x850xt, All games crash

mips · Jun 30, 2005, 05:36 AM

Hi folks.

Got a new pc from work, brand new. Some specs:

Athlon 64 XP 3700+
ATI Radeon X850XT PCI-ex (Omega 2.6.42)
2 GB (2x1024MB) DDR PC3200 Ram
500 GB (2x250GB) Seagate Barracuda SATA
Audigy 2 ZS
A8NE-FM Motherboard
500w SeaSonic

WinXP Home SP2

All games crashes after 1-2 mins: looping ingame sound, vertical lines on screen. Only way out is Power off and reboot.

Tried with different Catalyst drivers and now finally the Omega drivers.
....I didn't use Driver Cleaner....I will try that.

Now, the strange thing is if I play Quake3 in windowed mode, it works fine, but as soon as I enter fullscreen mode, 1-2 mins after, it crashes.

Thanks for any input on this...

daedal · Jun 30, 2005, 06:17 AM

Strange indeed, deifnitly give DriverCleaner a run. What about your chipset drivers?
When you say all games do this, what games have you tried?

mips · Jun 30, 2005, 06:31 AM

I have tried Trackmania, Quake3 and Star Wars Battlefront

Since I posted this topic I have clocked down the Core Speed and mem speed to a minimum, and have been able to play without any problems as I thought maybe it got too hot or something. GPU temperature was around 60-70c whenever i played, but now it is around 50+. Idle temp when not playing is around 40-45

Not sure if any of this figures are normal or not.

The_Neon_Cowboy · Jun 30, 2005, 06:47 AM

"SeaSonic" that worries me a generic PSU is the devil to any
high end system. thats the 1st time I've ever herd of that "brand".

60-70c is normal for the gpu

mips · Jun 30, 2005, 06:55 AM

Heh, so it could be the PSU rather than the temperature?

I'll try to fiddle around with some settings.

Maybe obvious, but does the card require (much) more power when using higher core and mem speed?

daedal · Jun 30, 2005, 08:56 AM

Well I have the same card that you have (although AGP) and your temps are about right. If you think it might have something to do with it, you can tweak the fan speeds using ATITool but as mentioned above, keep your eyes on your PSU graphs and watch for sudden dips.

Also try to get your video card it's own Molex rail and not share it with another device. Probably has nothing to do with it but I always feel safer when I go down that route.

Sandok · Jun 30, 2005, 09:05 AM

Bah my X800 XT PE has two fans on the same rail and no probs

But ya, a HUGE PSU from an unkown company, usually not a good sign...

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jun 30, 2005, 10:38 AM

My 9800 shares power with a floppy drive.

The odd thing is I saw someone run a whole bunch of glowy PC parts on a really high end PSU and it still exhibited cheap PSU traits. Bought a new Enermax one and it was fine.

Its getting to be luck of the draw.

Oh yeah...stay the hell away fro many acrylic or clear cased PSU. Too much fluff around the PSU (like glowy things and all that) == not good. They should be concnetrating on a GOOD PSU not a good looking one.

Just my buck o' five.

frx · Jul 1, 2005, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Neon_Cowboy

"SeaSonic" that worries me a generic PSU is the devil to any
high end system. thats the 1st time I've ever herd of that "brand".

60-70c is normal for the gpu

Seasonic isn't a generic brand, its pretty common among people looking for machines that are silent as there PSU's are extemely quite

frx · Jul 1, 2005, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H3X4D3C1M4L

My 9800 shares power with a floppy drive.

The odd thing is I saw someone run a whole bunch of glowy PC parts on a really high end PSU and it still exhibited cheap PSU traits. Bought a new Enermax one and it was fine.

Its getting to be luck of the draw.

Oh yeah...stay the hell away fro many acrylic or clear cased PSU. Too much fluff around the PSU (like glowy things and all that) == not good. They should be concnetrating on a GOOD PSU not a good looking one.

Just my buck o' five.

PSU's that are pretty are not necessarily bad.. and "fluff" and "glowy" things wont make a difference it just happens to be most of the binged out "fluffy" PSU's are cheap ones that are not very reliable. There still are PSU's that look pretty that work very good.. EXAMPLE: OCZ MODSTREAM...

Your right about wanting a reliable brand named PSU though.

MousePotato · Jul 1, 2005, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mips

I have tried Trackmania, Quake3 and Star Wars Battlefront

Since I posted this topic I have clocked down the Core Speed and mem speed to a minimum, and have been able to play without any problems as I thought maybe it got too hot or something. GPU temperature was around 60-70c whenever i played, but now it is around 50+. Idle temp when not playing is around 40-45

Not sure if any of this figures are normal or not.

i was getting same issue with my 850xt , and yes it was heat related for me, i installed ATI Tray Tools and set the fan to kick in at lower temps, so far no more lock ups.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 4, 2005, 11:17 PM

I think that'd be bad thermal paste distribution, because from what I see X850s have pretty beefy heatsinks and such.

nitrousoxide52 · Jul 5, 2005, 12:04 AM

What kind of heatsink is sitting on your cpu, in my old comp case, the same thing would happen to me, I would lock up, and sound would loop. So I underclocked my cpu, and everything ran fine. Try that, and see what happens. Try underclocking the fsb so it brings down the heat on the RAM and the cpu.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 5, 2005, 12:27 PM

Lowering the clock speed doesn't have a big impact on the actual temperature, lowering the voltage would.

If heat was that big a problem, Quake would cause it to manifest itself too.

Necrosis · Jul 7, 2005, 02:33 AM

Actually clock speed and voltages both have a huge impact on heat. It's about thermal dissipation, and wattage.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 8, 2005, 11:11 AM

Yeah but if you drop the clock speed and keep the same voltage, its roughly the same. I find voltage has the biggest impact, not to say that clock speed doesn't...but if you're going for low temperatures, you don't really need to lower the clock speed, just the voltage.

Thats why Athlon XP mobiles are so popular, low voltage, low heat, same clock speed.

Necrosis · Jul 8, 2005, 11:16 AM

Interesting since my processor in my sig at stock runs 28c idle. However, OC'ed /w no voltage increase idles at 32c. It really depends on the type of chip, and what core it has.

NUCLEARWINTER · Jul 8, 2005, 11:17 AM

Just Raise Ur Mem Core And Back Off On Ur Gpu Core A Little. Ur Memory Can Only Handle So Much Gpu Before It Conflicts. Also Crashing May Be That U Have Ur Fsb To Ur Cpu Too High...or Have U Changed The Timing Of Ur Ram? Sometimes If U Lower Cas Latency Too Far, Programs Will Crash

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 11, 2005, 09:39 AM

How would it conflict

Lowering CAS latencies causes blue screens more than it does outrright crashes

And Athlon 64's don't have a FSB to push too far :P

Necrosis · Jul 11, 2005, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H3X4D3C1M4L

And Athlon 64's don't have a FSB to push too far :P

What exactly do you mean by this?

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 11, 2005, 01:28 PM

An Athlon 64 does not have a front side bus. The Athlon 64 "equivalent" of a front side bus is the Hyper Transport bus.

Necrosis · Jul 11, 2005, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H3X4D3C1M4L

An Athlon 64 does not have a front side bus. The Athlon 64 "equivalent" of a front side bus is the Hyper Transport bus.

Huh being as I'm on my 2nd A64 it does.

When I overclock my processor, I don't do that by setting the Hyper Transport frequency. I do have to worry about the HT since if you go too far over 1GHz it can cause problems.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 11, 2005, 08:57 PM

Its in the design. An Athlon64 does not have a FSB no matter what the BIOS calls it. The HTT multiplier is how your CPU speed is derrived.

Its in the design. With the memory controller on chip theres no need for a FSB is there

Necrosis · Jul 11, 2005, 09:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H3X4D3C1M4L

Its in the design. An Athlon64 does not have a FSB no matter what the BIOS calls it. The HTT multiplier is how your CPU speed is derrived.

Its in the design. With the memory controller on chip theres no need for a FSB is there

Wrong.

The HT only has a multiplier of 1-5x so how could my processor speed be derived from this? The 64's have two multipliers. One for the HT and the other for the FSB.

AMD Athon 64 3700 San Diego

2200MHz

200 x 11 = 2200MHz FSB
200 x 5 = 1000MHz HT

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 12, 2005, 11:20 AM

So why the hell does the CPU speed increase if the HT speed is changed?

Perhaps I got confused between a divider.

But my main point is that....a Front Side Bus, by design, was to get data from memory to the CPU. Now that the CPU can get its own data it does not have a "front side bus" like an Intel CPU does or older Athlons.

Necrosis · Jul 12, 2005, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H3X4D3C1M4L

So why the hell does the CPU speed increase if the HT speed is changed?

Perhaps I got confused between a divider.

But my main point is that....a Front Side Bus, by design, was to get data from memory to the CPU. Now that the CPU can get its own data it does not have a "front side bus" like an Intel CPU does or older Athlons.

It's based off the memory speed 200MHz. Now do you see why? Actually the newer Athlons are more similar to P4's with their quad pumped bus. Of course it's not exactly the same thing, but you can't change the multiplier for Intel's bus.