Problem with 8800GTS 512

B

BL00DL1N3

n00b
Joined
Jan 2, 2005
Messages
19
I put together a new machine last night and have been having trouble getting it running. I think the problem lies within the video card.

The system has:

gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R motherboard
q6600 processor
evga 8800gts 512
2x 2gig g.skill ddr2 800 ram
vista ultimate x64

I first tried installing vista, which went through the install from cd fine. Once it was running off the hard drive, the screen just went black after a few minutes but the computer was still running. I tried reinstalling vista again and i couldn't even finish the installation after the first restart when installing. The screen would go black and I couldn't see what to do to complete it.

After I tried vista installs, I tried installing my old copy of xp, which is what I'm on now. It installed fine, but the problem kind of happened again. The screen went black after installing some drivers and restarting, but I got it to come back on after I restarted again. I'm always installing the latest drivers, but they don't seem to be helping much with the screen going black.

The only thing I can think of is the video card is malfunctioning. If anyone has any suggestions on what to do I'd appreciate it. I'm going to a friends house and trying a different video card and see if that helps, but if not what would be the next step?
 
Same video card and almost the same motherboard as you, and no problems here in Vista64, XP, or Linux. Using the 169.28 drivers in both varieties of Windows. I'd suspect that you got a dud, but not certain as of yet. Have you tried monitoring the temperatures with RivaTuner or the like?
 
Yea, that's another reason I'm lead to believe that this is a problem with the video card. My friend was trying to explain to me how to read my temps with rivatuner and I couldn't follow his instructions because rivatuner doesn't read my video card right.

It says there's no information available for my video card because of the drivers or something, but I've installed the drivers straight off of nvidia's website.

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about.
broke.jpg


Because of that, there are fewer options on the "Customize" button, and it's not letting me view the temperature thing.
 
Are you using the latest version of RivaTuner? I'm using 2.06. Also, you might want to try the latest Beta instead of stable drivers (which are also available right off of NVIDIA's site). Here's how my RivaTuner opening screen looks:

8237yh3.png
 
If you're under Vista 64bit you /must/ install the signed driver package that comes with RivaTuner or you'll get messages like what you're seeing now.
 
I almost forgot--to get the 8800 GTS 512MB to work correctly with RivaTuner 2.06, you must edit RivaTuner.cfg (probably in the program's directory) and add 600h to the G92 line.

Code: 
G92 = 610h-61Fh,600h

That lets RivaTuner know that a video card with PCI ID 600h (aka 8800 GTS 512MB) is a G92-based card. (More information here.)
 
^^what he said. I've got a 8800GTS 512 and I had to edit the config to make it work. Hopefully you figure out your dilemma, because the card is great.
 
What power supply are you running btw? It's unlikely, but I've seen weirder things happen.
 
The power supply is a corsair 620 watt, I definitely don't think it's the power supply that's causing the problem.

As an update, I managed to get vista installed and it seems to be running.. OK at best. I still have problems with restarting/shutting down. While I was installing drivers and whatnot, every time I needed to restart it wouldn't shut down properly and I'd have to hit the reset switch. This problem is leading me to believe that the problem is the motherboard.

Another thing I've noticed with the motherboard is that there is a line of 6 led's that go from green to red that are constantly lit up on the board. I've looked through the manual and haven't found anything relevant to them, and even googling hasn't shown much. Does anyone with my model of motherboard know what they are used for?

As for RivaTuner, I got that to work and the temperatures on my video card were ~70C which are pretty high, but I managed to get them down to 50C idle by turning the fan up.

I'm thinking about RMA'ing the motherboard because that's what I think would be causing the computer to not restart properly. Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
Make sure you get all drivers installed and updated before deciding the motherboard has any problems. For me with my 680i the system is very unstable until I get a good number of Vista updates. Also make sure you set proper vdimm for your RAM, as the default of 1.8v may not be enough to maintain stability with some sticks.
 
Assuming your DS3R is pretty similar to my DS3 that I got when the C2D's launched...man, it's a really quirky board. Some things you can try:

-in the bios, disable all of the peripherals that you aren't going to use
-change your pcie frequency from auto to 101 or 102
-set the ram speed and timing manually rather than having them autodetected (have to enable advanced options in the Bios for it to show up)
-add +.2 or +.3 to your ram voltage (assuming the default is 1.8)

Also, I should mention that I got erratic performance with my 8800GT and my DS3...eventually by playing with things I got it to boot and work properly but the CPU wouldn't overclock at all (which it had just fine with my old X1900XT). This was fixed when I updated to the latest bios, so that may be the first thing you want to try since it could save a lot of experimentation.
 
...yeah, BIOS update before all else. I (wrongly, I admit) assume this is the first thing people do upon getting a new board or build together.
 
silent-circuit said:
...yeah, BIOS update before all else. I (wrongly, I admit) assume this is the first thing people do upon getting a new board or build together.
Click to expand...

I don't. After reading what people are saying about the P35C-DS3R and BIOS updates on the TweakTown forums (where there's a Gigabyte rep), I'm afraid to update my BIOS; still on F2 here. :( Though F10 looks not to have as many complaints as previous ones, so I might bite the bullet...
 
Well, I know that the for the regular DS3 anyways, the older bioses are supposedly incompatible with the G92 cards.
 
I updated the BIOS and it fixed the restarting problem I was having and it looks like it fixed my problem with the screen blacking out too. I haven't tested it much, but so far it's been running fine.

I'm installing all of the windows updates and hoping that the system will be stable and ready for me to use.
 
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