PNY 5900 Ultra Issues

LowLevelOwl · Oct 30, 2003, 08:06 AM

I just got this card last night and I threw it in immediately. I have a Ti 4200 in there previously so I saw no need to remove drivers. Booted up...then Windows asked for a reboot and we were in business. I played around a bit in Windows surfing the web finding some information about tweaking my setup without o/c'ing. I found a few things but before I tried them I thought I would run AquaMark...and there is where my problems began.

I have not been able to run anything intensive on this card. From games to 3dMark2001, the computer will randomly freeze up and force me to hard boot to get the computer back up.

At first I thought it may have been the PSU so I changed it from an Enermax 350 to an Austin 400. When I rebooted I was able to run 3dMark2001 once completely but got a score of 11,000, so I rechecked my settings and tried again but was unable to complete another run. I tried this about 20 times with various drivers dating back from 44.03 to the 52.16's. Out of those 20 times, I was only able to completely run 3dMark2001 once more, the first time using the 44.03's and the second time using the 45.23's.

I had heard that my board had troubles running at AGP 8X so I tried to lower it to 4x but was unable to as when I applied the changes it would revert back to 8x. In the BIOS, the AGP option is locked at 8x.

I removed all my cards and unplugged all my peripherals so all I have plugged in to the PSU is the card and the hard drive.

Before I go out and shell out $100 for a new PSU. Does anyone have any pointers or suggestions?

ASUS A7V8X w/BIOS 1014.001 (Updated from 1013 thinking it would make a difference and it did not)
Athlon XP 2500+
512MB Corsair DDR333
PNY GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

That is all that's connected at the moment.

toddsmack2k · Oct 30, 2003, 09:36 AM

Have you done a clean driver install using driver cleaner? How about reinstalling DX9b or your Mobo drivers? When was the last time you did a fresh OS install. It does sound like your PSU but I would try these other things first before I would go out and buy another one.

LowLevelOwl · Oct 30, 2003, 10:13 AM

Yeah I did use driver cleaner and reinstalled the mobo drivers, that didn't help much. I have yet to reinstall DX9b, I'll try that and if that doesn't work then I'll do a clean OS install. We shall see what happens. And I just realized I created this in the wrong forum. Can someone kindly move this to the Graphics Card forum? Thanks!

toddsmack2k · Oct 30, 2003, 10:15 AM

Moved : ) !

tek · Oct 30, 2003, 10:24 AM

Yeah try doing a clean install before you dish out any more money, cause most likely its not any of your hardware. It's the old TI4200 drivers that are screwing with you.

I suggest a ZERO-WRITE format, so it completely erases the whole harddrive, instead of a regular format.

-tek

LowLevelOwl · Oct 30, 2003, 10:59 AM

How do I perform a ZERO-WRITE format?

LowLevelOwl · Oct 30, 2003, 06:18 PM

Well, I purchased a new PSU. An Antec TruePower 440W PSU and I was able to run 3dMark2001 and AquaMark03 back to back.

I got about 11,000 with 3dMark2001 which disappoints me but I got 34,389 with AquaMark03.

Is the AquaMark03 score any good?

LowLevelOwl · Oct 30, 2003, 06:31 PM

Seems like I spoke too soon. P.C. froze up a few seconds into MoHAA

hohum · Oct 30, 2003, 07:06 PM

Have you tried enabling the 'assign irq to vga' option in the bios? I don't have this option myself, but if you do have it it's worth a try. Assigns a interrupt request specifically for your video card - you may already know this, it's just a suggestion.