Is my videocard dying?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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AZK6er
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Post by AZK6er »

Proprietairy....

Thats the word I think (and spelling?).

It must be ALL in the motherboard setup to be able to draw that small of wattage and still be as reliable as they are. The power supply spec's are the same I would think. Have to get someone on here that works (worked) for like Compaq, Dell, HP or some of those to answer that question. I know that the socket "A" takes a tremendous anount of power to operate once you get to OverClocking those bad boyz. I know that for a fact as I am running a 1700+ T-Bred OC'd and had to up my power supply from 300 to 450, then all the little annoying problems went away that started to arise that wern't there before I started to OC. Strange.

BTW, I had it happen again today while browsing (after about 1 1/2 hrs.), the screen just went into Energy Savings Mode (by that I mean that the monitor shut off and the light started blinking Yellow then Amber), that after acting fine for the last 2 and 1/2 days.

Stupid thing....

Well, I'll try something else and get back to you.
Old Elf
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Post by Old Elf »

Hey dust for the old systems LOL
in the PS is where dusk causes that to happen
also power connections to the MB can get coroded
opps spelling LOL
do list
clean all dust out
Replace hard drive cable W/80 wire disable ATA 66/100/133(WDHD)
cheack to see if memory worked out of slots
cheack power connets to MB and wiring is not rubbing on (chassy short)
cheack GPU card if it has worked out of slot (and clean conectors)
new CPU greas too if more than year sence placed
and if all fails try to reinstall all OS/drivers/progs
Doh!!!!! good luck foks
oldie
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AZK6er
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Post by AZK6er »

Hey Elf, whats up.

Been awhile since we last talked.

My next thing is to reseat my Vid card and memory..... AGAIN.

Fun, Fun.
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AZK6er
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Post by AZK6er »

Lastnight I D/L'd System Mechanic, the 30 day free trial, to see if it might be something Registry related. I already had NortonSystem Works but thought that if I ran both in conjunction with each other then maybe what one missed the other would get, if it was a registry related problem. I'm grasping at straws here.

I've found that System Mechanic http://www.iolo.com takes a slightly different approach to the same problem and gets errors that Nortons seem to miss, and vise-versa. This maybe a good 1-2 punch that I might use from now on, now that I see how they differ.
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AZK6er
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Post by AZK6er »

Wondering how it goes with your problem King V.

Mine did it again 2 times, 1 right after the other, about 5 minutes after a cold boot while my system was sitting there Idle. I rebooted after the first time then it did it again just as soon as I got back into Windows. On the next boot it went OK and has held ever since. That was on June 15. Today is the 17th.

Right after that, I installed new Vid drivers (Det's 4300) and retuned all Video settings for performance. I'm crossing my fingers as after I retuned I got an extra 471 points on 3DMark 2001 SE. I now avarage 6240 for 5 runs (up from 5770 average). Not bad for a GF4 MX440 I think.
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His Royal Majesty King V
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Well, seems to be happening with a little bit more frequency now, but that might just be me imagining things.

I've recently set my browser to turn off smooth scrolling . . since I think the blanking and/or freezing tends to happen in mid-scroll, particularly (though not necessarily) when pictures are involved.

Hasn't crashed since, but it's only been a day. We'll see how it holds up in the long run.

Still, UT Demo won't last more than 20 minutes it seems . . though when I first got this videocard, I could play that game for hours.

No other revealing info though....
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His Royal Majesty King V
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Hey AZK6er?

Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

That new videocard ever come in?

What were the results? Problem go away, or still persists?

Thus far I haven't had any more browser crashes since I disabled smooth-scrolling. Haven't played UT Demo enough yet to see if that problem mysteriously went away also.
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Post by AZK6er »

Yeah, it has. It got here about a week ago. It's still in the box. I've been still working this video problem and haven't wanted to do anything different till I got THAT figured out.

Interesting note though,

Back when I first built up my system I had it powered by a Enermax EG-301 VE (VE ?) I believe (thats a 300 watt PS). I had my Duron 1.0Gig running the show then and was overclocking like mad, got it up to 1.44Gig on the FSB only as the chip was still locked, and got my GF4 MX-440 Gainward Golden Sample from a default of 270/400 up to 320/490. Then, in mid stream, I switched to a T-Bred 1700+ (the unlocked greenie) and started working with that one. Well, things went alright, sort of. I set my video back to factory defaults when I upgraded (as well as everything in the BIOS) before I slipped in that "Bad Boy" T-Bred so I could start out fresh.

I'll have to finish this on a later date, Sorry, but will be back later.

Back.......

I need to mention that all along I have been running a PK Electronics "Blackout Buster", the older version, the 525 VA/300 Watt one (now I see that that has changed to 525 VA/250 Watt). I have been running that for about 3 1/2 years and just purchased a new 300 Watt battery to replace the old one about 3 months before I built up this new system. Anyway.....

When I installed that new T-Bred I noticed right away that I was not getting a very good overclock and I should have been. My overclocks were not stable at all. One time I would run 3DMark 2001SE and all would be fine, then the next time I would crash out back to the desktop. Sometimes I could run several good runs and think all was right, shut off the system for the night, wake up and boot up the system and try again only to find it crash back to the desktop, or, completly lock the screen and I would HAVE to hit the reset button (as the 3 finger salute would only give me 1 back). Well, all of a sudden it hit me, Maybe that 300 Watter was just too small even though it WAS an Enermax. I thought about it for several days, then decided to order a bigger PS. I got a Antec SL-450 from NewEgg (they had a good deal going at the time, thats why I skipped over the SL-400). Well what do you know, I now could OverClock that T-Bred farther than before and it stayed stable, though still not quite what I was looking for (before I had a hard time getting past 143 for the FSB, and thats using Crucial PC-2100 DDR), but I am up to a 153 FSB with the same memory (I got a Abit KG-7 Raid board thats a hybred AMD/VIA 266 chipset).

Then, I started to try, I did say try, to overclock that video card and things started to get major flacky quick fast and in a hurry. So I set the video back to default again, but still had the occational screen thing that you have King V. I started to think again (I need to stop that, as it always seems to cost me $$), maybe my new Antec ain't getting enough power from the UPS. So, I did some calc.'s and came up with 276 Watts, thats what my system figures to need. Too close to that 300 Watts that my UPS is giving me, as I don't know for sure how many more Amps all my overclocking is demanding from my setup. Plus the fact that I now have a Sapphire 9500 128 that I want to drop in that same box, maybe I had better think of upping my UPS also. TigerDirect had a sale on a "CyberPower" 700AVR that puts out 350 Watts for $ 49.99. I got it delivered the 17th and installed it the 18th. WOW! What a difference that made. My system really sits up and takes notice now.

I've now got my GF4 MX-440 OC'd to 315/480 for about 6700 3DMark2001 SE points, AND, so far absolutely none of the little strange, weird, frustrating things that has happened before. I have been running the heck out of this system ever since, like running 3DMark 2001 SE + Hot CPU tester in the background and more. So far so good. No video problems yet. It looks promising to this point, but I am not going to give it a clean bill of health, just yet. I'm still working on it though, so STAY TUNED.
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AZK6er
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Post by AZK6er »

King V, How it goes with your Video.

Mine has seemed to straighten out since;

1) I now have plenty of good power in the right places, and

2) I have backed off some on my OverClocks. I came down 1 Mhz on my FSB and 5Mhz on the GPU core speed and 10 Mhz on the Video Memory speed.

Have not had an incident since June 15th. BTW, I updated my System BIOS from "CT" to "DM" (that wasn't supposed to do anything except allow the BIOS to recognize my T-Bred XP) and I got a nice supprise. I went from roughly 6776 3DMark 2001 SE points to roughly 6803 3DMark 2001 SE points (thats with a Gainward GeForce4 MX440 Golden Sample PowerPack 600 OC'd to 310/480). I have a BIOS Savior set up in this system and am running both BIOS versions, the "CT" and the "DM". I can switch between the two with a slide of the switch. I have checked several times and both BIOS's are setup the exact same. That was a nice added plus.

BTW, It looks to me that the NEW FX 5200 boards are about the same thing (spec. wise) as the GeForce4 MX440 are (the regular, not the 8x ones)
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His Royal Majesty King V
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

I've actually been kind of lazy and haven't done much.

I've had no browser crashes since I switched MozillaFirebird to NOT allow smooth scrolling.

Guess I gotta get off my lazy butt and get to some game-playing!

Will let you know what happens.
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His Royal Majesty King V
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Update.....

Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Ok, well, I'd still get the occasional crashes playing the No One Lives Forever demo . . . and definitely get crashes with Unreal Tournament Demo.

So I figured, well, sure, maybe grahamv suggested the power supply, and maybe AZK6er solved his problems with a power supply...

But 250 watts should be MORE than enough for a K6-III 450 (oc to 500), 2 hard drives, 1 CD-RW, and a Rage128.

So I went ahead and got a used Radeon LE (the old 32MB DDR sometimes identified as 7200) from ebay. I figure it's got no need for more cooling than a heatsink, is clocked reasonably low, so it shouldn't put too much stress on my system.

Stuck it in, had to wrestle a bit with getting DX9 and the latest Catalyst drivers in.

Well, on the desktop it works. Unreal Tournament won't last more than a minute or two tops, and NOLF works, but has all sorts of graphical distortion on the funkified text of the options screens, and in any options or menu screen where there's moving items, that whole section has very faint running lines vertically, sort of like you're looking at old film.

Not good.

And it irritated me. So I busted out my K6-2+ system with the same motherboard and a mere 230 Watt PS.

Stuck in the Radeon LE, got UT to run a few minutes before crashing, and NOLF ran with the same glitches (albeit the gameplay was smoother . . the K6-2+ is faster than the K6-III at the same clock speed?!)

So, what the heck? I know that the Rage 128 Pro worked for HOURS on end before . ..

So I decide to try it on the K6-2+ system. Played UT for like 20 minutes, no problem. Played NOLF, no problem. Total play time between the two games was only about 1/2 hour or so though, because at this point it was REALLY late.

*sigh*

Looks like I've got a defective Radeon . . shame, the seller's got perfect feedback thus far. But still, I'll try the Radeon on my friend's Intel P-II 266 system . . . that's what I used to find that my Nvidia cards were functional, just that my motherboard didn't like 'em.

In this case, I almost do hope it's a defective videocard, because I'd like to think I can do better than a 16MB Rage 128 Pro.

On the other hand, while NOLF played, it didn't seem any faster or smoother than with the Rage 128 Pro, so I guess my CPU is the limiting factor here. I'd just like to know for certain if my system is compatible with the Radeon LE.

Guess I'll know tomorrow if I got a bum videocard or not. And if I did, I hope the seller is decent enough to refund me for it.

But then I still haven't figured out my original problem! Probably try a new power supply and see what happens, once I get a working videocard anyway.

NOTE: just realized, I get the occasional text distortion with this new videocard on webpages too! Dammit! Very occasional . . but still irksome.


Still, I should've actually tested my old videocard on my other FIC board first, to see if the videocard was the actual problem . . . but that was counterbalanced by the "well, I'd like a Radeon anyway" school of thought. Off to do more testing to make doubly sure that the Rage 128 Pro hasn't gone flaky.


EDIT: Yep, ran my K6-2+ system with the Rage 128 Pro, running 3D games for over 1/2 hour. No problems. My K6-III won't last 15, maybe 20 minutes tops with those games. So now I guess I *do* have either CPU or power-supply issues with my K6-III system. In any case, throw a defective videocard on top of that and it's fun for the whole family!

Anyway, gonna try the Radeon on my buddy's Intel system. If I get the same symptoms, well, then I know the "new" videocard has issues.
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FIC PA-2013 E-O036, K6-III 450 2.2V @ 500
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J. H. McGowan (aka Jim)

Dying Video Card?

Post by J. H. McGowan (aka Jim) »

Your Royal Highness :

Seems presumptous of me to be offering you advise on this matter, (newbie) ; but I had a very similar problem with a machine that I built for a friend of mine. The thing ran fine at my place ; and when I took it to her place and set it up it worked fine there too. But when she moved it to another room the problems began. Principally this consisted of the monitor going into sleep mode and staying there when she rebooted . Not always mind you but often enough to be irritating and getting worse as time went on. I tried a lot of things including : power management settings ; Moving the machine back into the room where I first set it up, (worked temporarily) ; Putting a new plug on the monitor cable , (cutting out what appeared to be a kink damaged section of cable near the plug - didn't help) ; All this time the thing just kept getting worse. Finally one time I noticed that the bios was loosing her system password , and though I didn't think they were related I figured that I could at least fix that by putting in a new mobo battery. Bingo - fixed everything . P.S. the board is a FIC VA_503+

anonieimouse@msn.com
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