6800 Ultra locks up, then unfreezes, but with artifacts. he;lp

I have a PNY 6800 Ultra that I got in early July. Right now I am running the Forceware 61.77 drivers with it. It is not overclocked. It is on two seperate, dedicated power drops from the PSU anyway. My display is an IBM Thinkvision L200P 20" LCD with DVI @ 1600x1200x32. Drivers are fresh. My motherboard is an Abit IC7 and my OS is XP Pro. I think that covers it.

What happens is, I will be using my PC in any manner (gaming, or typing a post like this, for example) and the system will freeze dead for roughly 20-30 seconds. Normally I would just assume it crashed hard and hard-reboot, but eventually, it almost always clicks free and goes back to normal.

Sometimes.

A lot of times when it unfreezes artifacts will be strewn about the display regardless of what mode I'm in, stock speed or overclocked, and they will only go away with a reboot, at which point all is fine.

I know this is graphics-related at least in some manner because when it DOES happen to BSOD on me there's a problem with good old nv4_disp. I've tried running a bunch of different Forceware versions to no avail.

I'm considering a BIOS flash but I don't want to have to dig out my floppy for such a thing. Any thoughts?

what PSU do you have? that could be a problem, if its too small.

Also, Check to see if the Gpu fan is running properly. I have a 4400 and had to replace the fan because it quit. I dont know how the pny 6800's are they might be better now. Just a thought (oh ya wish I could afford a 6800 )

Mine does this but only when trying to play Doom3. I've checked everything and it runs FarCry and Halo with no problems or issues at all. With Doom3, I've pretty much determined it to be the audio drivers. So maybe updating the audio drivers could help out. Also, check your IRQ settings and make sure the audio and video aren't sharing the same setting. and if all else fails, try different drivers. I think nVidia has a way to go on the 6800 drivers themselves. I haven't found a set I really like.
And, what wattage power supply are you using? The 6800 ultra is a power hog.

mrgreenjeans said:

Mine does this but only when trying to play Doom3. I've checked everything and it runs FarCry and Halo with no problems or issues at all. With Doom3, I've pretty much determined it to be the audio drivers. So maybe updating the audio drivers could help out. Also, check your IRQ settings and make sure the audio and video aren't sharing the same setting. and if all else fails, try different drivers. I think nVidia has a way to go on the 6800 drivers themselves. I haven't found a set I really like.
And, what wattage power supply are you using? The 6800 ultra is a power hog.

Click to expand...

Sweet, somebody with the same problem. Sort of...

My PSU is a PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510 Deluxe, so it's got plenty of balls.

The GPU fan spins because my case is open on the desk next to me and I can hear it.

No IRQ conflicts. I'll check Creative's site for some newly revised Audigy 2 drivers though. Interesting suggestion; I'll let you know how it works out.

when your computer does that is there excessive hard drive activity?

Yeah, same here, I don't think it's the power supply then. I found a set on their site under the manual dowload section that were labelled "eax4.0 drivers" which i loaded and seemed to help considerably with my Doom problem, however, not a complete fix. Keep us posted on the progress.

stan03 said:

when your computer does that is there excessive hard drive activity?

Click to expand...

The drive is silent. I have some Corsair RAM with the funky activity lights on it and during the lockup only the green continuity lights remain on, the bandwidth indicator is dark. It's like the graphcis card gets stuck in some kind of loop that takes forever to get out of, and then when it does, half the time it doesn't know how to keep doing what it was doing beforehand.

I just installed the Forceware WHQL 65.73 drivers and updated the drivers on my Audigy 2 to 5.12.1.443 (the newest on Creative's site).

It's still doing it. Next up: chipset driver update.

edit: Ok, I installed the EAX 4.0 drivers even though they're older than my current ones, but I'll give this a shot.

edit^2: nope, still locks up with the EAX 4.0 drivers

I have this problem sometimes too in call of duty and warcraft 3. Didn't think anyone else was experiencing something this unique, but i am also using the 6800nu...

klear said:

I have this problem sometimes too in call of duty and warcraft 3. Didn't think anyone else was experiencing something this unique, but i am also using the 6800nu...

Click to expand...

Regardless, this is entirely unacceptable. If I can't resolve it soon enough I may just RMA this thing, pay the restocking fee, and go with an X800 Pro or something.

have u tried checking windows event log for any clues??