Video Card Memory Problem ??? Maybe ???

R

RideTheSpiral462

Geek Trainee
I bought a bunch of new parts for my machine 3 months ago...

A gigabyte SLI motherboard
A single stick gig of DDR (corsair 400)
A 500-watt power supply
An AMD 3700 San Diego
And a GeForce4 6800GT 256mb

3 months ago I was having strange problems with the computer spontaneously freezing with no error messages…I realized that this we happening during times of video intensive use (flash, use of the DVD player, trying to start WOW).

After running a diagnostic all was checking out (RAM, CPU math, Hard disk) but 2d and 3d memory tests both crash my machine almost instantly (the same type of error message-less freeze as before)

So I RMA-ed my video card cursing ASUS all the way to FedEx and back and now yesterday I got my new card in the mail, set it all up freshly installed windows and now I have the exact same problem.

I refuse to believe that Asus is that crappy and that they would send me a second video card with corrupted memory, so I have to be missing something, there must be something I’m doing wrong….anyone have an ideas? Some settings to check? And by the way, Yes SLI mode is turned off.

Thanks,
Chris

Ps. First person that can help me fix it gets a cookie!
 
What make and model of power supply do you have? 500W is pretty ambiguous...kinda like saying I have a car and it's acting weird.
 
Big B said:
What make and model of power supply do you have? 500W is pretty ambiguous...kinda like saying I have a car and it's acting weird.
Click to expand...


I bought it 2 months ago to replace the 420Watt cheapo that I had in there (I originally thought the card was not getting enough power)

The fact is I can't remember the brand name off-hand and I'm at work but it was the brand that antec makes for bestbuy, and it wasn't cheap (I bought it out of frustration at having to wait for more parts to ship)

So I've tried 2 different powersupplys on this machine as well, which I think rules that out.

-Chris
 
Try [google]Memtest[/google]. Let that run overnight to give the RAM a good work out and see if you get any errors. If you do, it may not be bad RAM--it could be a setting needs to be adjusted.

Also, make sure any and all power connectors on your motherboard and video card are connected.
 
Big B said:
Try [google]Memtest[/google]. Let that run overnight to give the RAM a good work out and see if you get any errors. If you do, it may not be bad RAM--it could be a setting needs to be adjusted.

Also, make sure any and all power connectors on your motherboard and video card are connected.
Click to expand...

Yeah everything is connected, the powersupply has a cable built right in for the video cards auxillary power and thats on there snug (the LED's on the card light up and the fan whirs away, and according to my Nvidia drivers the video card temp is good)

I've run mem test before on the ram long enough to test through all sectors at least once (not overnight).

and on the program my friend showed me that allowed me to do all those diagnostics it also passed the RAM diagnostic without a hitch, so I'm pretty sure its not the RAM...again the machine crashes during video test/the use of anything that requires video processing (I installed a slew of drivers and essential programs without a problem untill I did something video intensive (and this is accross multiple installs, one time I even imported my intire 60 gig I-tunes library without it crashing) So I'm thinking along the lines of the video card or the motherboard, and I highly doubt its the RAM.

I would test the video card in another machine but non of my friends have a PCI express MoBo (well one does but he wont disconnect his water cooling hoses to let me test my card...he sucks :P)
 
Well after 2 days I've finally figured it out....

Big B your initial hunch was right....after trying to flash my BIOS with a flash drive I realized that my flash stick was not recieving power, and then tried another flash stick which was also not recieving power, then I tried them in my laptop and niether where recieving power....and thats cause my damn powersupply blew them both up.

I installed a crappy spare powersupply from my neighbor and the machine is running and passing video tests, so tonight bestbuy is going to get a piece of my mind and then better give me my money back and they better pay for those flash drives else I might make a scene :P

BTW the powersupply is DYNEX and I don't recommend you give them any patronage.

So long story short Big B I owe you a cookie.
 
I've seen Dynex, and since I know nothing about them, I wouldn't put it in my personal rig, let alone recommend them.

You can snag an Enermax EG565P-VE 535W (what I use in my main box) or Antec TruePower TPII-550 at Newegg for under $90. The wattage isn't what matters (see the link about it in my sig for an in-depth explaination), but the amperage. You can also snag a Fortron/FSP Group AX450-PN for just under $50 last time I looked. The amperages are very good on it, but then again Fortron (along with Enermax and Antec) make solid power supplies.

While I've got nothing against BB, if you want a better power supply selection at non-assrape prices, go online. I've spent around $1k at Newegg myself, and I wouldn't spend that kinda money with any company I thought was worthless.

As far as Memtest goes, for future reference, running it for one entire run may not hammer the RAM enough to turn up errors, but if it does, something really ain't right (and that's another issue). Letting it run overnight will hammer it enough to give a pretty clear picture of if it's a problem or not.
 
Sometimes I do stupid things in the interest of time...

I ordered all my parts online and a ordered a cheap case and PSU just to get the machine running (I didn't feel like waiting 2 weeks to get paycheck when I was planning on spending alot of money on a sick case later)....anyway the machine was acting like crap and I orginally thought it was the PSU so I went to bestbuy (I had a gift cert) and dropped over 100 bucks on that dynex just to get the machine running...in retrospect becase of that decision it took an extra 1 and a half months to get the machine running but when I bought it getting my PC running that night was more important to me than saving money.
 
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