Random freezing in FarCry and 3Dmark03 on 6800's

[Noxis]

I did have a problem with random freezing mainly noticed in FarCry (very card stressful) and when attempting to bench in '03

First of all I thought heat, then I thought power related. However after lots of testing and forum posts it turns out it was Fast Writes being enabled causing it. I cant take credit but it definitly fixed the problem.

Interestingly disabling it in bios did not disable it in windows and I had to disable it using RivaTuner.

Also instersetingly for people not experiancing this, disabling Fast Writes appears to allow higher overclocks for people using all types of 6800s.

This appears to be a problem specifically on the nforce3 150/250/Pro/non-pro chipset ironically.

The problem has been posted by people in various places but its never been categorically fixed to my knowledge anyway (I did lots of googling believe me!). So I felt it best to post as a FYI for people.

[CrapshoT]

I wish I had that problem!!! Unfortunately Far Cry and 3D 03 run perfectly on my humble 9800 pro..lol

[Stewart]

Ah, the good old humble 9800pro. How fondly I look back on those days, all those... erm, weeks ago.

Amazing how fast things move on isn't it? When I had my 9800pro, I was thinking I'd sit out on this generation of GPUs, and see what came next. Little did I know, the 9800pro and 5900Ultra would be blown away, and very much mid-range, once the new boards were out.

My poor, poor wallet.

[Nomadd]

Re: "My poor, poor wallet."

Nah, roll on NV50 and R500!!!! ...but don't tell the wife. :-)

Wife: You spent £300 quid, just on a graphics thingy? Why?
Me: Er, come and look at the shiny pipes in Far Cry. :-)
Wife: You sad git.
Me (whispering): Must log on to Hexus to find some bros who *understand.*

Cheers,

Nomadd

[Stewart]

Luckily I haven't got a wife, and girlfriends don't have the required status to stop me spending my money on what I want.

Now, SLI is looking interesting, isn't it?

[Nomadd]

SLI - jeez, new Mobo and 2 new graphics cards - i.e. you'd need PCI versions. And while your at it you'd probably get DDR2 ram. That's wallet crunching I can't justify! :-)

To be honest, I'm rather skeptical about how much real-world improvement SLI would bring. Graphics pipes are very 'deep' these days and I wonder how much of that you can share with something as loosely coupled as SLI'd cards. I'd have thought a dual-gpu card with 512MB-1GB of shared graphics ram would be the proper solution. Mind you, you'd want a 1000W PSU to go with it! :-)

Nomadd