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3d blows my PC up

E

Echoes

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
94
Location
Italy
I was given an Athlon XP 2400+ computer, made by HP but basically it was only the motherboard, the cpu and a nvidia geforce2.

I added an 80Gb hd and my Radeon 9800 (working last time I used it in a PC), installed windows xp pro and tested some games.

The result is... I can't play 3D games. Every time I do it I get a BSOD. This happens only on 3D games, and it seems that the newer the game, the less I can play. For example, I managed to play No One Lives Forever 2 for 1 or 2 hours before the BSOD, but with "more hungry" games it can happen faster.

I updated the drivers, the directx, then I made a backup image of the disk and reinstalled XP and the original ATI cdrom. Since it didn't work (SP3 issues) I downloaded the oldest version of the drivers still working, and tried with that.
No luck, it seemed that the Graphic Card was not recognized, so I restored the XP version I had.

Another strange thing is that I can't simply restart the computer in windows. I need to turn it off and on again. If I don't do it this way, windows will close, the pc will reset BUT no graphic will appear, no bios logo or mem check, no hd loading sound.
I don't remember if I flashed the bios but I think I probably did that for the sake of testing every possible cause.

So, what should I do? Simply throw away the motherboard?
 
ATI has been the worst graphics card I have ever used. Always there have been issues and ended up getting rid of the card. It's always been drivers and maybe it's my inexperience, since they never seem to work for me.

I would say get another nVidia, those have been the best so far for new machines I have ever used.
 
Sounds like the card is overheating. Check the heatsink and fan. If you still can't get it to work, you may have to try underclocking the GPU, I wouldn't recommend that unless you just can't get your hands on another card.
 
Definitely sounds like an overheating or bad video card. I had/have this problem on one of my new gaming cards that I never saw until I played a game for 3+ hours then lost video but since we were doing a network game I could see that my commands were still going through (watching my character on a friends computer).

It eventually could damage your card if the fan isn't working and overheats the GPU. We kinda did the quickest work around for the night and just opened up the case and put a regular fan blowing on it lol. That prevented the problems. I don't game much so I haven't taken care of it yet but I assume there's probably some cooling system I could apply to the case/system that would help.

The overheating is because the video card cuts out and stays out even after reboot. If it was just a bsod and soft reboot fixes it then I'd suspect a corrupt directx installation or bad driver.

- John
 
it's not a soft reboot, the screen just hangs on the bsod (which has no writing).
I guess I should try cooling down the card and/or adding a bigger psu, smashing the card with an hammer ;)

Thanks for the help!
 
Sounds like a bad card... which is weird.

I've been exclusive to ATI since my Radeon 7000 (which is still in my P233 gaming system).

I've NEVER had luck with junky NVIDIA cards.
 
I had this with a card I bought off FeePay, it would work fine with standard 2D but fell over and ground the system to a halt when attempting to run 3D apps. A few of the lower spec demos would sort of run before either a BSOD or system lock-up.

Could be the PSU not up to the job or it could be that the board can't cope with it .. or the GPU could be toast unfortunately.


BG
 
The first thing that comes in my mind when anybody has a problem with an Athlon XP system, is bad capacitors on the motherboard. Have you inspected the board carefully?

Your symptoms don't sound entirely typical to that problem, but it could be related to CPU load rather than graphics card issues. It'd also explain the troubles you have with restarts.
 
Actually I didn't change the psu or look at the mobo, but I'll do both.

I'll also upgrade the CPU from Athlon XP 2400+ to 2600+, since I found my old broken motherboard (PCI diagnostic card says code F1, which in the manual is either "The AMIBOOT.ROM file is not in the root directory" or "Initialize Run Time Clock". Sounds familiar to anyone? :confused: I'll check the capacitors...).
 
as for diagnostics... being what i do for a living... here is my advice.
download, burn and use this. Technicians best friend:

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/
run memtest, let it run for an hour. no red lines means your good. even 1 is bad.
run a hard drive scan, i recomend seatools, that utility doesnt care what brand hdd you are using.

imo rebooting and bluescreening are fun little puzzles, being a hardware guy I like to find the faulty part... the problem has to be hardware or software. You must rule out hardware before blaming software (which is usually the cause!)

Overheating.. check all fans, they spinning fast? clogged with dust? Same with the heat sinks.. you should be able to see shiney metal =) how about the thermal compound under the cpu heatsink? check it, is it still sticky or has it dried out and baked in to a useless hard sludge? wipe clean and replace if needed (not too much, a dab will do you, too much and will not work right)

You say that it only happens when you are playing 3d games, well, all that means to me is th emachine is under heavy stress and could just be getting warmed up. But then again.. could be the video card, check the fan and heatsink on the video card, make sure its up to snuff.

Check for bulging or popped capictors (on video card and motherboard too)

whats your power supply rated at? I would imaging a "good" 350watt by sparkle, fsp etc... would suffice that rig just fine. More the merrier! Dont buy allied, they are garbage (but cheap)

drivers, got fresh drivers and windows updates? any patches for games you are playing?

is this a brand new fresh install of your os? if after all the testing and checking out you fail to find some thing bad... look at reinstalling the os from scratch.

If problem STILL persists then I would look at motherboard and or graphics card, neither of which is an easy determination, AFAIK there is no test to check video memory only. there are utility to stress the card out... oh duh... put the card in another machine and see if the problem follows the card... try another card in your machine... you get the point.

I do this crap all day long every day... god help me! =) good luck!
 
If I may make a small request for info...

I believe your video card is AGP 8x...is the motherboard?
Don't even try an 8x card in a 4x (or worse 2x) slot...and a lot of S462 boards had 2x or 4x.

Backwards compatibility is part of the standard, but I've seen way too many cases where it wasn't included. Some ATI AGP cards actually say on the box to not use them in a 2x slot...they still lie and say an 8x card will work in a 4x slot but I've never seen it work. Your symptoms are screaming incompatibility (or maybe even a poorly seated card) to me from my own experience.
 
Don't even try an 8x card in a 4x (or worse 2x) slot...
Click to expand...

Yeah, 8x card in a 2x slot is generally bad, but only the very earliest Socket A boards had 2x AGP anyway... the rest had 4x or 8x, and 8x cards work fine in 4x slots. You say you've never seen it work, but I've never seen or heard of it not working. Your experience certainly is not the norm, and I'm pretty confident that the problems you had were not simply due to the differing AGP standards.
 
Old Thrashbarg said:
Yeah, 8x card in a 2x slot is generally bad, but only the very earliest Socket A boards had 2x AGP anyway... the rest had 4x or 8x, and 8x cards work fine in 4x slots. You say you've never seen it work, but I've never seen or heard of it not working. Your experience certainly is not the norm, and I'm pretty confident that the problems you had were not simply due to the differing AGP standards.
Click to expand...

I'm certainly willing to change my views to reflect that...but have you seen ATI cards working like this, or other cards?

I believe all the times I've seen issues were ATI cards. I love ATI but I think it was an issue on their end with this.
 
I've run a few 9-series Radeons in 4x AGP boards, that includes a 9800 Pro like the OP has... and it never caused any problems.

I definitely feel that ATi cards are quite troublesome in general, I won't touch the newer ones with a 10 foot pole, but really the only issues I ever had with the 9-series cards were the horrid drivers.
 
Old Thrashbarg said:
I've run a few 9-series Radeons in 4x AGP boards, that includes a 9800 Pro like the OP has... and it never caused any problems.

I definitely feel that ATi cards are quite troublesome in general, I won't touch the newer ones with a 10 foot pole, but really the only issues I ever had with the 9-series cards were the horrid drivers.
Click to expand...

I've found a lot of people who have had issues with ATI cards...be it the card, the driver suite, or both. The only time I had a significant issue with an ATI card was with my Radeon 9200...it would BSOD or reboot upon switching to 3D mode.

To add fuel to the already mighty hot nVidia vs ATI fire...driver issues abound with my 7600.

The cause? The card was only half inserted in the slot, as the locking mechanism had come undone. Oops.

I'd say we shouldn't rule out 4x/8x incompatibilities here, but of course if the OP has an 8x motherboard it makes it all void anyway. I'd lean towards power supply if OP has a motherboard with AGP 8x (I may lean towards PSU anyway, though)
 
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