geforce 4 ti 4600 causing system crash [Archive]

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asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

hey, ive tried every and all bios settings i can. Even at default settings it messes up. Ive disabled everything one at a time and all together. I havnt tried taking everything out of the box but my CPU cooler and vid card. Ill try that tonight if im not too lazy and see if that helps. Hopefully it isnt my power supply. It shouldnt be though, but i'll look into it. As far as the ram, i got it from ocsystem.com. Its the expeditious gamer. Hold on let me get a link to it. http://www.ocsystem.com/foncoliexgam.html There you go. Thats the ram i have. I would assume it can handle a heavy load being that it has some nice properties to it. The thing is the same problem happens in my brothers computer which is a athalon xp 1600+ with an abit mobo, 300 megs pc133 ram and a soundblaster live. Also one peculiar thing. While i was testing it out i was able to actually get into Soldier of Fortune II. It will freeze up shortly after but when i get in, it looks like im running around in the holodeck in star trek. I see a bunch of black polygons with white lines defining the edges. some parts are actually textured but 90 percent of what is rendered isnt. Thanks for the useful info <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Hey guys, I dont know if this forum supports technical support. It seems more like discussion of new technology but ive tried at ever other good forum I know of and no one has been able to post a good reply that helped me. I probably just need to send the card back cause its defective but I figured id try here first since you all seem like a bunch who know your sutff. Anyway, I'll get to the point. Im going to just copy and paste the post I left at guru3d.com and hopefully you guys can give me some answered on this one. the post ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Whatsup, This is going to be a little long so if you dont feel like reading come back later. Im having a serious problem here and id like to see if anyone here can solve my problem. I've been to various forums and am still awaiting replies from my manufacturers if they ever decide to respond. The only thing I can think of to do next is return my hardware and assume I have a defective product, but I just thought I would check here. First off, I'll start by posting my system specs. Athlon XP 2100+ Shwiftech m480cx (i think thats the modle number) cpu cooler with vantec tornadoe 84 cfm fan gigabyte ga-7vrxp ddr333 motherboard 2x512mb ddr333 sdram cas=2 cl=2 t=1 Asus v8460 Ultra Deluxe GeForce 4 Ti 4600 Soundblaster Audigy mp3+ Western Digital Hard Drives 1x 20gb 5400 rpm 1x 100gb 7200 rpm Skyhawk aluminum midtower case with 5 thermaltake smart fans and one vantec tornadoe 84 cfm on the top blowhole (basically my system stays cool and its not overheating thats the problem) Enermax 430 watt power supply with dual fans Klipsch Promedia 5.1 speakers Sony GDM F500R 21in monitor lite-on 32x12x40x cd burner lite-on 16x dvdrom drive The Problem: Ok, basically I just got this system a week and a half ago. I threw the baby together wanting to see what framerate I would get in counter-strike now and be able to play games such as SOFII with good framerates now. Thats where the torture began. The computer continually hangs.. I don't mean its popping me back into windows or anything like that. When playing a game my computer will freeze up and ill have to do a hard reboot via the reset/power switch. It also hangs when doing stuff such as listening to winamp and such, but expecially when playing games or doing stuff that stresses the video card. What I have done: Here I'll tell you guys what I've done to pinpoint the problem and why I think its probably defective hardware. I spent 2 days trying to get my system working on Windows XP Professional. I flashed my motherboard bios to the newest bios, got the newest via4in1 drivers, newest drivers for my video card, sound card and everything else. When the problem still persisted I reverted back to trying older driver versions for all my hardware. The problem was still there. During this time I reformatted and reinstalled winXP about 4 times because the constant hard reboots were messing with my system hardcore.. expecially when it would freeze and need a hard reboot half way during a driver installation. So I pretty much ruled out that it wasnt a driver issue, and was a hardware issue. At this point i started swapping devices to see if that would fix it. I started with my ram, taking out one stick leaving the other in.. and vice a versa. Wasnt the ram. I replaced my sound card (the audigy) with my older one (soundblaster live!) and the problem still persisted. I checked all the temps in my computer and my cpu temp at idle is 37degrees celcius, case temp is 41 degrees celcius. That sounds ok to me. My voltages also appeared to be alright. I didn't however replace my video card yet. At this point I installed Asus SmartDoctor to check my video card. I got an error message saying my motherboard wasnt supplying my AGP bus with the proper voltage. The required voltage is 3.3 volts and my motherboard is supplying it with 3.1 volts and supposidly this could cause system instability. So I was excited but also discouraged. I thought it was my motherboard causing the problem.. so it could be fixed, but this meant id have to tear apart my system to send it back to the manufacturer. Well, while waiting for a reply to an e-mail i sent gigabyte tech support about the issue i decided to try installing windows2000 Professional and see if that might fix the problem It didnt fix the problem. So FINALLY I swapped my new asus video card with my older Herculese 3D prophet 2 (geforce 2 gts) video card. I stopped having the problem. I could play any game and do anything I wanted and not have a single problem. So I thought again, well maybe its the fact that its a less powerful video card and therefore requires a lower voltage to run. I sent another e-mail to Gigabyte asking what the hell was up.. it had been a week and still no response from them. I also e-mailed the store I bought my motherboard from to let them know I was having trouble, so my warrenty would fall under the 10day money back return policy instead of the 30 day hardware exchange warrenty (in case gigabyte motherboards just suck ass and cant supply a correct voltage in general). Well, then today I decided just to rule out that it isnt my video card itself, I would throw it in my brothers computer and see how his computerhandles it. He has an athlon xp 1600+ with soundblaster live so on and so forth. Anyway, he got the same problem. The system would freeze. It woudlnt reboot. No bluescreen, no sound loop. Just freeze while playing a game and would require a hard reboot. I installed Asus SmartDoctor and his motherboard was supplying 3.29 volts to the agp bus.. not very far off from the required 3.3. THEREFORE, I have to assume that the problem is my actual video card. Im going to contact the merchant that I purchased my video card from and ask about their return policy, but before I go to all that trouble is there anything else I can try that I'm missing? Any suggestions? Has anyone else experienced this problem with a similar configureation? Any feedback would be great. If you actually read through this whole thing I appreciate you wanting to help. Sorry it is so long but I figure rather than post 8 posts over the next few days telling you all this info little by little I would just spit it out right off the bat that way you guys can respond as accurately as possible and not waist your time. If you would like to contact my my e-mail is asphix1028@hotmail.com and my AIM name is Asphix20. Thankyou again. Asphix ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give me. I appreciate it. Im still waiting for asus to get back to me on the issue. I have to assume the hardware is defficient. Under win XP i got that blue screen several times saying that the nvidia driver got stuck in an infinite loop (i think thats what was what got stuck in an infinite loop). Just throught hat extra info would help. Mostly though the system just locks up. I have my vid card packed up and ready to be shipped back to the retailer I bought it from. Perhaps the new leaked nvidia drivers could help it? Let me know what you think. Thanks, Asphix

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Oh yeah, id just like to add my theory as to whats worng. I think perhaps it might be a corrupt sector of ram on the video card? My computer will lock up when listening to mp3's or browsing through windows explorer for a while or surfing the net. Sometimes it will take a mere 5-10 min for it to lock up, sometimes as long as an hour and a half. However it ALWAYS locks up within the first 3 minutes of playing a video game. I think since video games use the card more, and hence more ram is used it hits that bad sector faster while when doing other things such as browsing the net, lookin through my hard drive and other tasks as such, it doesnt use so much of the 128 megs of on board ram and that bad sector is avoided until chance lands some data on it causeing my computer to freeze. Im not an expert in this by any means, and this idea might be totally far fetched. I dont know how the ram on video cards are managed or anythin but it was just a hypothesis.

Reynard 13

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Hello !!!!! This Is A BIOS Set-Up Issue.................. You Need To Go Thru & One at A Time Starting from Defaults.... Figure Out Which BIOS Setting Is Creating The Issue....... This has to be done Systematically......One At A Time..... Then Test It Thouroghly ...... You Will Find a Happy Place........ When That Is Done.... Write It Down.... That way you have a Reference Point.... In Case You Try To Make Changes....... This Sounds Like A Memory Timing Issue...... Plain & Simple...... My System : System #1 Athlon XP MP 1900+ Vantec Copper Heatsink w/7200 rpm Delta Fan MSI K7T 266 Pro2 ARU Motherboard 3x 256 meg. Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM Unbuffered Hercules Game Theatre XP 6.1 Soundcard PNY GeForce 4 4600 128 Meg Vid Card 1-Maxtor DiamondMax60 ATA 133 5400 rpm 160 gig. 1-Maxtor DiamondMax60 ATA 100 5400 rpm 100 gig.(On USB 2.0) 2-Maxtor DiamondMax60 ATA 100 7200 rpm 30 gig. 1-Western Digital Special Edition ATA 100 7200 rpm 120 gig. TDK Velocd 32x10x40 CD/RW TDK Velocd 12x10x32 CD/RW 16x Toshiba DVD/ROM Chieftech SOHO Server Case 400 Watt PowerMax P/S WIN XP Pro/WIN2K Pro

Colin

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

<< I think perhaps it might be a corrupt sector of ram on the video card >> Do you see artifacts on the screen while in windows or a game? If so, then yes you have bad memory but if you don't the RAM is probably ok. The GF4 draws quite a bit more power then any previous videocard, parhaps your PSU is not adequate. I use to use an Enermax 651G (550W) and it would constantly reboot randomly. After much frustration, I swapped the PSU for a 400W Sparkle and my problems went away. I know you're having different problems, but perhaps your PSU is not supplying clean enough power to your peripherals. Try disabling some case fans, remove some IDE devices and then see if you have the same problems. On that note, a 21" monitor draws a lot of power itself also, try plugging your computer into a different outlet or power bar. You're not overclocking your system are you? If so, run it at stock speeds. What type of memory do you have? 2x512MB DDR333 doesn't really tell me anything. Can it really run at aggressive settings?

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Anyone else? Any more recommendations??

GNXtreme

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

A friend of mine bought a Visiontek Ti4600 that came from the factory with a part that was not soldered in laying in the bottom of the box.  That card would not even post at startup.  Visiontek RMA'd the card and he is expecting it back anyday now.  I know that doesn't help you any but maybe it might make you feel better if it turns out to be a bad card.

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Hehe. Post at startup? Are the geforce 4's supposed to post at startup? I know with my herculese geforce 2 gts before it posts the bios and will do the ram count and check for the drives it will post my video card and the amount of ram on the graphics card and what not. My geforce 4 however doesnt do that. I kind of assumed that maybe it was just my geforce 2 that did that.. but are geforce 4's suppsoed to?

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Just for the record so anyone else having this problem can see this and it will maybe help them. It was my power supply, but wasnt the wattage being put out. When buying a power supply pay close attention to the stats. Expecially if your getting a DDR board with a powerful/power hungry video card. Make sure the max output of the 3.3volts of your new power supply is up to par. The one im getting in the mail next week, an enermax has a max output of 38A in 3.3 volts. That should be enough to supply my ddr ram and video card with a stable even flow of power. Just check out the stats of this power supply and base any upgrade on these stats. http://www.maxpoint.com/switching_power_supplies.htm

GNXtreme

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

My GeForce4 does post when I turn on my computer and so does my friends...both are Visiontek cards, mine 4200 his 4600.

asphix20

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

Hmm.. weird.. well my asus doesnt.. i know the card is fine though cause i threw it in my dads computer yesterday evening (he has an acer 230 watt power supply) and he ran the card stable. I ran 3dmark 2001 and it did the entire benchmark just fine.. he got a score of somethin like 3200 or somethin.. not bad for a 400 mhz intel with 256 megs pc100 ram <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"> but yeah, so im upgrading my power supply and that should take care of the problem. Now that i got that problem out of the way i can start fine tuning my computer and start overclocking it. Right now i have it clocked up to 1.93 ghz (athalon xp 2100+) and its running completely stable. Im gonna puch it some more in a day or so.. When ig et my new power supply ill be able to go further being that this power supply doesnt give a steady stream of power..

Jake

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

I've got an Antec SX1030B with 300 Watt SmartPower (Model # PP-303X). I was having a similar freeze problem running games until I received replacement Soyo MB (Dragon Plus). It worked ok for awhile, then I started getting freezes again, this time only when PC2100 memory running at 266 versus 200. Could this be a power problem related to the 300 watt Antec PSU? I'm running WinXP Pro with Radeon 8500, Soyo Dragon Plus MB (SY-K7V w/ network/sound), AMD 1800XP, HP tape drive, DVD, LS120, 40GB HD, Actiontec PCI modem and the monitor is Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2060u (21"). Again, does this PSU have enough juice?

GNXtreme

06-15-04, 02:25 PM

IMO...300w is plenty of power for what you described, Jake.  That is unless you are overclocking and pushing up the voltage you may run into some power shortages occasionally.  Now weather or not your PSU is putting out the proper juice is something that I cannot say without testing it myself.