geoforce 3 ti500 nightmare

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Sat Jul 06, 2002 8:04 pm

ok heres the story,

i bought a msi geoforce geoforce 3 ti 500 4 weeks ago.. when i recieved and installed it ..i could not get it to work kept rebooting all the time and when i ran 3dmark or any game it would crash back to the desktop or simply reboot again. so i sent the card back and they changed it for a new one. i installed the card and i got the same things happening what happened with the first one. wtf? so today i went and tried the card in my buddys computer and it worked fine without any problems at all.
(gigabyte ga7zm (kt133 chipset). (250w psu)

i came back home tried 5 different sets of drivers from the msi site and nvidia no luck at all. still keeps screwing up. hopefully someone here has some suggestions. btw when i put my old gf2 mx back in everything works great?

amd athlon xp1900+
asus a7v333 (kt 333 chipset)
512mb samsung pc2700
enermax 350watt psu

westeren digital 100gb hard drive
windows xp

thanks in advance for any help/suggestions

cheers mike...

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Jul 06, 2002 9:21 pm

First off, be prepared to spend some time troubleshooting this.

You need to go down this list and check each of these items:

- I recommend the NVidia reference drivers over the manufacturer's. Do NOT use beta or leaked drivers - use only the latest official reference drivers. Get them here: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers

- In the motherboard's BIOS menu, make sure that "Assign IRQ to VGA" is enabled and that both "Video BIOS Caching" and "Video Ram Shadow" are disabled. Set "AGP Aperature" to 64.

- The Geforce does NOT like to share an IRQ with other devices - make sure it's the only card using it's IRQ. If you can't change the IRQ for the conflicting card in Device Manager, then you must move the card to another slot.

- Go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site and see if there's an updated Flash BIOS for your mobo. It could be your AGP bus support isn't up to spec.

- You may not have the proper or the latest drivers for you motherboard's APG to PCI Bridge. The Geforce is a true AGP card (unlike 3Dfx cards) and is very fussy about having the AGP bus setup properly. This is a MAJOR gotcha. Windows will install the wrong mobo drivers until you update them. There should be drivers that came with your motherboard on a CD, but you should download the latest version from the motherboard manufacurer's web site.

- It's possible that some other device is causing the problem. Best way to isolate it is to pull ALL your cards except the vid card (IMPORTANT: note what slot each card was installed in). Play the misbehaving game and see if it runs stable (yes, the game should run just fine without a sound card installed). If it behaves, install each card ONE BY ONE starting with the sound card until you isolate the bad boy. It's important to put the cards back in their original slots to avoid PCI IRQ Sharing problems (see next paragraph).

- You may have a card that has a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). The SBLive, NICs and SCSI controllers are very prone to this. Fix is essentially the same as mentioned in the previous paragraph except when you find the misbehaving card, you need to move it to another slot. More details on this problem here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9

- You should also check out the Geforce FAQ at http://geforcefaq.com

Hope this helps...

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 12:08 pm

fp thanks you very much for the very informative in depth answer i appreciate it. ok i tried everything you said in your post .. firstly the new nvidia drivers.. no luck. i only have one pci card installed (d link nic card) it was on irq 16 the same as the video card .. so i moved that into another slot...no luck. i noticed i also have a usb controller on irq 16 but all the settings and everything to change the irq are grayed out .

the only thing i can find in the bios what you told me is the aperture size which is now set to 64. the other 2 settings i cant seem to find in my bios (asus a7v333 rev1007) i read the manual from head to toe but couldnt see anything . installed latest 4 in 1 drivers also .. what bugs me is as soon as i put my old asus v7100 geoforce 2 mx back in works damn fine. i dont know what to try next as this new card works great on my buddys system (kt133 chipset).

thanks for your advice..

mc

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 1:46 pm

Rather puzzling. While there are some differences, I would expect any system that a GF2 works in would be fine with a GF3.

There has to be something unique about your system.

GF3 will draw more current than a GF2, but you have a modern mobo and a decent PSU.

Did you check for a BIOS update for the mobo?

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 2:25 pm

thanks again fp... yes latest bios (1007) board is brand new asus a7v333. somebody mentioned it might be memory related .. but then wouldnt it give me probs with gf2 also?

got 2x256 meg pc2700 samsung in system runs stable as a rock without gf3

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 5:01 pm

Memory is possible, so is PSU. The GF3 will stress the memory subsystem and power supply more. Could be one of them is just barely stable with the GF2 but won't cut it with the GF3.

Things like that are tough to diagnose without spare parts to swap out.

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 5:25 pm

thanks again.. maybe if i set the ram in the bios to run at 266mhz instead of 333mhz it will be more stable. i can try that right now. although the ram is pc2700 maybe its not up to spec ie: overclocked pc2100. ill try it and get back to you.

Jim Z · Post by **Jim Z** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 5:30 pm

yeah, what FP said. Games dumping to the desktop and unexpected reboots are often signs of a system that's overclocked too far. While you're not overclocking, marginal hardware such as a dodgy stick of RAM or flaky power supply can act almost identically to that. Try running on one stick of RAM, clock it back to 266 and see what happens.

edit: Is this a Samsung-branded DIMM or is it "Jimbo's generic DIMM" with samsung chips on it? If it's not a Samsung-brand DIMM, then it just might be an overclockable PC2100 part.

Also see if you can borrow a different power supply. I've heard both good and bad about enermax power supplies, most often people complain about them because they do not hold the +5 volt output stable. and the +5 volt output is practically THE critical output on the system (many things are run from the 5v rail, the CPU's core voltage is one, and many times AGP power is as well).

also, what cooling are you using on that CPU? The 1900+ isn't exceptionally toasty but many of the low-cost heatsinks are pretty limp.

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 9:48 pm

ok fp jim(thanks for replying) you must of read my mind jim.. i left both sticks of ram in and clocked it back in the bios to pc2100 speeds. i just ran 3d mark for 45 mins without any problems at all. yeah its samsung chips on a generic board probably like u said pc2100 overclocked. i did buy it as pc2700 from ncix.com and i bought all my other parts there too. surely if its rated at 2700 i should be able to sort something out with them or maybe swap the 2x256 megs for 1 256 crucial or something better so i will be able to run 2700 all the time although there is not a huge peformance difference between 2100 and 2700. i paid for 2700 spec thats what i want. anyway im gonna do a bit of gaming to test it more and ill post my results in this thread. btw will i be ok with just 256 instead of 512? about the cpu fan its a standard amd stock fan ..also have 3 case fans...ill keep u guys updated

cheers

Jim Z · Post by **Jim Z** » Sun Jul 07, 2002 11:36 pm

yeah, if it's totally stable with the memory at 266 (PC2100) then I'd b%#ch at your retailer.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Mon Jul 08, 2002 6:13 am

glad you got it working a little bit - any way you can up the voltage on the ram? I had a similar problem on a p4 rig - with memory - i had no voltage adjustment and had to slow the memory down from 333

mikecanada · Post by **mikecanada** » Wed Jul 10, 2002 6:30 pm

ok thanks guys for all your replies... finnaly sorted it out my 2 x 256 sticks of ram were exactly the same.. but wont work together. i ran memtest 3.6 16 hours on each stick it gave me no errors. now just running with 1x256 and works great looped 3d mark for 4 hours...so guess its ok now

thanks to everybody for your input