucial 2x2GB DDR2 667

All the other components are from my old machine so I know they work. The reason I went with this set up is because the motherboard allowed me to use an old processor and save some money. Yes I know bad idea.

The problem I have is that when playing games (WoW, TF2) my monitor will go black, then go into standby, and the sound will just loop. The only way to restart is with a hard reboot.

I have updated all the drives and even tried to roll back to some old ones with out any luck. I’ve run memtest and done a stability test on the video card. Now all of these checked out and I only have problems gaming, not web surfing or watching movies/videos. I believe my problem may be that my video card is PCI-e version 2.0 or Gen 2 and the motherboard doesn’t like that. On the Biostar website they state that NV8800 will not work because “Its due to hardware support limitation to the Gen II PCI-E VGA card support from the chipset.” While that’s not the same video card I have I believe that’s my problem.

Has anyone else run into similar problems or any ideas on how I might fix it?

As I don’t expect this to be any easy fix, I’m planning on just upgrading to another motherboard and new processor. Money is of course an object but I still would like a good solid board with a decent processor as close to or under $200. Any recommendations on a good mobo that I can run the same memory on(667) and my use my new video card. I ask because I’m not sure about running different memory on different motherboards, i.e. the motherboard requires 800 and I use 667, will this work or will I need to OC? And the fact that the motherboards I’ve looked at on newegg don’t say PCI-e 2.0 or anything like that.

Any help would be great. Thanks

 

[Nenu]

The problem isnt down to a PCI-E version mismatch, thats a non issue.

Running indivdual stability tests is no guarantee your PC will be stable with everything running hard at the same time. Especially if you have low case airflow.
Many GPU tests dont push the card to its max. ATI tool gives way higher overclocks than I can actually use.
I get much higher GPU temps and a solid overclock when testing with rthdribl.

Try using your PC with the case side off (and a housefan blowing in if you have one).
If this helps, you have a heat problem.
Can you check GPU and CPU temps at idle and load?

There is a possibility your PSU cant handle the extra load but I doubt it as they are pretty low power components.
What PSU do you have?
If you can try another good PSU, give it a go.

Any DDR-2 motherboard can use DDR2-667 but with an X38 or X48 motherboard it will limit some overclocks as they cannot go lower than 1:1 FSB to Ram speed.
Ideally you want to stay at 1:1 regardless of which motherboard you have anyway as your PC is faster that way.
With 1:1 and say a max overclock of your ram of around 800MHz (not guaranteed, you need to find the max yourself), your max FSB is going to be around 400MHz.
Multiply 400 by the CPU multi you wish to use and that will be around your max overclock due to the ram topping out.

ie CPU multi of x9, 9x400 = 3.6GHz assuming the chip and motherboard will clock that high too