2nd opinion on crashes

BKtje

Right i've started getting random crashes while playing gfx intensive games.

I've never gotten it playing UT, odd time in cnc, ut2k4 quite often but this new game (wont mention it incase i get in trouble but it begins with a D) crashes anything from 5-20 mins.

Ive tried different Bios's, different gfx card drivers, reverted to stock speed, new directx but nothing seems to work

My fan on my 9700pro stopped spinning a while back and took some crashes 9and a very hot gfx card) before i noticed and fixed it. Would my 9700pro be bust?

(im gonna run a memtest tonight and prime95 tomorrow but i doubt its either of these as im at stock atm).

Apart from the crashes the game runs great at high settings and 1024 with my system at stock (30-60fps, average about45)

I have disabled fast write in he bios tho the bios says pci as main gfx adaptor. Tried setting it to AGP but nothing changed.

On my old drivers i got a vpu recover error (saying hardware failure), a system lockup or a crash to desktop. Thus far on these drivers ive had 1 hardlock.

ANyone got any ideas? Is it my gfx card thats ****ed? (only other gfx card i got is a geforce 256 which wouldnt let me run these games that are crashing my system so i dunno.

Thanks

Dr. Dre

What about case/cpu temps ?

Just how much more crashes do you get when playing it, specifically relating to any retail games you have?
I mean, it's an ill-gotten game, god knows how it's been ripped etc..

BKtje

Mobo reports case at 44 and cpu at 7.
I howeber know that the bios is reporting it wrong (well known issue with this mobo).
CPU is generally at -15 to -25

It happens in u2k4 with a fair amount of frequency tho not as often as this ill gotten one.

I have just changed one thing however and i aint crashed since. I remembered the details of my own post that i made a while back about amd 64 cpus prefering 2-3-2-10 to 2-2-2-5 so i switched it without much hope. Low and behold ive just played for the last hour without a hiccup.

I dont think its a ram limitation as in most games and all benchmakrs the ram holds up fine (am still going to do a memtest tomorrow). Think the memory controller on the cpu just needs that xtra bit of loose timing (dunno if this is cos the mem controller is on the cpu now rather than on the northbridge or wether a64 would just prefer the losoer timings. Im sure it will all be xplained in the future).

With this knowledge i can get back to overclocking (just hope that it is idneed fixed as that would make me a very ha
ppy bunny )

Stephen

Tried the latest official ATI Catalysts? I had problems with the Omega drivers and my 9800 pro.

BKtje

Yer i had tried 4.4 and 4.7. Ive never used omega drivers.

Still no crashes since changing the timings slightly so im thinking its sorted..