Random Reboots and Corrupt Graphics....

[Speed]

Hello,

Firstly I apologise for the length of this post, but I needed to be sure that all the information was down in detail.

Now I decided to post this in here because as far as I'm concerned it’s likely to be graphics card related. Basically I had a lot of problems in the past with my current setup (specs below) and I’ve replaced various parts trying to fix the problem. The main problem with trying to nail down what’s wrong is the fact that these problems don’t happen all the time. My system could go weeks without any problems, but I’ve currently hit a bad spot.

Current Specs:

Intel P4 2.4C
Abit AI7
2 x 512 Twinmoss DDR400
GigaByte R9700 Pro with a Zalman HP80C and fan
Tagan 480W PSU
Western Digital 120GB 8MB Cache Hard drive
Windows XP Pro SP1

Most of the changes I’ve made have solved the problems for a short amount of time, I guess that could just be one of my problem dry spells though. I have changed in the past, my power supply as I thought the problems could be related to lack of power. I’ve also recently changed my motherboard.

My current problems are random reboots and graphical corruption in games. Basically in the past 4 days I’ve had at least 7 random reboots. Strange thing is most of them have been while I was doing something non-intensive, like viewing web pages, using word etc. The second problem is I get graphic corruption in games.

Below is a screenshot from Full Spectrum Warrior which shows the kinds of things I'm experiencing.

http://www.speedsurfer1212.pwp.bluey...images/bad.jpg

I have similar experiences in Farcry, to the stage where you can't even identify the weapon you are holding, let alone where you are facing. Usually the desktop is fine, but sometimes does go unreable after an experience like the above in a game.

I have to say that the above has only started happening all the time in the past few days or so. I have however experienced these things in the past with this card, which prompted me to change my power supply in the first place.

At first I thought it was cooling on my graphics card as I have a Zalman HP80 series on there, but after directing a 120mm 125CFM Ys Tech @ 12v at the card the same problems are encountered.

I have tried the graphics card in another pc, but the only pc I have access to has a Duron 800. I didn’t encounter any problems, but the time and effort to remove geforce drivers etc took its toll. I tried a few games, it was fine but I'm wondering if the Duron could be holding the card back and not allowing it to go fast enough to cause problems.

By now I'm thinking the graphics card must be faulty so I attempted to change the graphics card I had in there (R9700PRO) with a GF4 Ti series card. Now this GF4 Ti card has been sitting and working fine in another pc (the Duron 800 rig). Now I removed the Ati drivers, rebooted in safemode, ran drive cleaner. Switched the cards. I then rebooted, it past the normal bios bit but once it got to the XP loading screen you couldn't see nearly anything of it. Just a few flickering bits, my TFT then said no signal and the pc rebooted.

This time it didn't get as far, it got stuck on the Abit screen where it gives you the option to press TAB to show POST and DEL to show BIOS. It got stuck there every time I rebooted. The POST LED showed 52, which is "Test all memory (clear all extended memory to 0). I pretty sure that is just part of the booting process that it normally goes through. So I ended up sticking the R9700PRO back in, with more questions than answers.

It seems I get totally screwed graphics everytime I try and play any games. I also got a VPU recover error for the first time today after trying to start a game, it screwed up at the menu, even before I loaded a save game. So I'm guessing the card is totally screwed and needs replacing?

If anyone could help me out with this problem it would be a great help, I'm running out of idea's.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[Steve]

Have you tried reseating the cooling solution on your Radeon? It might be bad contact with the core rather than lack of airflow.

Also, what AGP mode is your AGP slot, and do you have fast writes enabled in the BIOS?

[Speed]

Hi Kez,

Thanks for your reply!

Thats a good idea, I really should have thought of that earlier! I will try that in alittle bit.

With regards to your questions, it is set at 8x AGP and fastwries on. I have tried turning fastwrites off using the ATI control settings. The same problems in games were experienced and they seemed considerably slower (stuttering etc). So I turned it back on.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[Speed]

Right, I took the Zalman cooler off and put the old cooler back on. Nothing changed, now the fan is alittle noisey and flakey at best. The way I see it, I either need to buy a good cooler like an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer to make sure its not heat realated or replace the card.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[ArmagoN]

hmmmm could be a problem with your Mobo, i have ghad a similar problem before, changed the board and it was fine, other issues i have had was the northbridge on the board burnt out, so if your under warranty still try getting it replaced.

[Speed]

Hello,

Well I actually recently replaced my board from a Abit IC7 to what I have listed in the specs, thinking that was the problem. Although it sorted it for alittle while the problems came back worse than ever.

I've also tried using ATI Tool to underclock the card, that did help a tad but the artifacts were still there. I also used ATI Tool's artifact scanner and it picked up tons at stock. Alot of the times after I do things like that or go into a game, the whole desktop gets permently screwed. So no refreshing gets rid of it, have to reboot.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[Speed]

Right, more experiences. I tried to install the Ti4200 card I tried before. I had the same experience (read bottom of my first post for details), but this time I reset CMOS before I started up the PC after putting the card in. The same things happened but I manged to get into bios.

Strange thing was that the screen kept going black and back to the bios screen, almost like what happens if you switch res in windows. I've had a muiltmeter attached to the ATX plug that comes out of the PSU for a while now reading the 3.3v rail. Funny thing is that in bios and startup when the R9700Pro was in there it read 3.40, but with the Ti4200 it read 3.28v.

I've also noticed that since I installed the new motherboard (may have also happened on the old motherboard just not sure) the FSB reads 204 instead of 200. This is all under default auto detect settings for a 2.4C. Now of course this isn't no big problem, but after I rebooted in bios a message came up (that I have seen before) saying CPU unworkable or has been changed etc. Entered the bios and nothing was different, maybe the CPU is causing the problem?

Anyways, I managed to get into safe mode. A message came up saying saying it detected a possible device failure (more on that later). So I rebooted, got into XP, installed the drtivers, rebooted.

I opened ATI Tool and used it to scan for artifacts on the Ti4200, it was fine for all of half a minute and then it couldn't stop detecting them. While this was happening the muiltmeter was reading 2.98v. Kept saying No errors for 0.03 seconds, much like the R9700Pro. I closed ATI Tool and the pc rebooted!

So after the pc started up I decide to try and play FSW, did work for about 5 seconds but there was the flashes I got in bios. Then there were no textures on the people and the game froze. I rebooted it. When it started up again, I tried to play again, this time the game just froze and the pc rebooted itself.

After windows started up, the same error message that I had in safemode come up.

Main Error Message

Details on that Error Message

God knows whats going on, are both graphics cards screwed? Is this brand new motherboard screwed? Is my PSU screwed? This is really taking the F**KING P***

If anyone could suggest anything I try to norrow down the search of whats wrong it would be a great help!

Thanks

Mark

[jimborae]

Hmmm, it does sound like a fubarred agp slot but am I right in saying that this a replacement board for one that was showing the same symptoms? If your radeon worked fine in your duron machine & your GF4 did as well then your graphics cards aren't the problem.

Also it would be helpful to know what bios revision you're running & drivers.

Do you have access to a PCI graphics card as that would help in showing whether the card and/or the agp slot is knackered.

Also have you run memtest86 to rule out that your memory isn't dodgy, doesn't sound like it is though.

Another thing though, you said you had turned off fastwrites in windows, well try turning it off in the bios first. Fastwrites does bugger all except cause instability.

Finally what is the agp voltage set at in the bios?

[Speed]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, you are correct this is the second board. The first one (IC7) had the same sort of problems, so I replaced it for a AI7.

I maybeable to find a PCI graphics card that works, but I have tried and couldn't get the dam card to show anything on the screen. I'll try some others later.

I have infact ran MEMTEST86, this is my second thread to do with these problems. I guess for forgot to mention it, the ram passed serveral runs with no problems at all.

I actually couldn't find fastwrites in bios, hence me turning it off in windows. I'll have another look while I get you my AGP voltage.

On a side not the fan on my northbridge of this new motherboard makes alot of noise when the pc is first started up on a morning. I know its the northbridge fan as I've stopped it and the noise stopped, I just thought I would mention it although I doubt it would be anything.

Another thing is a recently plugged my pc case speaker back in, as it kept going off with some siren noises. I pegged it as a problem (that these Abit Guru boards suffer) to do with the software or so I was reading in the FAQ's on the Abit site. Now it just went off when and the screen are started to do these black to screen flashes I mentioned, all the time now. Well not all the time, but it does it every few minutes a few times.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[Speed]

As requested: AGP Voltage 1.55v

I've looked for the fastwrites option in bios, can't find it. I don't think there is one as I've also looked through the bios section of the manual.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[jimborae]

Mark, I'll have a look for it in my bios when I get home from work, I do seem to to remember turning it off in my bios but maybe I'm just going bonkers.

Jim

[Speed]

Hi Jim,

Thanks very much!

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[jimborae]

Mark I'm going bonkers sorry.

No option to turn it off in bios.

[jimborae]

Do you know what bios you are running though and are you able to post your bios settings? As for the Northbridge fan, it's well known there crap so I wouldn't worry about it too much Could you also check your temps in the bios as well & report them

[Speed]

Hey,

Latest bios 1.9 I think is its ID. With regards to bios settings they are set to optimized defaults with ATA, Audio, IEEE 1394 all disabled.

Thanks for the info on the fan!

Temps: 40-45 CPU, 32 System and 37-42 PWM (any idea what PWM is?)

On a side note, I put the R9700PRO into my other (Duron 800) rig and ran ATI Tool's Artifact scanner for 1 hour and 15 minutes. No Artifacts were found so its likely that the card is fine!

So god knows whats going on? PSU no providing enough amps?

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)

[Speed]

On a side note, I put the Ti4200 card back in my Duron rig but it reboots when I try the Artifact scan. So god knows whats going on with that

I also put the R9700PRO back in its P4 rig, ran the artifact scan. It detected none for 15 minutes and it wasent till I came back and opened outlook that it did. I actually not so sure if the R9700PRO is ok anymore even if it did 1 hour 15 minutes in the duron rig. Maybe it needed stressing while it was running the scan.

Regards,

Mark
(Speed)