Enermax 350W - is it enough?

[Feck]

Hi peeps,
I recently upgraded my system to A64 3200 (1mb CG stepping), MSI K8N Neo Plat, Corsair 2x512 XMS4000, sblive, 9800 128MB Pro. When playing BF1942/BF Vietnam the system crashes ocassionally, usually leaving me with ATI VPU recover or a complete system reset. Ive tried the latest 4.7 catalyst drivers and an old 3.7 driver it makes no difference. I recently upgraded from a GF4 Ti4200 to the ATI card, clean install of Windows 2000 SP4 and latest ATI drivers, all was fine for about a day or 2 then it started reseting or crashing to desktop from the game. I had no problems with the GF4, its only happened since installing the ATI card. Im wondering if the Enermax 350W is no longer sufficient to suppy the system, is it worth upgrading this item?

For what its worth Ive tried using Mushkin Lvl 1 3200, makes no difference.

Appoligies in advance if this has been asked before but Im at my wits end.

[Byatt]

Hum...are you crashing in anything other than BF1942?

[Feck]

Both 1942 & Vietnam are crashing, these are the only two games Im playing atm. Ive ran Aquamark a few times, it runs without fault. Havnt tried any other games to be honest, I believe Vietnam & BF1942 use different game engines.

[Byatt]

I'd be inclined to say there's something going wrong between battlefield and your ati card then - try running aquamark or 3dmark03 repeatedly to be certain.

could also try some drivers from omegacorner (url is obvious )

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

What is your current AGP setting?

8x or 4x ?

If it's 8x try putting it at 4x and see if you still get the VPU recover errors. I have two MSI boards and I have to run the gfx cards at 4x AGP to stop errors. Have a feeling this may be a VIA chipset problem but it's worth a go.

[Apex]

prolly driver related

[Feck]

MSI K8N is an Nvidia 250Gb chipset, Ive already tried 4.7 (latest) and 3.7, makes no difference. Current AGP setting is 8x, Ill try 4x to see if that makes a difference.

[Spud1]

another thought would be to try a better gaming OS =) have you got an old copy of 98se lying about? its a much better OS for games and well pretty much anything unless your running a business from you PC

or better still upgrade to XP pro [or home and use the TweakNT trick to make it pro =)]

XP is miles better than 2k and will probly fix your problem imho - its well worth the money

Failing that make sure AGP fastwrites are off in the bios, and do a complete driver clean before you install new ones

and try omegas set =)

[oralpain]

Try messing around with memory timings, battlefiled is versy susceptable to memory errors.

Your PSU should be ok if you are not overclocking. The again, the radeon uses alot more power than the GF4 did, so that could be it.

[daniel_owen_uk]

To be honest games are not the greatest of stress tests, mainly because they stress everything and make it hard to pinpoint the problem.

I would try 3 programs to stress test, firstly run prime95 turture test with small FFTs to test the cpu, then memtest86 to test the memory (bootable cd), then lastly try 3dmark03 in a loop.

[Byatt]

a load of crap about win2k

Win2k's fine, and doesn't come with teletubby interfacing as standard.

[sybrows]

Win2k's fine, and doesn't come with teletubby interfacing as standard.

second that
BrOw

[Apex]

third that m8

only reason i moved to XP was that it was on offer at uni and the fact i was getting file sharing errors at lan parties.

still run 2k on the laptop though it make much better use of the hw then xp ever did.

[Feck]

Right, Ive tried MemTest-86 v3.1a (bootable) left that running for 2hours... no errors. Then I tried prime95 for around an hour (should have let this run for longer). Finally I tried 3DMark03 with patch 340, first time I ran it the system froze at Battle of Proxycon, I ran it on several ocassions and only managed to complete it once. I have also tried a different PSU, problem remains. Is the 9800 faulty? I dont get any artifacts, runs smooth (when its running). Im not going back to Win98/ME, I could try XP but I cant see what difference that would make. Should I RMA the 9800, or is there summit else I could try?

[iMc]

i get very similer problems with my setup. never have worked it out. think it mite b power supply but im stumped tbh.

[Byatt]

I'm stumped as well tbh - if you've tried a different PSU, well, my thoughts could be that maybe the card is overheating, maybe some of the onboard memory on it is slightly faulty...but nothing certain - who did you buy the card off? You might want to contact them to see if this is suitable grounds for an RMA.