Help... Can't figure it out...

[Wuzzbent]

Ok maybe you guys can help me figure this out..

I built a system in March, here are the specs

AMD 2500+ Barton (Tornado Fan at Full 5200 RPM)
GigaByte GA-7VM400MF MotherBoard
512MB PC2700 Ram
Radeon ATI 9200 (SE) 128MB Video Card
400 Watt PSU
2 Rear Fans (Sucking In over Mobo) and a side fan (Pulling Out Warm Air)

My temps on a full load are about 51c CPU and good case temps (forgot exact)

Keep in mind NONE of my hardware is overclocked.

Anyways everything was fine until last week. Now my system seems to do lot's of hard lock ups when I'm in a 3D game. I will be playing and the graphics will just sieze up and freeze, I can still hear music or voice, my Internal Lan card is still working, hard drive is still reading/writing but my graphics just lock up. I can't even CTRL-ALT-DEL out of it, I have to shut down the power to and reboot. Now this happens on all the games I have been playing the last week or so. I have a unlimited subscription to Yahoo! Games on Demand and I have over 156 games I can play and they all seem to lock up now.

I have so far to try and rectify the problem..

Bought a new H/D and formatted it and put a fresh win 2k install on it. Still the same problem

I have Tried different many different ATI driver versions.. I have flashed my bios to the latest update, I have installed all the latest AGP, USB, etc, ie drivers for my system. I tried Omega drivers and Rage3D Softmodded.. Still no luck..

I'm at a loss.. It doesn't pick any specific spot to lock up, it just locks up randomly.. Sometimes I can play for 10 minutes, sometimes an hour, but it always happens..

I have ran Prime95's Torture test for 24 hours and it showed no errors so I'm assuming my memory is fine, I ran 3dMark2001SE in Loop mode and went to bed, woke up and it was locked up last night..

Could this mean my card is fried? I haven't overclocked I bought it 2 months ago.. I mean it was fine for the first 2 months, then it just started to act stupid..

Any suggestions?

[Valk]

Radeon 9200 is one that has no fan right? I would take your pc appart and rethink cooling. this should be in that forum perhaps too. but anyway. your rear fans sucking it is not productive since the air escaping your machine, basicly thought the psu only is not enough.

you need case fans blowing in from the frong and blowing out from the back. good case airflow is crucial to keeping your machine stable. you might also put a fan on your graphics card.
video freezing like that is a heat problem with your gpu.

[PottaCoola]

As valk said you might want to rethink your case fans, the two blowing in from the back might be blowing in hot air from your psu that is blowing hot air out. and you would normal have your side fan blowing in. so if you make your side fan blow in cool air and your rear fans blowing out hot air.

[Wuzzbent]

Originally posted by Valk
Radeon 9200 is one that has no fan right? I would take your pc appart and rethink cooling. this should be in that forum perhaps too. but anyway. your rear fans sucking it is not productive since the air escaping your machine, basicly thought the psu only is not enough.

you need case fans blowing in from the frong and blowing out from the back. good case airflow is crucial to keeping your machine stable. you might also put a fan on your graphics card.
video freezing like that is a heat problem with your gpu.


No actually the 9200 SE has a fan on it.. it's not a big fan but it's a fan. So you think this is a heating problem then? How come it didn't do this to me the first 2 months I had it? Now it all of a sudden starts haveing problems? I will try to reverse the fans in back and see if that helps but I don't think that is the problem. We shall see I guess

[PottaCoola]

if you live in the uk then its because the its hotter now even my pc is doing it with my processor but if not i dont know but still you shouldnt have 2 fans blowing the hot air in that the psu is blowing out that cant be any good

[Ducatti]

That's a via 400 chipset on the MB right? I don't know about anyone else, but I was told by ATI tech support that the via 400 and powerted by ATI don't get along to well... If your card is built by ATI give em a call... it's in canada though so watch the long distance..