my first build

A

Amandalynn

n00b
Joined
Jul 5, 2006
Messages
11
Hello I have been suggested to visit these forums for all the best info I just recently bought a new gaming pc and I am afraid I am utterly clueless at the power of my machine.. and even more specifically the best graphics card drivers for my gc... (i do know that the newest isn't always the best). I also know my graphics card while one of the newer versions >.< it is also very glitchy so let me toss out my system specs so peeps could give me some good feed back on if i failed at my first attempt at building a pc

OS XP Media Chenter SP2
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+
2.21GHz, 2 GB of Ram
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT Driver 8.3.9.1
WD 74GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 HD

Hmmm what else to add *grin* oh yeah my awesome new light scribe dvd burner (but yeah thats just an added toy for me to play with ^_^)

So thoughts comments concerns?

My GC seems to run properly as long as i turn of shadows and antialysisng (OMG can't spell but oh well)


Thanks much
Manda
 
With a rig like that you should have no problem running w/ high shadows and Antialiasing.

Especially at a resolution of 1280x1024. Not sure if you run at a higher rez......

I recommend the 84. series drivers, or maybe even the newest.
 
What games are you playing on that machine?

ALso what programs do you have running in the background when you are playing your games?
 
Currently play a smidgen of everything until Archlord beta is announced. I am running at 1280*1024 in Lineage 2, WOW, and AutoAssault all at max details except shadows and antialiasing. When I turn them on i get greyed out segments then, well, the whole screen flickers and i play the blinking game to reboot. I also had a system crash on my last 3DMark test... as far as programs running in the background my guess is that the largest system hog is nortan and the second is the massive all-in-one hp printer program (many of the hp components i have removed from startup) And then there of course is zone alarm, msn, yahoo, and Teamspeak...

I do have to scale down my rezolution for Legend of Ares and Hero. The games themselves don't support the higher rezolutions (so deffinantly not a graphics card problem there).

~grin~ and to be honest compared to my last build.. one that worked wonderfully for 6 years that my brother put together for me and was finaly scrapped for part because it could no longer keep up, was horrible compared to this so to me no shadows or antialiasing is not a disappointment ^_^ since i don't know what it looks like to begin with!

The goal for this machine or the game that it was designed for is Huxley. And by the release of that game i want my machine to be ready for dual graphics cards... So i plan on stressing it to the max with one and try to get it to a comfortable lvl before adding a second card...

Hence my concerns about the drivers. I know currently theres a beta driver but i have no desire to install it until i hear better things.. Which is why I am here :D
 
Bah I knew that was coming next... and it is a very good question as not enough power for the graphics cards means all sorts of problems...

This is the one i purchased from NewEgg: Antec NeoPower NeoHE 550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply 100 - 240V UL, CUL, TUV, CE, FCC, CCC, CB, C-tick
 
yeah i am hoping it will support the dual graphics cards as it has independent power cords for them.

So far with three days running and playing games my temp has been right around 45-50 c
 
Is that the temp on your grapics card? Overheating cards can cause all sorts of weird crap. I also had a bad mobo once that did everything except 3D graphics fine, then it would get very blinky with lots of artifacting.
 
Yep thats my graphics card temp. Not entirely sure how to check my CPU temp *grin* but Nvidias properties manager has the gc temp in it ^_^
 
Amandalynn said:
Yep thats my graphics card temp. Not entirely sure how to check my CPU temp *grin* but Nvidias properties manager has the gc temp in it ^_^
Click to expand...

The cpu temp is usually reported in the bios. You can also check out speedfan, it's free to download windows utility. I don't remember the url offhand but you'll be fine if you google it.

Weren't there issues with the 7900 series? Have you tried downclocking it a bit, or contacting the manufacturer's tech support?
 
Yeah i found that out after the fact. seems to me on the 3dmark it crashes my system when it loads into the one that had building that spawns around you or bridges above you or something >.< not sure i stop paying attention each time right before it crashes.. I am going to move my driver up to the 84 series. but as far as I can tell the graphics card is fine as long as there is no shadows as far as under clocking I want to wait to make sure it is running ok so i don't void the warrenty ^_^ and I am not completly sure how to do that and i need read up on it...
 
ok this is what happens in the benchmark test. one of two things occurs, the screen starts flickering and i blink my way to a resart of it causes a force restart...

Where? Graphics test 4 Deep freeze about 1300 frames in, where a building or something loads... lol perhaps i should move this to a different thread since now its a problem and not a question...
 
Thanks bro...

I swear if my old rig could have kept up with the new games i would have NEVER updated... That thing never crashed, never over heated, and chugged along like the fate of the world depended on its little fans... but now I have this big bad machine with the capability of Dual core and it can't even make it through a benchmark test... /sigh and for the record there isn't even a spot of huskie hair in my new pc...
 
capability of Dual core
Click to expand...

Not quite. Your mobo is capable but your proccy isn't. It is 64bit capable though. ;) And you can upgrade in the future if you want but first things first.

I completely missed this, sadly. It's my own fault as I definitely knew better. This is the [H] so when in Rome, don't forget to pay attention to Ceasar. :( :

EVGA

EVGA is seeing things much different than BFG on how to handle this situation. Joe Darwin of EVGA admitted that they are aware of problems being had on mostly the high end 7900 series of card and it does seem to be something to do with EVGA’s overclocking of the card. While EVGA would not share any RMA numbers or percentages with us, they have revamped what they are doing for their customers that are having issues. They are using a much tighter quality screening control on the overclocked 7900 video cards going out the door. They are also going the extra distance to talk to the persons returning cards with issues and seeing exactly what problems they are having with them. Say if a customer has issues with Oblivion and needs to RMA their card, EVGA will make sure and run extra cycles of Oblivion on their new card to make sure all is well. So while Joe would not be specific beyond what I have written here, he did seem very sincere in the fact that they had heavily beefed up testing on all overclocked cards leaving their warehouse. If in fact these GeForce 7900 GPUs do not have the headroom for overclocking that the previous versions widely had, a more diligent screening process should be able to find the GPUs to fit the bill...hopefully.

Another problem that we discussed was people having to RMA their cards more than once. Joe pointed out that EVGA very much wanted you to return your problematic EVGA 7900 card to EVGA, and not the retailer. This way EVGA could make sure you get exactly what you paid for. EVGA was even going as far to cross ship cards to make sure that their customers have as little downtime as possible. This is of course a great service to many that is appreciated and please notes that a credit card would be needed to do this.

One interesting thing that was brought up in conversation was what applications where having trouble. Again, F.E.A.R., Oblivion, and 3DMark06 were mentioned, and obviously these applications are pushing even 7900 cards very hard. Joe mentioned that he had seen some people with the theory that 3DMark was breaking the cards. In some circles folks that had issues with the 7900 had only had problems after running 3DMark06's Deep Freeze test. While I am not a synthetic benchmark fan, it sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but interesting nonetheless and maybe something to keep in mind.

UPDATE 5/30/06

EVGA Came forth with more information concerning this issue.

EVGA would like to thank its forums members for posting system specs and the details about the issues they are having. EVGA takes these matters very seriously and is looking into all post to extract the data from them.

Below are some key facts regarding this issue that we want to share with everyone:

EVGA’s 7900GT Series total RMA rate is from 0.04% to 1.9% per different SKU’s (which includes cards that had no problems found)

19% of the users who requested a 2nd time RMA out of the all RMA still experienced either the same issue or new issues unrelated to the VGA card itself.

EVGA will continue to perform better product quality control ensuring a reliable and stable product. At the same time we are also improving our technical support skills marking sure to provide a better customer service experience with EVGA’s product.

EVGA has observed some users pushing the card to an unreachable amazing clock speeds and causing the GPU and/or memory to fail permanently and this has gotten our attention.

All over-clocking exceeding our product preset clock/memory speeds out of the box is NOT recommended. Some users may be able to over-clock with higher speeds, but this may lead to hidden issues like artifacting or random lock ups. That is why we have created several different clocked products for 7900 series.

We encourage EVGA customers who have problems to contact our technical support staff first to get the problem fixed ASAP. Our support number is 888-880-3842 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Thank you to all the the moderators and members’ continuous support to our community.

Joe Darwin

jdarwin@evga.com

End Update

src: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA2OSwyLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top