AB9 Pro and graphic card desperation !

[lfoggy]

Hi,
Apologies for posing a question like this on my first post but I've only visited this forum since buying a AB9 Pro a few weeks ago !

My new computer project has got somewhat stuck with a problem that I am beginning to suspect resides in the mobo. I have a new AB9 Pro, 2x1 Mb RAM, E6600 core2 duo, 2x320Gb HDD in raid 1 and a Galaxy 7900GS card with a Windows XP operating system. All went well during the initial assembly and driver installation. Problem is I can't get the graphic card to work properly. It just about copes with Windows applications (with hardware acceleration turned down) but is completely unable to handle games, slowing down painfully on even the simplest action with everything turned down to minimum. Much worse for example than my 7300GS card I have on another system. I have tried several drivers including the very latest from Nvidia to no avail. I swapped the card with another that I know works with the same problem so it's not the card. I tried a high quality power supply that I know works and that didn't help either (also remembered to plug in the separate power connector to the card!). Also tried all the usual things like unplugging and replacing all the connectors etc. I've added no other cards or drivers on the system except my Soundblaster Audigy but the problem predated its installation anyway.
The bios are as delivered a few weeks ago so I can't imagine they need updating.
I originally thought it was a driver or software problem but now I am beginning to think it is the board itself hence this post.......any suggestions ? Am I missing something really obvious and stupid !?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

[redlight]

I would check your bios version first mate even if the board is new to you it may have been sitting on a shelf for a while. I flashed my AB9 bios the day it came.

[Richh]

My new computer project has got somewhat stuck with a problem that I am beginning to suspect resides in the mobo.

From what you have described, there are more likely explanations than a faulty motherboard, but there's not enough info here for us to be certain either way, not least because you don't appear to have told us what, specifically, is wrong with your computer at the moment.

Problem is I can't get the graphic card to work properly. It just about copes with Windows applications (with hardware acceleration turned down)

What happens with hardware acceleration turned all the way up?

but is completely unable to handle games, slowing down painfully on even the simplest action with everything turned down to minimum.

That is not remotely surprising. Obviously enough, turning the hardware acceleration right down stops your graphics card hardware-accelerating anything, so to all intents and purposes it behaves like a pre-DirectX card from about 1994. In practice you shouldn't have to set the acceleration level at anything other than maximum on any system.

Again, what happens with the acceleration level turned all the way up?

Much worse for example than my 7300GS card I have on another system

Are you saying you've had to turn down the hardware acceleration level on that other system?

I have tried several drivers including the very latest from Nvidia to no avail

Have you loaded the latest Intel Chipset drivers for the motherboard? Have you installed WinXP Service Pack 2 plus the myriad of subsequent updates? Have you got a fully patched DirectX 9 installation?

I swapped the card with another that I know works with the same problem so it's not the card.

Good to know, but you're still not telling us exactly what "the problem" is. System instability? Visible corruption in the display output? What?

I've added no other cards or drivers on the system except my Soundblaster Audigy but the problem predated its installation anyway.

Noted.

The bios are as delivered a few weeks ago so I can't imagine they need updating.

That's a flawed assumption as you don't know how long the board spent on a boat or a shelf before you bought it. The latest release AB9/Pro BIOS is 1.6. If yours isn't at least at 1.5 level, update immediately.

I originally thought it was a driver or software problem but now I am beginning to think it is the board itself hence this post.......any suggestions ?

Erm, erm, erm...

Am I missing something really obvious and stupid !?

... telling us exactly what "the problem" is would be good!

We need to know exactly what symptoms present - with hardware acceleration turned right up. Running DXDiag and making sure all the graphics tests pass would also be good. The more comprehensive a picture we are able to build of what's going on, the better equipped we'll be to help you.

[CrazyMonkey]

Update bios to latest, be carefull though my friend had huge screen corruption on his 7900GT with the 1.6bios.

[lfoggy]

Wow, thanks for the replies, especially RichH who has clearly read my question carefully.

The OS is Windows XP with all the currently available updates according to the MS website including service pack 2
The chipset driver was downloaded from Abit a few days ago.
The Bios are as delivered but I will update these tonight
DirectX9 is from the CD that came with the graphics card (assumed that was up to date but will update that as well !)
I had never heard of DxDiag but have now found it and will run it tonight (thanks)

The problem is that after assembly and software installation I got the following problems with hardware acceleration fully up - slider to the right (I only turned it down to see if it would make any difference to the mouse pointer).

Intermittenly jerky mouse pointer movement
A few instances of system freezes
A few instances of sudden reboot and then when the system restarts the message that the system has recovered from a 'serious system error' + error code.
Very poor graphic card performance in games, i.e. painfully slow framerates. No image corruption however....stationary images look fine !
Strange thing here is that sometimes it speeds up and behaves normally for a few 10-20 seconds then slows down again.

Windows applications such as Office seem to work fine and fast appart from the intermittent jerky mouse pointer.

Also should add that the whole lot is cooled with a Zalman Reserator (CPU, VGA and northbridge). The GPU and CPU temperatures are consistently low - not surprising as I haven't been able to use the PC for much yet ! There is also a fan to cool the other bits on the mobo so I don't think heat is an issue.

Your interest is greatly appreciated. Aplogies for not being as familiar with PCs as many other contributers but this is only my second PC build.....the first went without a hitch though !

P.S. just a thought. Got a bit messy with the thermal compound (arctic silver) on the Northbridge. Could this conceivably cause something to short out...does thermal compound conduct ? (this is called grasping at straws !)

[Richh]

.

[Richh]

Wow, thanks for the replies, especially RichH who has clearly read my question carefully.

My old teacher always used to say that the clue is usually in the question, so it pays to read carefully.

The problem is that after assembly and software installation I got the following problems with hardware acceleration fully up

Intermittenly jerky mouse pointer movement
A few instances of system freezes
A few instances of sudden reboot and then when the system restarts the message that the system has recovered from a 'serious system error' + error code.
Very poor graphic card performance in games, i.e. painfully slow framerates. No image corruption however....stationary images look fine !

Okay, so now we know where you're at.

Also should add that the whole lot is cooled with a Zalman Reserator (CPU, VGA and northbridge).

Right, one of my next questions was going to be to ask about GPU and vRAM temperatures. Take it the video memory has got some passive cooling on it, or are you liquid cooling that as well?

P.S. just a thought. Got a bit messy with the thermal compound (arctic silver) on the Northbridge. Could this conceivably cause something to short out...does thermal compound conduct ? (this is called grasping at straws !)

Aaaahhh, well, yes, some types of metal-loaded thermal compound definitely do. Even though Arctic Silver themselves claim that AS5 does not conduct electricity in the true sense of the term, it certainly does induct, which is just as bad in practice, as, in the wrong place, it could either be affecting the chip's power supply, or even act as a filter or choke on one or more of the signal lines.

If you were using a metal loaded paste, and were messy enough for it to touch or partially short some of the small SMD components on the northbridge's FC-BGA carrier, or indeed on the board itself, then weirdness certainly could result.

You've already run a partial process of elimination by swapping in another graphics card, but equally it'd also be instructive, if you could arrange it, to put your 7900 in another machine to rule that out as a positive cause.

Beyond that, it'll be instructive to see what DXDiag does, and it certainly would be worth removing the northbridge waterblock and taking a really close look to see where that thermal compound may have gone. Edited to add that it might not be a bad idea to check the GPU as well, just in case!

[lfoggy]

Now have bios 1.6 and the latest directx9
Dxdiag says everything is working
My northbridge is clean and free of any contaminating arctic silver (there wasn't much anyway but I removed any traces with isopropyl alcohol and re-applied fresh compound sparingly).
The graphics card RAM has passive cooling fitted and is cooled by a fan. The heatsinks get slightly warm to touch but not hot.

And the result.....problem remains !

Very intermittent though. My seven year old managed to play LEGO Star Wars for half an hour and everything was working beautifully but then suddenly it all slowed down to crawling speed again. He was very dissapointed !
GPU and CPU temperatures were not high (40-50 C) so its not that.

This makes me think it is a hardware rather than software issue.
Do I need a new mobo or is there anything else I can try ?

[Dareos]

I dont suppose this could be a memory problem rather than a graphics card problem?

[gilgamesh]

Now have bios 1.6 and the latest directx9
Dxdiag says everything is working
My northbridge is clean and free of any contaminating arctic silver (there wasn't much anyway but I removed any traces with isopropyl alcohol and re-applied fresh compound sparingly).
The graphics card RAM has passive cooling fitted and is cooled by a fan. The heatsinks get slightly warm to touch but not hot.

And the result.....problem remains !

Very intermittent though. My seven year old managed to play LEGO Star Wars for half an hour and everything was working beautifully but then suddenly it all slowed down to crawling speed again. He was very dissapointed !
GPU and CPU temperatures were not high (40-50 C) so its not that.

This makes me think it is a hardware rather than software issue.
Do I need a new mobo or is there anything else I can try ?

OK mate on weird problems like this my advice is this.

Take off you water cooling and go back to STOCK air cooling where ever you can, including the gpu. If you are having problems such as this then wcing will jsut add to the confusion. If I were you mate I would go back to stock cooling on everything and then jsut work forward from there, this is the way I would go about it.

gilgamesh

[Highland3r]

Run rivatuner and sit it on the hardware monitoring part. This wll record GPU temps along with clockspeeds. Check the cards throttling up to performance 3d correctly (and remaining there) and that the cards not dropping back to 2d speeds for some reason.
Also, check the CPU load when running games (and also idle) make sure there's no process hogging CPU time which could cause the crap performance. The random lag in windows could be caused by high CPU load. (Thinking along the lines of a virus or similar here)
Have you tried re-installing windows at all? Also, grab the latest chipset drivers from the Intel site.

<edit> Checking the GPU temps under load should show whether we're dealing with a temp related issue here. I'd hazard a guess we're not due to the random reboots etc you're seeing. Also, give windows memtest and orthos a run if you haven't already, as mentioned this could be an issue with memory or similar. What speed is your ram currently running at btw? It might be worth giving a touch more vDimm (say 2-2.1v) and seeing if that helps too perhaps. </edit>

[Richh]

.....problem remains !

Very intermittent though.

Haaaaaang on a minute! When you say it's very intermittent, what, exactly do you mean? Is it more intermittent now than it was a couple of days ago?

When your littleun was sat playing Star Wars happily, was this immediately after all your fettling, or before? Had the computer been switched off for somet time prior to him jumping on there? Are there any external issues that could possibly explain this unexpected bout of good behaviour from your PC?

Have to agree with Gilgamesh's comments above. In situations like this, the KISS principle applies, and that means pulling your liquid cooling kit off for the time being and ruling out all other possible external factors. Same with Highland3r's suggestion to check the performance/throttling functions on the graphics card.

[gilgamesh]

Haaaaaang on a minute! When you say it's very intermittent, what, exactly do you mean? Is it more intermittent now than it was a couple of days ago?

When your littleun was sat playing Star Wars happily, was this immediately after all your fettling, or before? Had the computer been switched off for somet time prior to him jumping on there? Are there any external issues that could possibly explain this unexpected bout of good behaviour from your PC?

Have to agree with Gilgamesh's comments above. In situations like this, the KISS principle applies, and that means pulling your liquid cooling kit off for the time being and ruling out all other possible external factors. Same with Highland3r's suggestion to check the performance/throttling functions on the graphics card.

lol at fettling? thats a good old yorkshire expression

ANd yeah at Highland3r comments on the vdimm situation. Sometiems motherboards autodetect the required voltage needed on your memory modules wrongly and as such the module is not getting enough juice, please check this mate. Nice one Highland3r!

As I said above take off your wc kit and go back to stock. Did i read rightly that you have your northbridge cooling on the same loop as your cpu and gpu? Once again we have many factors interfearing with each other. go back to stock air mate and see how you go.

[lfoggy]

Thanks again for all the suggestions. Should keep me going for a while!
I will get to work on the weekend replacing the stock cooling and trying out the other suggestions like the RivaTuner. Will report back when done..

Have run Norton antivirus 2007 and nothing detected (I too as thinking viruses).

Richh, I did think the new BIOS had done the trick because the system worked faultlessly for over an hour after the update which is more than it ever has. Unfortunately this bout of good behavior was transient as when I switched it on today it was back to its old tricks almost right away......sometimes I hate computers......

[gilgamesh]

Thanks again for all the suggestions. Should keep me going for a while!
I will get to work on the weekend replacing the stock cooling and trying out the other suggestions like the RivaTuner. Will report back when done..

Have run Norton antivirus 2007 and nothing detected (I too as thinking viruses).

Richh, I did think the new BIOS had done the trick because the system worked faultlessly for over an hour after the update which is more than it ever has. Unfortunately this bout of good behavior was transient as when I switched it on today it was back to its old tricks almost right away......sometimes I hate computers......

Just a suggestion havce you disabled nortons only whislt your running a game? It wouldnt be surprised that it was nortons casunig the problems with your games, bah I wouldnt touch nortons witha ten foot barge pole.

gilgamesh

[Dareos]

I tend to take the Patricians view of things about Virus checker companies

to paraphrase it, when Ankh Morpohk was undergoing a rat infestation and a bounty was put out on rat tails, thousands upon thousands were handed in but the rat problem didnt go away.

The Patrician's answer

Tax the rat farms