Extreme amounts of trouble with new 3d card

[bluesman]

[Product Information]
*Product Type : Graphic Card
*Product Model : N6600 Series
*Product S/N : 5acm241480
*Date of Purchase : 2005/12/23

[Motherboard Specification]
*Motherboard Vendor : Aopen
*Motherboard Revision : AX 4 BS PRO
*Motherboard BIOS Revision : R1.09

[CPU Specification]
*CPU Vendor : Intel
*CPU Type : Socket 478
*CPU Speed : 1700 Mhz

[Memory Specification]
*Memory Vendor : Kingston
*Memory Model : Sdram
*Memory Capacity : 2x 256

[HDD Specification]
HDD Vendor : Maxtor
HDD Capacity : 40GB

*Operating System : WinXP SP2

[Problem Description]

HI,


I bought a new 3D card for my 5 year old system. It origionally had a Geforce 3Ti200, and now there's a Asus Geforce 6600LE. I also replaced the power supply from 300 to a 400w one (a good quality one too). I checked voltages and everything gets enough (stable) power. Now here's the problem. It all works fine in Windows. But when i start a game or any app that requires 3D acceleration, the computer completely freezes (as in the caps lock light on the keyboard freezes). The strange thing is that it worked fine for a while. I played Need For Speed most wanted, a heavy DX9 game, for over a month. It never ran 100% stable in the first place and these crashes where kinda random. It only happened once in 3 days so i could cope with it. But now it's random when something acually works.

Even when i start light things like the Volvo Ocean Race virtual spectator it locks up. I tried installing beta and older drivers but anything else then what i currently have (forceware 81.98) makes a BSOD (without useful info about files) after rebooting right when the Windows accounts are suppost to show up.

I updated the bios of my motherboard (Aopen ax4 bs pro), but it didn't help. I also did a completely fresh install of WinXP, also didn't help. I'm getting desperate here.

The card works fine in the system of a friend of mine, who has a relatively new system. A Dell with a P4 HT processor. We stress tested it with games like doom 3 and the latest splinter cell.

What can this problem be? They don't want to give me a diffrent card at the store so help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bill]

[Product Information]
*Product Type : Graphic Card
*Product Model : N6600 Series
*Product S/N : 5acm241480
*Date of Purchase : 2005/12/23

[Motherboard Specification]
*Motherboard Vendor : Aopen
*Motherboard Revision : AX 4 BS PRO
*Motherboard BIOS Revision : R1.09

[CPU Specification]
*CPU Vendor : Intel
*CPU Type : Socket 478
*CPU Speed : 1700 Mhz

[Memory Specification]
*Memory Vendor : Kingston
*Memory Model : Sdram
*Memory Capacity : 2x 256

[HDD Specification]
HDD Vendor : Maxtor
HDD Capacity : 40GB

*Operating System : WinXP SP2

[Problem Description]

HI,


I bought a new 3D card for my 5 year old system. It origionally had a Geforce 3Ti200, and now there's a Asus Geforce 6600LE. I also replaced the power supply from 300 to a 400w one (a good quality one too). I checked voltages and everything gets enough (stable) power. Now here's the problem. It all works fine in Windows. But when i start a game or any app that requires 3D acceleration, the computer completely freezes (as in the caps lock light on the keyboard freezes). The strange thing is that it worked fine for a while. I played Need For Speed most wanted, a heavy DX9 game, for over a month. It never ran 100% stable in the first place and these crashes where kinda random. It only happened once in 3 days so i could cope with it. But now it's random when something acually works.

Even when i start light things like the Volvo Ocean Race virtual spectator it locks up. I tried installing beta and older drivers but anything else then what i currently have (forceware 81.98) makes a BSOD (without useful info about files) after rebooting right when the Windows accounts are suppost to show up.

I updated the bios of my motherboard (Aopen ax4 bs pro), but it didn't help. I also did a completely fresh install of WinXP, also didn't help. I'm getting desperate here.

The card works fine in the system of a friend of mine, who has a relatively new system. A Dell with a P4 HT processor. We stress tested it with games like doom 3 and the latest splinter cell.

What can this problem be? They don't want to give me a diffrent card at the store so help would be greatly appreciated.

Does it happens as soon as you turn it on (while still cool) or only after it has been running for awhile and warmed up?

This can be caused by many things, but heat, leaky capacitors, and/or bad/failing RAM pop to the top of my list.

1. Heat - since you say this only happens when you go 3-D - or in otherwords, when you really tax the system, heat could be an issue. Pop the side off the case and make sure the system is clean of dust, dirt, and critters. Make sure all fans spin freely. Route cables so that front to back air flow is not restricted (consider replacing flat ribbon cables with round cables). Get a desk fan and blast it in there while playing - not conclusive but if it remains stable with the fan, good chance it is heat related.

2. Do a visual check of the capacitors surrounding the CPU. These small soda-can looking devices are prone to leaking. Look for a dried foam looking substance on the tops. Also look for caps that appear to be bulging as those will likly be leaking soon. They can be replaced, but with a 5 year old motherboard, I would go for a new board.

3. To test your RAM, download and install on to a formatted floppy MemTest86. Then, with the floppy in the drive, reboot the computer. The computer should boot to the floppy and start testing your RAM. Let it run for several passes or even overnight. You should have no reported errors.

 

[Bill]

Added thought - By far, your video card is much more powerful than your CPU - the CPU's limitations, along with only 512Mb of PC133 SDRAM may just be creating a bottleneck and causing the system to choke - that does not explain why it used to work, however - but something to think about.

Also - how much free disk space do you have? With only 512Mb of RAM, I suspect the Page File on the slow hard drives is getting used pretty good. If you are running low on free space, the Page File may be giving you problem.

You might look in the Events Viewer to see if there are any errors.

 

[bluesman]

Added thought - By far, your video card is much more powerful than your CPU - the CPU's limitations, along with only 512Mb of PC133 SDRAM may just be creating a bottleneck and causing the system to choke - that does not explain why it used to work, however - but something to think about.

Also - how much free disk space do you have? With only 512Mb of RAM, I suspect the Page File on the slow hard drives is getting used pretty good. If you are running low on free space, the Page File may be giving you problem.

You might look in the Events Viewer to see if there are any errors.

It's the 6600LE one, not the GT. I guess it's still a lot faster then the rest of my system though. Funny thing is, my mainboard also only supports AGP X4, which shouldn't be a problem because AGP is suppost to be backwards compatible.

I have 12gb free on my windows disk that also contains the games. The HD's are 7200rpm and have caching enabled. I'm not sure how big their cache is though.

Does it happens as soon as you turn it on (while still cool) or only after it has been running for awhile and warmed up?

It happens when i turn it on. When it works, it all works OK. Today i was lucky. Been playing HL2 for hours.

This can be caused by many things, but heat, leaky capacitors, and/or bad/failing RAM pop to the top of my list.

1. Heat - since you say this only happens when you go 3-D - or in otherwords, when you really tax the system, heat could be an issue. Pop the side off the case and make sure the system is clean of dust, dirt, and critters. Make sure all fans spin freely. Route cables so that front to back air flow is not restricted (consider replacing flat ribbon cables with round cables). Get a desk fan and blast it in there while playing - not conclusive but if it remains stable with the fan, good chance it is heat related.

It's clean of dust but it's filled with bigass cables. The fans all spin freely. I have a monitor program that shows the temps in the system. The case is constantly around 35C, and climbs to around 38C when playing games, and the CPU constantly at 40-42C.

2. Do a visual check of the capacitors surrounding the CPU. These small soda-can looking devices are prone to leaking. Look for a dried foam looking substance on the tops. Also look for caps that appear to be bulging as those will likly be leaking soon. They can be replaced, but with a 5 year old motherboard, I would go for a new board.

Yea, i've checked that too. Some of them are bulgy-looking and some have some (hardly anything though) nasty looking brown stuff on top of them. When these things really start to leak, what problems can i expect?

3. To test your RAM, download and install on to a formatted floppy MemTest86. Then, with the floppy in the drive, reboot the computer. The computer should boot to the floppy and start testing your RAM. Let it run for several passes or even overnight. You should have no reported errors.

I did this for half an hour without errors. Besides, can this also be the case even if all the trouble started after a 3D card upgrade?


..

Just a question though. This P4 is the 845 chipset, with the SDram. I didn't knew much about computers when i bought this 5 years ago. But the processor and the Ram are definately bottlenecks to the 3D card, right?

I've been thinking about a new board. But i bought this new 3D card to hold out with this system just one more year. When Vista comes out, i will get a new badass system. I just don't feel like spending any more money then i already did, because i won't see anything of it back when i'm gonna sell it to some sucker.

Updating my mainboard, processor and RAM will cost me around 400 bucks i think. The thing is, i'm a guy who rarely buys a new computer, but when i do, i want a totally badass one. And a Geforce 6600LE isn't exactly badass. I think i will save money till the end of the year and buy something awesome then. But that aside.

 

[Bill]

Yea, i've checked that too. Some of them are bulgy-looking and some have some (hardly anything though) nasty looking brown stuff on top of them. When these things really start to leak, what problems can i expect?

More of what you currently are experiencing. Leaky caps are bad and most likely a part of your problem - they will only get worse. The problem is not that you have stuff leaking - although it is corrosive - the problem is that when caps begin to leak (or bulge) the electrical characteristics of the component changes and the circuit becomes unstable or causes instability elsewhere.

Start budgeting for your new system now.