video card upgrade gone horribly wrong: help wanted

Bodega

Gawd
Joined
Feb 7, 2004
Messages
776
The other day I finally received my 'new' asus 4890, a big upgrade from my aging 7900GT.

i uninstall the drivers, reboot in safe mode and use driver sweeper, reboot n swap in the new card and get it all set up. the problems then begin.

every game i try to play crashes or doesn't work in one way or another (cept for crysis and cs1.6 idk why). the crashes happen various ways; from lame error messages (arma2: "cannot create 3d device..) to full on computer restarts, but always before the game even gets to a menu screen. also tried WoW, arma1, CoD4:MW, lost planet, Bioshock, FEAR2("Unable to initialize the render to a valid video mode").

i log GPU-Z to see if there is a heat issue, but in crysis w/ full settings it 'only' gets up to 68C. no artifacts, no problems at all.

i decide that there must be some problem with the card so i do another clean sweep and put back the 7900GT... onoes the problems are still there...

step1) tried different driver versions for each card. nothing.
step2) run ATITool. the graphical component doesnt even show and eventually locks up.
step3) run extensive tests with prime95 & memtest but there seems to be nothing wrong with CPU(Q6600) or ram(patriot ddr2-800 @ 533)
step4) update mobo's BIOS(abit IP35pro). no luck
step5) swap out for bigger PSU. still not working.
step6a-6f) back my stuff up, wipe my HD, fresh clean install of winxp w/ latest drivers for mobo, vc, etc. STILL NOTHING WORKS!?!

help me Obi-[H], youre my only hope :(
 
yeah sorry,

Q6600 D0 @ stock 30c-44c
Abit IP35pro, latest bios
EVGA 7900GT 256mb, ASUS EAH4890 1gb
2x1gb patriot 'PDC22G6400LLK' (ddr2800 [email protected], running 533, SPD @2.0v)
PSU1: thermaltake TR2 RX-550 (550w, 16a+17A on 12v)
PSU2: Antec earthwatts 650 (650w, 22a+22a+25a on 12v)
HD: samsung HD501LJ 500gb
 
Well this looks hardware related b/c of step 6 (clean install and still have problems). If it's happening to both vid cards, that eliminates the GPUs themselves. Maybe PCI-e slot is messed up? Just for shits/giggles see if it works in the lower PCI-e slot. Yes, it's only 4x, but if it works there then you can confirm that your 16x slot is bad.
 
well i shat/giggled as i tried the 4x slot but came up empty handed. im really running out of factors to eliminate here. For all its worth ive had the setup running fine for quite some time. makes me wonder if somehow something on the mobo got shorted & fried by the new video card?.
 
you did unplug the pc before swapping cards, right?
 
yeah, everything by the books. I've done alot of work on PCs in the past but now i am really stumped; never seen a problem quite like this before. The only possible part malfunctioning at this point would be the mobo (also tried a different HDD) but i would not expect to have these symptoms
 
After your clean install.. Were you able to run Crysis again? That's the only thing that puzzles me that initially you were able to run that with no problems. For me when I first got that game it was the only game that would force me to step back my OC about 50mhz. . . this was before I started doing hours of prime for stability testing.. but yea the toughest game to run on a pc ran on your setup without much of issue. I'm wondering if some update you're missing or initially got hosed when you did uninstall.. some hotfix or .net update that's required for catalyst drivers.
 
Crysis still works and i've also discovered that FEAR1 works fine. the NFS:Shift demo does not get past the loading screen however.
 
Well I'm running a 4890 and was able to play nfs:shift in xp without problem but not in win7 rc7100. It would get stuck after finishing race while trying to go back to main menu. I'm running an aging amd dual core system so your q6600 should have no issues. Were you prompted to install that .net microsoft thing for the ati drivers? (Sorry I'm replying from mobile) HMM ... wait could this be some odd video codec issue? Does nfs get to the language prompt?
 
Were you prompted to install that .net microsoft thing for the ati drivers? (Sorry I'm replying from mobile) HMM ... wait could this be some odd video codec issue? Does nfs get to the language prompt?

Yeah the .net went without issue. in nfs i can look through options and whatnot and select a race & car. it shows the cut scene then gets to the loading page when it gives you tips. this is as far as it gets in this particular program.
 
Yeah the .net went without issue. in nfs i can look through options and whatnot and select a race & car. it shows the cut scene then gets to the loading page when it gives you tips. this is as far as it gets in this particular program.

Alright .. it's not codecs then. I missed the part about you swapping HDs or that would have been my next step. ... everything points to the video card... but it runs crysis... now as above poster suggested to try a different PCIE slot ... is that possible... did you try that? ... Feel free to laugh at me but I've never tried this as my small factor pc only has 16x and 1x so I have no idea on this. I'm stumped. Other than reinstall os again and install video drivers from cd with every bios thing on default ... my 3870 had that HDMI issue before the hotfix from ms came out. Installing cd drivers then new drivers on top was only solution. This was fixed later.
 
You really have seem to cover the troubleshooting well. You retrying your old card with the same results, makes me suspect an MB issue also. Just curious you stated that you upgraded the BIOS. Have you made sure the BIOS are configured right?
 
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I had a friend with a similar problem to this. He got the ("Unable to initialize the render to a valid video mode") error when he tried to play 3 different games. I don't know the whole process of what he did but he said it had to do something with his ATI drivers and DirectX9. You probably know more about that than I do, but it might be something to check. You seem to know what you are doing hardware with the hardware so I think it had to be something on the software side. I am still kind of stumped...
 
You really have seem to cover the troubleshooting well. You retrying your old card with the same results, makes me suspect an MB issue also. Just curious you stated that you upgraded the BIOS. Have you made sure the BIOS are configured right?

The flash went fine, then i made sure everything was configured how it should be. including disabling anything that im not using such as floppy & 1394

I had a friend with a similar problem to this. He got the ("Unable to initialize the render to a valid video mode") error when he tried to play 3 different games. I don't know the whole process of what he did but he said it had to do something with his ATI drivers and DirectX9. You probably know more about that than I do, but it might be something to check. You seem to know what you are doing hardware with the hardware so I think it had to be something on the software side. I am still kind of stumped...

almost seems like your friend had the same issue as me. i frequently get prompted to (re?)install DX which is a little odd. the fact that crysis and fear1 play fine seem to rule out the possibility of dx not being installed tho. Not sure if theres some issue with dx10 that im not familiar with.

i appreciate you all taking the time to help but ive really made little progress, i might go 'borrow' a new mobo from a local retailer and see if i can get anywhere
 
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