radeon 9700 problems

[ice 73]

everytime i play a game i get a message saying the gme has encountered a error. i am running a 350 watt spu i dont have any drive bays due to lack os use and onlything conected to the spu is the hd, mobo, and video card.
i cant not underclock my card because every time i try vpu recover kicks in, when i turn off vpu recover the problem only worrsens.
i have tried uninstalling, and reinstalling windows. the problem still occurs. please help.
just to clarify, i get windows error messages while playing. the windows message states "doom3.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close"
i have also tried to decrease agp to 2x and the problem happens. only time it gets better it seems is when i but an extra fan on the 9700. but when i try to UNDERclock my radeon 9700 it doesnt work.

[Curly]

i have also tried to decrease agp to 2x and the problem happens. only time it gets better it seems is when i but an extra fan on the 9700. but when i try to UNDERclock my radeon 9700 it doesnt work.

sounds like a overheating problem, a few things you could check are, check the fan on the gfx card is working, you could try runing with the side of the case off see if that helps or check that you have enough airflow through your case.

Curly

[ice 73]

it does seem to be overheating but i cant for the life of me figure out why it is oveheating so badly, the fan works fine, i surrounded it with case fans and it took longer to get the windows error message, usually aorund 10 min with the case fan it took me around 1 hour and a half -3 hours. but with 2 case fans sourounding it, plus the onboard fan it shouldnt be overheating like this.
got any further suggestions on how to stop it from overheating?

[Spunkey]

hi matey, what kind of case do you have? pics would be handy if you have them.

Whereabouts is your case? is it near a radiator, or tucked away in a tight space?

*edit*
oh and what processor and heatisnk as well, they can be putting out a lot of heat which will warm up the inside of your case if you dont have good enough ventiltion.

[ice 73]

my computer is open i dont close the sides, i dont have a digital camera to take a pic, i ahve teh stock amd hsf for amd xp 2800. the video card is in the middle of the computer all the slots near the video card are free.

[ice 73]

i also cant figure out why i cant under, or over clock the 9700.

[Ravens Nest]

May just be faulty, try it in someone elses PC for a while, to discount the possibility of it being something else in your computer that maybe causing the problem.

[JimmyBoy]

what chipset does the mobo have, ive had nothing but trouble with vpu errors, in the end, i updated the agp drivers then did a clean driver install and that fixed it...

[ice 73]

i have sis735 chipset ecs k7s5a mobo.
i dont think its the video card since it plays doom 3 fine with no lagg for 2-4 hours then i get a error saying doom3 has caused problems, i get some kind of error on all my games after a certian amount of tiem gaming.

[chriswood_7]

Overheating matey by the sounds of it, get yourself a decent cooler

Chris

[ice 73]

which cooler would you recomend, and why cant i underclock teh card with out getting a system crash?

[malfunction]

Have you checked the cooler is still making decent contact with the core?

[ice 73]

decent contact yes, i would like to know if its a heating problem why cant i underclock it, every time i attempt to underclock vpu recover kciks in, with vpu recover off my computer crashes. this is from a 5 mhz under or over clock.

[malfunction]

Well AFAIK VPU recover only kicks in when a call to get the card to do something doesn't respond for 'x' amount of time in the driver... So it could be the driver / system not the card... Though having said that I doubt it. What are you running (OS, driver version, CPU, overclocked or stock)? Have you done anything to the card recently (regreased the core, etc) and did you get it new or is it from retek or similar? How long have you had the PSU?

[ice 73]

Well AFAIK VPU recover only kicks in when a call to get the card to do something doesn't respond for 'x' amount of time in the driver... So it could be the driver / system not the card... Though having said that I doubt it. What are you running (OS, driver version, CPU, overclocked or stock)? Have you done anything to the card recently (regreased the core, etc) and did you get it new or is it from retek or similar? How long have you had the PSU?

i am running currently the stock drivers that windows recomends that seems to ease the problem. i dont know the exact version of catalyst, i was running 5.2 but those made my system crash. i am running
windows xp sp2
amd 2800+ underclocked to amd 2000+ due to my mobo only being 133 fsb
ecs k7s5a pro mobo
i havent done anything to the card recently.

after my system crashes i get a report saying that it was caused by a hardware driver.
also sometimes when i reboot my hard drive cant find windows and the system tries to boot in lan.

[malfunction]

Regardless of anything else it sounds like you could do with a better mobo so that your CPU can at least run at full speed (though SiS chipsets are usually stable in my experience)... I doubt it's the CPU that's causing it but you can test to see if the system is stable by downloading Prime95 and doing it's torture test for several hours (at least)...

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

And memtest can rule out any problems with your RAM:

http://www.memtest.org/

Other than that try speedfan:

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

To check that at idle and under CPU load your voltages and temps are OK...

If the mobo is old (and it certainly sounds it) check any capacitors are still flat on top and not leaking... Check the CPU HSF is mounted OK, not full of dust, etc too...

Other options are to reinstall windows. FWIW the default windows drivers are probably crap performance wise.