38 mhz agp bus bombs out--HELP!

I've been running my 1.6a@2400 for a while now and not had any trouble, except after about 45 mins in 3d gaming the game application shuts down. I throttled down to 133mhz FSB and I have no troubles.

I've tried a few things and I'm pretty sure that my problem is in my video card. It's a built-by-ati 8500 retail. Anyone know how to fix my video card to be stable on my p4s533 with a 38mhz AGP bus? The card's not overclocked BTW.

lock your pci agp ratio to 1:1 I'm not farmiliar with p4 boards so i don't know if your board offers this option but I do believe most p4 boards do. hope this helps.

Well mine doesn't. Unfortunately.

Thanks though. Anyone else have an idea? Any software out there lock the agp/pci bus? (think I'm dreaming there)

38MHz AGP-bus? WTH? Standard is 66MHz.

i think he meant pci bus not agp
that converts to a lousy 38*2 =76 mhz agp bus
not a lot thou

I think your problem might be the limit of your processor. your agp spec doesn't seem high enough to cause that kind of a problem. you could try upping the voltage. naturally i may be wrong but an 800mhz overclock is alot for a 1.6. upping the voltage even a tad might just give you the added stability as 3d gaming is very stressfull on your system.

snvpa said:

I think your problem might be the limit of your processor. your agp spec doesn't seem high enough to cause that kind of a problem. you could try upping the voltage. naturally i may be wrong but an 800mhz overclock is alot for a 1.6. upping the voltage even a tad might just give you the added stability as 3d gaming is very stressfull on your system.

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From what the boys have said in the Asus MB section and from what the CPU database says, the p4s533 (my board) is usually very solid in overclocking the 1.6a to 2.4. It can push a 1.8a even further, actually.

Another reason that I think it's the video card is that it only crashes when I play a 3d game. It's solid folding, solid in number crunching, solid everywhere--except a 3d game. OH and the video card gets wicked hot. Especially a little chip in the upper right hand corner on the "front" of the card (side with the GPU). I have no idea what it does, but it's about 3 to 5 mm rectangle and gets hot enough to burn you. I don't know what kind of voodoo those people at ATI do on the cards to make them work (no pun intended), but it results in some hot parts!

I'm pretty sure it's not the memory as when I am running at 2.4 I put myself on conservative timings. I could squeeze a bit out of it, but I am afraid of data corruption.

All that said, I'm willing to up the voltage and give it a shot. I was running it at 1.6-1.7 for a while, but I noticed absolutely no difference in stability (can't remember if I played any games while I had it up or not), so I brought it back down. What voltage do you recommend?

Hey--wonder if I'd get more of a benefit in gaming from oc'ing my CPU to 2.4 or my 8500 retail beyond spec? There's a thought...

OH and my PCI bus is at 38, so you're right about my AGP bus being at 76 MHz. My bad.

if you set your agp to 2x, it would fix your problem.

You may not notice that much of a performance decrease since it is o/ced.

cursor said:

From what the boys have said in the Asus MB section and from what the CPU database says, the p4s533 (my board) is usually very solid in overclocking the 1.6a to 2.4. It can push a 1.8a even further, actually.

Another reason that I think it's the video card is that it only crashes when I play a 3d game. It's solid folding, solid in number crunching, solid everywhere--except a 3d game. OH and the video card gets wicked hot. Especially a little chip in the upper right hand corner on the "front" of the card (side with the GPU). I have no idea what it does, but it's about 3 to 5 mm rectangle and gets hot enough to burn you. I don't know what kind of voodoo those people at ATI do on the cards to make them work (no pun intended), but it results in some hot parts!

I'm pretty sure it's not the memory as when I am running at 2.4 I put myself on conservative timings. I could squeeze a bit out of it, but I am afraid of data corruption.

All that said, I'm willing to up the voltage and give it a shot. I was running it at 1.6-1.7 for a while, but I noticed absolutely no difference in stability (can't remember if I played any games while I had it up or not), so I brought it back down. What voltage do you recommend?

Hey--wonder if I'd get more of a benefit in gaming from oc'ing my CPU to 2.4 or my 8500 retail beyond spec? There's a thought...

OH and my PCI bus is at 38, so you're right about my AGP bus being at 76 MHz. My bad.

Click to expand...

Why not put a heat sink on that wicket hot chip and maybe a card fan.

Mr.DLucey said:

Why not put a heat sink on that wicket hot chip and maybe a card fan.

Click to expand...

I've got a fan rigged to blow directly on it. Where can I find a heat sink this tiny? Cut another one up and mount it on top perhaps?

I've got a Radeon 7500 AIW that won't even post with the PCI speed over 37.5 MHz, AGP 75 MHz.

Some cards are just picky.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. I bumped up to 1.65v and ran MOHAA for about 3 hours no crash. Pretty great IMHO. Maybe I'll try bumping it back down to 1.6 or 1.55 and see if I get the same results. I guess I was wrong--not the card, the CPU after all.

Thanks guys.