3D usage makes system unstable... why?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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His Royal Majesty King V
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3D usage makes system unstable... why?

Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

All,

Ok, I'm stumped.

My K6-III system was giving me instability in 3D usage, but also had other issues, possibly a dying power supply, and a Windows OS that was way overdue for reinstallation. It had a 16MB Rage 128 AGP videocard.

I've most recently been using a game called Zuma. It's a simple game, but does make use of the 3D subsystem.

The K6-III system would, when playing games that use 3D, occasionally the screen would go blank, with the monitor's LED turning yellow as if the system had gone into powersave mode. At other times, it would hard lock, where even the mouse wouldn't move, although background music would still play (though if I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, then the music would start repeating the same half-second sequence). Still, nothing would recover from either of these two things aside from hitting the reset button or powering off then on.

EDIT: on occasion, when the screen blanks, the sound will lock as well, with an odd, tinny sound coming continuously from the speakers.

Ok, well the system was overdue for a wipe-reinstall, and it did have other issues.

Time to bring the K6-2+ out of semi retirement. Got a fresh new OS install, and the system is known to be stable. Got a Radeon 7500 32MB AGP card in there, latest drivers from ATI, VIA's 4-in-1 drivers, and DirectX 9.0b. Via's drivers were installed using AGP in Turbo mode, and the BIOS has the AGP 2x speed enabled.

Well, lo and behold, I fire up Zuma, and about a minute into the game it crashes. Same symptoms as the K6-III system had.

So, I don't quite know where to begin. Is the FIC board just problematic with decent 3D? It's a VIA MVP3 board. Any suggestions? I'd really like to be able to use the K6-2+ to play some games that take advantage of the 3D system.

I'll be really humiliated if I have to get a low-end P3 or Celeron system just to get decent stability using Direct3D or OpenGL.

Thanks in advance!
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Post by georgep1 »

You might try an older 4in1 driver set. I think viaarena has an alternate download for older Via chipsets.

If that doesn't work, I would try to install the AGP drivers in 1X mode. This does nothing to really hinder performance on 500 MHz (or less) PCs. Back in the olden days at amdzone, this was the first suggestion for 3D instability in games for Super7 systems.

If none of that works, do a "Start", "Run", and type in DXDIAG. Attempt to disable AGP Texture Acceleration (or some such description) if it lets you. This will hinder performance, but the game should run if it is an AGP problem.

Good luck.
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

well, late last night I checked . . AGP Texture Acceleration is listed as Not Available.

I've set the 4-in-1 drivers to AGP in Normal Mode (instead of Turbo), as well as the BIOS to disable 2x AGP.

I'll see how that goes. Worst case, I know the ATI drivers have a setting to disable AGP.... that is there's a slider that says Disabled, 1x, and 2x.

Keep yer fingers crossed for me, I'm writing this from work now, will give it a go when I get home.
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Post by Wiggy »

What OS are we talking about here?
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Windows 98SE.

Well, technically 98lite, as I use 98lite to put the Win95 GUI on what is otherwise completely Windows98. I can always swap-in the Win98 GUI if needed though.
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Post by cake »

I've found that using any Catalyst drivers above 3.2 on my K6-rig
causes lockups. Just my 2c..

Edit: That's the rig in my sig, running win2k.
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Well, so far setting AGP to 2x, 1X or setting AGP speed to "off" in the SmartGart tab of the ATI drivers doesn't help. Lasted longer with AGP off, but still eventually crashed.

I might try the earlier catalyst drivers.... if I make any progress, I'll let you all know.

On the plus side, a friend of mine is supposed to be giving me his old Athlon 500MHz system. That should be interesting. If I recall right, those were mostly AMD chipsets, no?
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Results:

Catalyst 3.2 - No improvement
Catalyst 4.3 - No improvement (this is the last WHQL certified one)
Catalyst 4.7 - No improvement

I did catch something odd though. Normally when I boot up the system, the CPU fan doesn't kick in until about 2 seconds into it or so, although everything else has already gotten going.

BUT . . this time, when it crashed, I noticed the sound of the CPU fan slow down. Then when I hit reset, it went through its normal CPU fan not running, then running full speed.

Don't know if that's significant or not.
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Post by Wiggy »

Have you tried turning the Windows Hardware Acceleration down a notch?
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Nope.... I'll keep that one in mind in case my current "trick" doesn't work.

I stumbled across something about the VA-503+, which is just the AT version of my board.

It said that for the Rage Fury Maxx, instability was cured by disabling the following items in the BIOS:
"write cache pipeline"
"read around write"

So, since my read-around-write was enabled, I disabled it.

Played the game quite a bit, maybe a bit over an hour or so today, and no trouble. I'm hoping that this was actually the solution!

If not, I'll try cranking down the hardware acceleration.
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Woohoo!!! Been two days without a crash!

The read-around-write setting seems to have solved the problem.

Don't know why or how, but hey, I'm not complaining.
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Post by Jim »

Glad to here that. Since I have 2 FIC VA_503+ boards in good working order, you have been a trailbreaker for me thanks. :)
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

To go even further, I've reinstalled the No One Lives Forever demo.

It would hang on occasion before. Now, I only played it a few minutes this time, but no troubles now.

I then installed the No One Lives Forever 2 demo. That wouldn't even get the main title and menu screen up, but would crash the system, every time.

Now, well, I've just played it for about an hour. Trouble free.

Yeah, it's a little bit choppy. My system BARELY makes the minimum requirements. Technically, they recommend a P3 500MHz as a bare minimum.

But the fact that it played fine, with no crashing, is the big deal for me.

I understand the VA-503+ are typically a little less trouble-prone about videocards than the PA-2013, and have heard of people getting Nvidia-based videocards to work on the VA-503+ rather well. As for the PA-2013, though, nothing I've ever tried would work with Nvidia cards, either AGP or PCI. Web browsing would crash them.

Still, just to be on the safe side, I'd stick with ATI on your boards as well.
FIC PA-2103 E-O036, K6-2+ 450 2.0V @ 500 1.9V
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