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#1
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PC Freezes
Hi,
I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. I am running a dual boot 98SE-Win2Ksp4 system and my previous vid card was a Radeon8500LE and the system was extemely stable, but the vid card was lacking while playing Halo for PC and Doom 3. I rarely use Win98SE. Sometimes the PC screen will just freeze except that the USB mouse pointer will still move but will not execute anything. The serial keyboard also becomes non-operational,even though the Num Lock light will still be on. In around 5 sec the computer screen goes blank with it's on light (green) going to standy or no signal (yellow) color. The HDD and the fans (cpu, case, and vid card) still are powered up but the PC is not booted. Many times I have to push the reset button several times for the PC to reboot. (sometimes I even have to shut the power off to the OC, wait awhile and then it may or may not reboot on the first try. I uinstalled the Radeon drivers initially and installed the BFG and the latest Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia site. I also tried the Omegaman's drivers. I later removed the BFG card without uninstalling the Nvidia drivers and installed the Radeon8500le. No more problems booting up or rebooting and I didn't install the Radeon Drivers (course the picture was at 16bit, etc and poor). Neverless, I could shut down with a restart with no problems. I did not experience any shut down or reboot problems with the Radeon . I shut down and unplugged and removed the Radeon and installed the 6600. Again, immediate problems trying to boot up. Took several tries. So, it seems that the Nvidia drivers are not the problem, but most likely the 6600. Any ideas on how to fix this problem? Thanks, Buffalo PS: When it does actually start to boot up, I can hear the monitor click, a beep and it starts working. When the boot attempt fails, the monitor never comes out of standby and there are no beeps. |
#2
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PC Freezes
On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote:
Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger |
#3
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PC Freezes
Venger wrote: On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote: Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger Yep, the BFG6600 card does use that bridge. I will try to find if there is any work-a-round. The chip in my ECS MB is a SIS 735. Thanks, Buffalo |
#4
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PC Freezes
Buffalo wrote:
Venger wrote: On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote: Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger Yep, the BFG6600 card does use that bridge. I will try to find if there is any work-a-round. The chip in my ECS MB is a SIS 735. Thanks, Buffalo Have you tested the card in another PC yet ? Paul |
#5
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PC Freezes
Paul wrote: Buffalo wrote: Venger wrote: On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote: Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger Yep, the BFG6600 card does use that bridge. I will try to find if there is any work-a-round. The chip in my ECS MB is a SIS 735. Thanks, Buffalo Have you tested the card in another PC yet ? Paul No, don't have one handy. Wish I did. Buffalo |
#6
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PC Freezes
Buffalo wrote:
Paul wrote: Buffalo wrote: Venger wrote: On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote: Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger Yep, the BFG6600 card does use that bridge. I will try to find if there is any work-a-round. The chip in my ECS MB is a SIS 735. Thanks, Buffalo Have you tested the card in another PC yet ? Paul No, don't have one handy. Wish I did. Buffalo You know, it occurs to me, looking at your parts list, that you're almost equipped for some overclocking. Your RAM is overspec for the job (which doesn't hurt anything - PC3200 is easier to re-sell). And you're using a mobile, which could either be to save power, or could be for overclocking. (I bought my mobile, so I could experiment with it.) Are you overclocking the processor ? And if so, how are you doing it ? A mobile would allow multiplier changing (but at least half the motherboards, don't have good multiplier controls in the BIOS). With the right BIOS version, perhaps you can dial the FSB clock. The reason I ask, is video cards have changed over the years, in terms of what they'll tolerate for a clock. Back in the 440BX days, there were video cards that could go from 66MHz (nominal value) to 100MHz or more on the AGP clock. Cards needed to go that high, because the chipset/design had limited dividers in clock generation. And because the AGP multiplier wasn't that high (8X didn't exist then), the GPU interface could tolerate a lot. When the ATI 9800Pro came out, the range on that was 66MHz to 75MHz. That was a real disappointment for some people, who had grown accustomed to video cards you could crank the hell out of. It was "lights out" above 75Mhz. Around the same time, motherboards started coming out with "clock locking", where the PCI/AGP would remain at 33MHz/66MHz, no matter how you dialed the FSB. On the older boards, when you dial the FSB over a small range, the AGP clock changes in proportion. Let's start by taking the ratio of 75MHz/66MHz, which is about 14%. A 14% overclock on the FSB, might be enough to cause an AGP clock value which violates what the Nvidia HSI can handle. If you do a high enough overclock, eventually you get to a point were a new divider is used to generate the PCI/AGP clocks. But then, that causes "bands" of "bad clock values", in terms of what is safe to use and what is not safe. To get to the "next band of good values" is usually a big jump, and you might get a black screen in the attempt (and have to clear CMOS and try something else). When clock locking came out (like on my Nforce2 board), that eliminated those concerns. (Some of the early clock locking boards were a mess, because the boards were rushed out. But eventually, clock locking was a real solid feature.) I think on my Nforce2 motherboard, I could even choose my AGP value. I think 66MHz and 75MHz may have been BIOS choices (and they'd stay locked to those values, as I'd dial the FSB). But I never bothered with 75MHz, because even if my AGP setup could tolerate it, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to my games (CPU limited). I did mainly multiplier dialing on my motherboard, but it was limited by having only four multiplier bits, instead of the required five. It meant I was stuck on "low multipliers" up to 12.5x, unless I did a socket mod with a wire to get the "high multipliers". That would have taken me above 2500MHz, and based on what I observed in experiments below that value, there just wasn't any point going up there. Flake city. My machine stayed at 2200MHz for its entire life (11x). My mobile just ended up being a nice 3200+ and that's all. ******* If you're not overclocking at all, and say, running sync 100/100, then you can always try setting the AGP multipller (try 2x instead of 4x). The manual doesn't show a BIOS option for that, but googling seems to show people changing AGP in their BIOS. Back in those days, I didn't understand some of the AGP speed options. Occasionally, you'd run into systems that supported AGP 1x and AGP 4x, but no AGP 2x. And there wasn't an explanation for why. Yours may offer AGP 4x and 2x. And 2x should be good enough for an experiment. ******* Another possibility is a power supply issue, but why would it freeze so nicely, instead of crashing or BSODing or the like ? Your setup could have a fairly good 3.3V/5V loading. If your 400W supply was of recent vintage, some of those can be pretty weak on +5V. Back when I had my system, I think I was looking for 5V @ 25A for safety. Your motherboard doesn't have an ATX12V 2x2 square power connector, so processor power could be coming from a lower voltage rail. And then the question would be, why is the new video card drawing power from a lower rail. That part doesn't make sense. The 6600OC might be using +12V for example, which you've got lots of. If they were using the +5V source on the Molex, well that would be a potential disaster for a system like yours. If you can post a picture of the label on your supply, it might make it easier to comment. This one, for example, has 5V @ 20A, which for my Nforce2 system and video card, might have been on the edge of stability. Some of these newer supplies, can't even deliver half of what is shown on the label (some of the early 80%+ supplies had a problem with the 5V rail). http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-371-033-Z04?$S640W$ Towards the end of my Nforce2 era, I bought one of these as a replacement for a bad supply. Ones like this were nice, because they had decent 12V (20A), but also offered 5V @ 30A, which helps on my Nforce2. They don't make these any more, but I got two different ones like that on sale (clearance, because Enermax didn't want to hear about them any more). I call an item like this a "crossover" supply, because they can take a heavy load on a single rail, that rail being +5V on my Nforce2 board, or +12V on one of the Intel machines. So a supply like this, makes a nice spare you can slap in either kind of system. It's too bad they still don't make these. (Should have bought another while I had the chance.) http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...194-011-05.jpg Paul |
#7
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PC Freezes
Paul wrote: Buffalo wrote: Paul wrote: Buffalo wrote: Venger wrote: On 5/1/2011 10:34 AM, Buffalo wrote: Hi, I just installed a BFG6600oc AGP 256MB card in my ECS K7S5a mb. I use an Athlon XP2400 mobile chip, 1GHz of PC3200 ram, one HDD, a CRT monitor, 400watt PSU with 18a on the 12v rail, and a pci LAN card. I only have one HDD, floppy, and a DVD\Burner. Not sure about that MB, but other AMD chip MB's often didn't like video cards that used a PCI-AGP bridge chip, which I believe that 6600 likely uses. That's actually the final reason I ditched my dual Athlon board... Venger Yep, the BFG6600 card does use that bridge. I will try to find if there is any work-a-round. The chip in my ECS MB is a SIS 735. Thanks, Buffalo Have you tested the card in another PC yet ? Paul No, don't have one handy. Wish I did. Buffalo You know, it occurs to me, looking at your parts list, that you're almost equipped for some overclocking. Your RAM is overspec for the job (which doesn't hurt anything - PC3200 is easier to re-sell). And you're using a mobile, which could either be to save power, or could be for overclocking. (I bought my mobile, so I could experiment with it.) Are you overclocking the processor ? And if so, how are you doing it ? A mobile would allow multiplier changing (but at least half the motherboards, don't have good multiplier controls in the BIOS). With the right BIOS version, perhaps you can dial the FSB clock. The reason I ask, is video cards have changed over the years, in terms of what they'll tolerate for a clock. Back in the 440BX days, there were video cards that could go from 66MHz (nominal value) to 100MHz or more on the AGP clock. Cards needed to go that high, because the chipset/design had limited dividers in clock generation. And because the AGP multiplier wasn't that high (8X didn't exist then), the GPU interface could tolerate a lot. When the ATI 9800Pro came out, the range on that was 66MHz to 75MHz. That was a real disappointment for some people, who had grown accustomed to video cards you could crank the hell out of. It was "lights out" above 75Mhz. Around the same time, motherboards started coming out with "clock locking", where the PCI/AGP would remain at 33MHz/66MHz, no matter how you dialed the FSB. On the older boards, when you dial the FSB over a small range, the AGP clock changes in proportion. Let's start by taking the ratio of 75MHz/66MHz, which is about 14%. A 14% overclock on the FSB, might be enough to cause an AGP clock value which violates what the Nvidia HSI can handle. If you do a high enough overclock, eventually you get to a point were a new divider is used to generate the PCI/AGP clocks. But then, that causes "bands" of "bad clock values", in terms of what is safe to use and what is not safe. To get to the "next band of good values" is usually a big jump, and you might get a black screen in the attempt (and have to clear CMOS and try something else). When clock locking came out (like on my Nforce2 board), that eliminated those concerns. (Some of the early clock locking boards were a mess, because the boards were rushed out. But eventually, clock locking was a real solid feature.) I think on my Nforce2 motherboard, I could even choose my AGP value. I think 66MHz and 75MHz may have been BIOS choices (and they'd stay locked to those values, as I'd dial the FSB). But I never bothered with 75MHz, because even if my AGP setup could tolerate it, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to my games (CPU limited). I did mainly multiplier dialing on my motherboard, but it was limited by having only four multiplier bits, instead of the required five. It meant I was stuck on "low multipliers" up to 12.5x, unless I did a socket mod with a wire to get the "high multipliers". That would have taken me above 2500MHz, and based on what I observed in experiments below that value, there just wasn't any point going up there. Flake city. My machine stayed at 2200MHz for its entire life (11x). My mobile just ended up being a nice 3200+ and that's all. ******* If you're not overclocking at all, and say, running sync 100/100, then you can always try setting the AGP multipller (try 2x instead of 4x). The manual doesn't show a BIOS option for that, but googling seems to show people changing AGP in their BIOS. Back in those days, I didn't understand some of the AGP speed options. Occasionally, you'd run into systems that supported AGP 1x and AGP 4x, but no AGP 2x. And there wasn't an explanation for why. Yours may offer AGP 4x and 2x. And 2x should be good enough for an experiment. ******* Another possibility is a power supply issue, but why would it freeze so nicely, instead of crashing or BSODing or the like ? Your setup could have a fairly good 3.3V/5V loading. If your 400W supply was of recent vintage, some of those can be pretty weak on +5V. Back when I had my system, I think I was looking for 5V @ 25A for safety. Your motherboard doesn't have an ATX12V 2x2 square power connector, so processor power could be coming from a lower voltage rail. And then the question would be, why is the new video card drawing power from a lower rail. That part doesn't make sense. The 6600OC might be using +12V for example, which you've got lots of. If they were using the +5V source on the Molex, well that would be a potential disaster for a system like yours. If you can post a picture of the label on your supply, it might make it easier to comment. This one, for example, has 5V @ 20A, which for my Nforce2 system and video card, might have been on the edge of stability. Some of these newer supplies, can't even deliver half of what is shown on the label (some of the early 80%+ supplies had a problem with the 5V rail). http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-371-033-Z04?$S640W$ Towards the end of my Nforce2 era, I bought one of these as a replacement for a bad supply. Ones like this were nice, because they had decent 12V (20A), but also offered 5V @ 30A, which helps on my Nforce2. They don't make these any more, but I got two different ones like that on sale (clearance, because Enermax didn't want to hear about them any more). I call an item like this a "crossover" supply, because they can take a heavy load on a single rail, that rail being +5V on my Nforce2 board, or +12V on one of the Intel machines. So a supply like this, makes a nice spare you can slap in either kind of system. It's too bad they still don't make these. (Should have bought another while I had the chance.) http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggIma...194-011-05.jpg Paul Thanks for the interest and great info on your old rig, My PSU is rated at 50amps@+5v, 18amps@+12v, and . It is a cheap PSU and it may not live up to it's rating. I do OC my mobile cpu and the highest FSB that will work is 148 (actually it ends up being 146.7MHz) and that puts the memory at the same bus speed and raises the PCI bus from 33MHz to 36.7MHz. I believe that also raises the AGP bus speed to 73.4MHz. I did try to go down to stock 133MHz FSB speed (133/33/133), but the problem still existed. My cpu temp normally runs less than 120F and usually below 110F (around 43C) and idles around 104F. I believe the cpu voltage is 1.58v and it presently runs at 2053.13MHz. I My ECS K7S5a ver 3.1 mb does not have any jumpers to OC with and requires modding the board to increase the cpu voltage, etc. I use the HoneyX OC Bios ( 021209 OC BIOS) which gives me more FSB selections, but my PC will not boot at anything over the 147MHz selection. I also don't believe that there is a BIOS for my mb that will do any multiplier changing. That would make it easy and I know my cpu would accept it. I have tried the SpeedFan utility to increase it to 150/30/150 and also 150/30/100 but get an instant freeze and a hard shutdown is required. Same result when I tried to go higher. I also tried the 166/33/166 setting, just in case, but it also froze instantly. I tried these setting after I lowered my ram timing to Safe. I usually use the Ultra setting. The BFG6660oc AGP 256MB vid card has a 12v 4-wire molex receptacle on it and I tried two different 4-wire connectors from my PSU on it. I am presently running AGP 4x. Not sure if I can try 2x or not. WTH, I will give it a try. Strange, three times this am, shortly after first boot the screen froze. The first time I was just checking Goggle News and the screen went blank, monitor into Standby and then it came back on after around 10 sec. The second time I was reading a .pdf that I had just opened (I was also on the Internet) and the PC stopped responding (black screen) and never came back. Then I was listening to a video clip on the news and the screen went black but I could still hear the audio so I quickly hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and the Task Manager came up on the Desktop with my normal background. I then cancelled it and the clip continued on normally. Almost sounds like the vid card has a problem with something on the Internet (refresh?) or maybe it is a bad solder joint. It seems like the problems are more prevalent during the first 10 min or so before the card is totally warmed up. I am using a CRT montior and this card has both a VGA and a DVI connector on it. I tried a DVI (male) to VGA (female) adapter on it and the monitor (VGA) will not come on even though the PC boots up into Windows. I also tried that adapter on a XFX 7600GT AGP 256MB card (has two DVI connectors and S-Vid, but no VGA connectors) and the PC boots up, but no video. This would 'seem' to indicate that my PSU is supplying enough power since the 7600 draws more 12v power than the 6600. Do you know if any DVI to VGA adapter will work or are their different kinds? Any idea on how to check the pins? Perhaps I should just buy a new LCD monitor now because I will have to upgrade my PC and OS in the near future. The new monitor will have an DVI connector and cable. Thanks again, Buffalo PS: Perhaps I should try the 'oven-baking' trick to see if it helps. |
#8
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PC Freezes
Buffalo wrote:
Thanks for the interest and great info on your old rig, My PSU is rated at 50amps@+5v, 18amps@+12v, and . It is a cheap PSU and it may not live up to it's rating. I do OC my mobile cpu and the highest FSB that will work is 148 (actually it ends up being 146.7MHz) and that puts the memory at the same bus speed and raises the PCI bus from 33MHz to 36.7MHz. I believe that also raises the AGP bus speed to 73.4MHz. I did try to go down to stock 133MHz FSB speed (133/33/133), but the problem still existed. My cpu temp normally runs less than 120F and usually below 110F (around 43C) and idles around 104F. I believe the cpu voltage is 1.58v and it presently runs at 2053.13MHz. I My ECS K7S5a ver 3.1 mb does not have any jumpers to OC with and requires modding the board to increase the cpu voltage, etc. I use the HoneyX OC Bios ( 021209 OC BIOS) which gives me more FSB selections, but my PC will not boot at anything over the 147MHz selection. I also don't believe that there is a BIOS for my mb that will do any multiplier changing. That would make it easy and I know my cpu would accept it. I have tried the SpeedFan utility to increase it to 150/30/150 and also 150/30/100 but get an instant freeze and a hard shutdown is required. Same result when I tried to go higher. I also tried the 166/33/166 setting, just in case, but it also froze instantly. I tried these setting after I lowered my ram timing to Safe. I usually use the Ultra setting. The BFG6660oc AGP 256MB vid card has a 12v 4-wire molex receptacle on it and I tried two different 4-wire connectors from my PSU on it. I am presently running AGP 4x. Not sure if I can try 2x or not. WTH, I will give it a try. Strange, three times this am, shortly after first boot the screen froze. The first time I was just checking Goggle News and the screen went blank, monitor into Standby and then it came back on after around 10 sec. The second time I was reading a .pdf that I had just opened (I was also on the Internet) and the PC stopped responding (black screen) and never came back. Then I was listening to a video clip on the news and the screen went black but I could still hear the audio so I quickly hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and the Task Manager came up on the Desktop with my normal background. I then cancelled it and the clip continued on normally. Almost sounds like the vid card has a problem with something on the Internet (refresh?) or maybe it is a bad solder joint. It seems like the problems are more prevalent during the first 10 min or so before the card is totally warmed up. I am using a CRT montior and this card has both a VGA and a DVI connector on it. I tried a DVI (male) to VGA (female) adapter on it and the monitor (VGA) will not come on even though the PC boots up into Windows. I also tried that adapter on a XFX 7600GT AGP 256MB card (has two DVI connectors and S-Vid, but no VGA connectors) and the PC boots up, but no video. This would 'seem' to indicate that my PSU is supplying enough power since the 7600 draws more 12v power than the 6600. Do you know if any DVI to VGA adapter will work or are their different kinds? Any idea on how to check the pins? Perhaps I should just buy a new LCD monitor now because I will have to upgrade my PC and OS in the near future. The new monitor will have an DVI connector and cable. Thanks again, Buffalo PS: Perhaps I should try the 'oven-baking' trick to see if it helps. You've at least answered one question. You've got a good handle on operating the hardware, and know more about it than I do. I tried searching for evidence the SIS735 has trouble with AGP 4X, and that was inconclusive. I ran into one thread, where the poster used some Windows utility to switch from AGP 4X to 2x. And that seemed to help. Of the two factors, switching from AGP 4X to 2X, compensates for chip technology that wasn't really suited for the task (I had a motherboard once like that, and it's the only motherboard I couldn't tame - crash and burn constantly after three weeks of experiments). The clock thing, on the other hand, could be related to PLL and clock tree on the GPU. I don't know the significance of it going between 66 and 75MHz, or why my Nforce2 board chose to actually offer 75MHz. If you dropped the system to stock, and it was no better, then your clock would have been 66MHz. But you still have room to change AGP from 4X to 2X. Older systems had pesky "drive strength adjustments" for AGP, but I don't know if that is in the BIOS either. One system I had here, had something like a total of 256 values to test, and no way was I trying that :-) On some of those older, half baked designs, playing with drive strength was part of the "fun". Thank goodness they couldn't afford wider registers for the controls :-) None of your symptoms match an "Easy Bake" type GPU cure. I don't think your card needs to be baked. DVI-I to VGA adapters are passive. It's just wires stretching from one connector type to the other, and moving RGBHV signals from the cross shaped area of the DVI-I, to the regular 15 pin VGA pattern. The only problem I've had with that, is ill-fitting connectors on cheap video cards (tend to jam and mess up the connector they're mating to). If your adapter fits smoothly and doesn't need to be forced on, it's probably OK. I don't think it's a video standards issue (DVI versus VGA), because you do get to use it for a while. The only other thing I'd probably try, is running a Linux LiveCD. Or actually installing Linux on something (hard drive, because your machine might not boot off a USB flash stick). I'd probably install the tainted Nvidia driver, and see how long the system stayed up (there are three driver versions, as Nvidia divides the pool of cards into groups). Apparently Linux has the ability to specify the AGP 2X speed thing, in some config file in the OS. I've never tried that, because it's been some time since I've had trouble with video (current system is PCI Express and no issues to report). Paul |
#9
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PC Freezes
Paul wrote: Buffalo wrote: Thanks for the interest and great info on your old rig, My PSU is rated at 50amps@+5v, 18amps@+12v, and . It is a cheap PSU and it may not live up to it's rating. I do OC my mobile cpu and the highest FSB that will work is 148 (actually it ends up being 146.7MHz) and that puts the memory at the same bus speed and raises the PCI bus from 33MHz to 36.7MHz. I believe that also raises the AGP bus speed to 73.4MHz. I did try to go down to stock 133MHz FSB speed (133/33/133), but the problem still existed. My cpu temp normally runs less than 120F and usually below 110F (around 43C) and idles around 104F. I believe the cpu voltage is 1.58v and it presently runs at 2053.13MHz. I My ECS K7S5a ver 3.1 mb does not have any jumpers to OC with and requires modding the board to increase the cpu voltage, etc. I use the HoneyX OC Bios ( 021209 OC BIOS) which gives me more FSB selections, but my PC will not boot at anything over the 147MHz selection. I also don't believe that there is a BIOS for my mb that will do any multiplier changing. That would make it easy and I know my cpu would accept it. I have tried the SpeedFan utility to increase it to 150/30/150 and also 150/30/100 but get an instant freeze and a hard shutdown is required. Same result when I tried to go higher. I also tried the 166/33/166 setting, just in case, but it also froze instantly. I tried these setting after I lowered my ram timing to Safe. I usually use the Ultra setting. The BFG6660oc AGP 256MB vid card has a 12v 4-wire molex receptacle on it and I tried two different 4-wire connectors from my PSU on it. I am presently running AGP 4x. Not sure if I can try 2x or not. WTH, I will give it a try. Strange, three times this am, shortly after first boot the screen froze. The first time I was just checking Goggle News and the screen went blank, monitor into Standby and then it came back on after around 10 sec. The second time I was reading a .pdf that I had just opened (I was also on the Internet) and the PC stopped responding (black screen) and never came back. Then I was listening to a video clip on the news and the screen went black but I could still hear the audio so I quickly hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and the Task Manager came up on the Desktop with my normal background. I then cancelled it and the clip continued on normally. Almost sounds like the vid card has a problem with something on the Internet (refresh?) or maybe it is a bad solder joint. It seems like the problems are more prevalent during the first 10 min or so before the card is totally warmed up. I am using a CRT montior and this card has both a VGA and a DVI connector on it. I tried a DVI (male) to VGA (female) adapter on it and the monitor (VGA) will not come on even though the PC boots up into Windows. I also tried that adapter on a XFX 7600GT AGP 256MB card (has two DVI connectors and S-Vid, but no VGA connectors) and the PC boots up, but no video. This would 'seem' to indicate that my PSU is supplying enough power since the 7600 draws more 12v power than the 6600. Do you know if any DVI to VGA adapter will work or are their different kinds? Any idea on how to check the pins? Perhaps I should just buy a new LCD monitor now because I will have to upgrade my PC and OS in the near future. The new monitor will have an DVI connector and cable. Thanks again, Buffalo PS: Perhaps I should try the 'oven-baking' trick to see if it helps. You've at least answered one question. You've got a good handle on operating the hardware, and know more about it than I do. I tried searching for evidence the SIS735 has trouble with AGP 4X, and that was inconclusive. I ran into one thread, where the poster used some Windows utility to switch from AGP 4X to 2x. And that seemed to help. Of the two factors, switching from AGP 4X to 2X, compensates for chip technology that wasn't really suited for the task (I had a motherboard once like that, and it's the only motherboard I couldn't tame - crash and burn constantly after three weeks of experiments). The clock thing, on the other hand, could be related to PLL and clock tree on the GPU. I don't know the significance of it going between 66 and 75MHz, or why my Nforce2 board chose to actually offer 75MHz. If you dropped the system to stock, and it was no better, then your clock would have been 66MHz. But you still have room to change AGP from 4X to 2X. Older systems had pesky "drive strength adjustments" for AGP, but I don't know if that is in the BIOS either. One system I had here, had something like a total of 256 values to test, and no way was I trying that :-) On some of those older, half baked designs, playing with drive strength was part of the "fun". Thank goodness they couldn't afford wider registers for the controls :-) None of your symptoms match an "Easy Bake" type GPU cure. I don't think your card needs to be baked. DVI-I to VGA adapters are passive. It's just wires stretching from one connector type to the other, and moving RGBHV signals from the cross shaped area of the DVI-I, to the regular 15 pin VGA pattern. The only problem I've had with that, is ill-fitting connectors on cheap video cards (tend to jam and mess up the connector they're mating to). If your adapter fits smoothly and doesn't need to be forced on, it's probably OK. I don't think it's a video standards issue (DVI versus VGA), because you do get to use it for a while. The only other thing I'd probably try, is running a Linux LiveCD. Or actually installing Linux on something (hard drive, because your machine might not boot off a USB flash stick). I'd probably install the tainted Nvidia driver, and see how long the system stayed up (there are three driver versions, as Nvidia divides the pool of cards into groups). Apparently Linux has the ability to specify the AGP 2X speed thing, in some config file in the OS. I've never tried that, because it's been some time since I've had trouble with video (current system is PCI Express and no issues to report). Paul Thanks for the info and response. Buffalo PS: I think I will put my old Radeon 8500LE vid card back in and try that DVI-i\VGA adapter on it to see if my monitor will work. If it works with that card, then I will know that the adapter is good. If it doesn't, then I could only assume that the adapter is bad.. Interesting. |
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PC Freezes
Buffalo wrote: PS: I think I will put my old Radeon 8500LE vid card back in and try that DVI-i\VGA adapter on it to see if my monitor will work. If it works with that card, then I will know that the adapter is good. If it doesn't, then I could only assume that the adapter is bad.. Interesting. I put my old Radeon 8500LE in and I tried the DVI-i/VGA adapter in it and once again, the PC booted into Windows but the screen remained as blank is it does before you turn the power on. I shut down (ctrl-alt-del) and then changed my monitor cable to the VGA port on the Radeon and rebooted again. Monitor worked as it should. Will look into another DVI-i/VGA connector. Buffalo PS: Reinstalled my BFG6600 card and it worked like before. |
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