Upgraded PC crashing.

Diabolus

OK heres the deal.
I upgraded my pc (i added the x800 and ram from http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=185917&page=1&pp=20 )

Now my pc completely locks up in some games.
F1 Challange '99-'02 being the most predominant.
I have a 400W power supply in my pc and i have 1 HD and 2 CD drives.
Doom 3 crashed on me similarly.

I have tried Sandra and other tests for the RAM to make sure its fine and i cant see a problem.
Any ideas?

RE*AC*TOR

What make is your PSU? I'd imagine the x800pro is quite a power drain. Sometimes cheap branded PSU don't deliver the wattage their supposed to. That I'd say is the most likely problem. To be honest i'm not even sure if 400W is enough for a p4 and an x800pro.

BadCharlie

Did you get 2 sticks of ram? If so remove one of the sticks. If you only have one stick of ram try the stick of ram in another slot.

Dingatron

I'd run memtest86 as a start. I was having simular problems before and it turned out that although the memory was rated for a 200 Mhz fsb it did not like it. The result was intermittant game crashes and the odd blue screen. Worth a check anyway.

Col_Loki

What speed are you running the memory at? Given that your running the 2.6 @ 3ghz that would mean your memory is also being overclocked unless your using a divider.

Also it would be good to know what make of PSU you have, is the pc shutting down and restarting? Or just crashing?

Diabolus

Its just simply stopping.
Games stop music stutters on 1 sound effect.
The PC is not overclocked atm.
The ram is running at 400.
Its also dual ram.

Ill check the PSU when i get home.
Also the memtest thing did nothing.
when i booted from the floppy it said 1003 constantly.

Also i have 2 512MB DDR 3200 sticks in my server pc so ill try them.

unkel

It is less frustrating to check the stability of your system running the torture test of Prime95 (free download) than to be crashing during gameplay

Diabolus

I tried the other RAM but the game still crashed.
I also removed both IDE drives and only have a HD and gfx being powered off the PSU. Any other possibilities?

dubdvd

i see in your sig that you have the x800 pro -xt did you you flash the gpu bios or did you use the pen trick to get the 16 lanes open ...maybe this could be the root of the problem ??????just an idea maybe im wrong????? :rolleyes:

Diabolus

This problem existed before i flashed the Gfx.
It was a firmware jobbie.

I eliminated lots here
I disconnected all drives bar my os one
i have only 2 power sockets being used.
1 for hd 1 for gfx.
I removed my sound card.
i removed all USB devices.
I got no idea what to try next.

Dingatron

Also the memtest thing did nothing.

The best way to use it is to download the memtest iso and burn the image using nero. It creates a bootable cd and will run on a boot from the cd rom. It would definately rule out the memory.

Diabolus

Welll i brought home pc3200 ram from work and the same thing happens so from what i can tell that rules out ram right?

BloodBath

What graphics card were you using before the upgrade?


BloodBath

Diabolus

Geforce 4 Ti 4800 SE 8x AGP 128 MB

Optikus

have you deleted the geForces drivers and installed the latest ATI ones?

Diabolus

I did a fresh install of windows.

gline

I am having exactly the same problem on my system, memtest came up fine and prime95 ran for 9 hours fine, only happens wen i play games. Dont know what it could be. I tried everything, even dropping the overclock on d graphics card, i am going to format pc later incase it is a conflict with drivers, and maybe look for a newer bios for mobo. It happens after about 2 hours, sometimes way less during games. any ideas??? personally i tink my psu could be drained, as i have a lot of devices in it, not sure though

Dingatron

memtest came up fine and prime95 ran for 9 hours fine

That should rule out the memory and cpu. Could be the PSU alright. Worth checking this thread from rage3d if your card is an ATI. Even if its not ATI still probley worth a look. Had a simular problem with a 9700NP before and something in the thread work when all else had failed.

MR DAZ

I had a similar problem with a 9800XT in a shuttle system....


I though it was heated related but it turned out to be the agp speed.

Is your card AGP or PCI Express?

If its agp see below comments

If you go into the control panel for your ATI drivers and turn the

AGP speed back from 8x to 4x this worked for me.

Strange but i Couldnt play games for more than 10 -15mins witout it crashing.....but this sorted out the problems.

Diabolus

Its an AGP card.
So make it 4x.. So the card is borked?

gline

cool,i'll try the agp 4x and im also gonna attach the x800 to an xternal power connetor that my psu has, it has an external 12v molex connector, so that means nothing else will be running with the x800

MR DAZ

No....I wouldnt say that....

TBH I didnt really ook to much more into solving the problem....

I cant see any difference between running games at 4x than running them at 8x

Its only a tempory fix but it'll will get you by untill you get a proper fix.


That is assuming it works

Diabolus

MR DAZ wrote:

No....I wouldnt say that....

TBH I didnt really ook to much more into solving the problem....

I cant see any difference between running games at 4x than running them at 8x

Its only a tempory fix but it'll will get you by untill you get a proper fix.


That is assuming it works

Well the more help the better.
Im going to try what the thread recommended says.
Agp to 4x and AGP voltage.
Thnx I appreciate it.

Diabolus

Well Full Spectrum Warrior crashed.
Gonna try a different HDD.

Dingatron

Try some of these if there not in the thread. Most possibly are but its a long thread.

so many many many people open threads about "card chrases" etc...
so here is a little guide for all angry people to look before opening a new thread (perhaps should go sticky )

card crash:
- try agp voltage in bios up to 1.7 (should fix 95 % of the problems)..try 1.8 if 1.7 did not function
- install all the latest motherbard bios
- run in agp 4x mode (powerstrip or even with the smartbus) (should fix chrases in 98%, I run in agp 4x mode, there is no certain perfomance loose and you don't have to set up your card to 1.7 agp voltage)
- uninstall ati drivers , then install directx 9, after that the ati cat 3.0 drivers
- minimum 300 watt power supply (even some guys have no problems with 250 watt, so it is a question of other components in your system)
- try not to share the power cable of the ati card with many other devices
- do not share irq of the ati card with other devices (seems to be a big problem especially with soundblaster cards)
- use no card on pci 1 slot (next to agp slot) , look in your motherboard guide which slot also shares irq with agp slot
- the ati card gets very hot, so you look if the card has enough air

---

stutter problems:
- try to disable all icons in the tray (right bottom corner in default...where the clock is )
- try disabling as many programs as possible (use alt+ctrl+del to see which programs run in background)
- you can set with the task manager the priority of your 3d program up to high (causes some problems, but could also help)
- you can set the hardware acceleration in windows down a notch (fix stutter in 95 %)
- try disabling agp fast writes in bios (some guys say so , I have no certain results with it)
- execute smartguard and look if everything is enabled
- try changing "system" in the device manager from acpi-uni (default win xp, means a motherboard with 2 or more cpu) to acpi (one board with one cpu)..some people have success, some not (me inclusive )
- stutter in opengl is fixed with the latest ati drivers

---

bad performance:
- see stutter problems
- antivirus programm in background?
- other heavy programm in background ?
- execute smartguard and look if everything is enabled
- many people are angry about bad performance in some games like battlefield..remember that perhaps your firwall or internet conection makes trouble

---

gline

How can you know if it is a graphics card crash???The whole system hangswith a black screen

Dingatron

Well if the memory and cpu stress tests show up nothing than your really down to either the PSU or the graphics card. If your PSU is a Antec TruePower 550w I'd say its not PSU. As said I had simular problem with a 9700 and I think I put the AGP voltage up in the end to 1.7 and it sorted it out but I think I went through a lot of other stuff in the thread that didn't work. Have you set VPU recover on in the control panel and send error mail to ATI. It must log a gpu error but not sure where it puts it or if it is readable?

gline

yeh i have it switch on, does it not give u warning when u reboot telling u that it has logged an error report. My agp voltage is already turned up. mite be that i have a few devices on the same line as the x800, i tink the dvd drive and fan controller maybe on the same line, which is why i want to get it on its own line

Dingatron

That's a decent PSU although the X800 is meant to be power hog. Unplug absolutely everything you don't need as test. If that doesn't solve it your down to the GPU.

gline

well im going to attach the x800 to the external 12v power socket on the back of the psu so that its on its own, this would rule out power problems. if its d gpu , just use agp 4x????

Dingatron

From what I've read there is little if any performance decrease from running AGP X4 instead of AGP X8. If it sorts out your problem with no major FPS loss than I wouldn't spend to much time on it. Life is too short! :-)

gline

heheh, true, but check out my rig, i want it running at peak preformace man, heheh, i will swap around d power leads and get it running on its own 1 first, then agp 4x is the next solution

BloodBath

If I had an x800 I would want to run it in agpx8. It does make a difference with cards like that especially in new games like doom 3. Running agpx4 can't be anythng more than a short term solution.

Try turning off vpu recover and turn off agp fast writes as well.


BloodBath

gline

What is VPU Recover anyway???? What does do???

Dingatron

BloodBath wrote:

If I had an x800 I would want to run it in agpx8. It does make a difference with cards like that especially in new games like doom 3. Running agpx4 can't be anythng more than a short term solution.

Try turning off vpu recover and turn off agp fast writes as well.


BloodBath

Could be true with the X800. Unfortunately I haven't got X800 :-( but if someones willing to send me one, I'll do some benchmarks and report back the results. With the Radeon 9XXX series the X8 AGP performance wasn't that significant.

MR DAZ

As Far as I know... It automaticly shuts down the game or application that is making the system /gfx card unstable

BloodBath

There is no need for either vpu recover or agp fast writes and both have been known to cause crashing with some configs. It's worth a try.


BloodBath

gline

MR DAZ wrote:

As Far as I know... It automaticly shuts down the game or application that is making the system /gfx card unstable

ah well then, could definitly be the vpu recover doing it as i have my x800 overclocked a fair bit, maybe the vpu recover sees that as unstable and shuts down the game, it cant be the temps though as they are usually about 55-60 at 100% load for about 2-3 hours(ie when im playing a decent new game), i'll definitly turn that off and see if it makes any difference.

Mr T

.

gline

Well its worth a try, no skin off my back, every setup is different, just cuz it didnt work 4 u doesnt mean it wont work for every1, different systems - different problems

MR DAZ

.

gline

Hehe, u tell him. Its true, this forum is for advice only. Its only advice u dont have to take it or use it, keep it positive MR T

Dingatron

It's gettin hot in here.

Well if you're still having problems have a search in the X800 rage3d forum and you might come accross something. The guys there usually know what their talking about.

netman

Dunno if you managed to fix your problem or not, but here's a suggestion.

If you flashed the x800 pro to xt it not only enabled the 16 pipes but also raised the frequencies from 450/475 Mhz to 520/560 Mhz.

It's quite possible that your card can't cope with the XT speed, try downloading ATI Tool and lowering the frequency to X800 Pro's default, 450/475, and then playing the games.

It will still leave all 16 pipelines enabled, and if that works then you just need to find the highest stable overclock for your card.

You can find ATI Tool here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

Diabolus

Thnx neways netman but its been liked this since before i flashed it.
Also its down on stock speeds. Below PRO settings.

I think the problem lies in my HDD.
Im gonna throw a different one in it and Reinstall Windows.
I'll let you know.

Col_Loki

[edit] Mentioned by ding already (upgrading motherboard drivers and having a look at bios updates).

Diabolus

Just to let you all know.
I figured out what was wrong with the pc.
The Ram i got is DUAL Twinned DDR.
I had a stick in A1 and a stick in A2.
I should have had a stick in A1 and one in B1.
Since i corrected that i have had no problems.

Thanks anyways.
Im glad it wasnt my gfx card or PSU.

Dingatron

Nice one. Glad you sorted it out. Can get fraustrating after a while. Funny how memtest passed?