[i810 Forever]

On Christmas I received a Built by ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. I installed it, with the 2.2 Catalysts, under Win98SE, and had crashes, spontaneous restarts, and crashes that gave me all types of strange colors on the screen. When my friend and I put together his P4/Radeon 8500 LE setup, we had similar symptoms under Win98, so he upgraded to XP, and everything was fine.

I figured that upgrading to XP would fix my problems, so I bought a copy of XP, and although its a lot more visually pleasing and faster than 98SE, I still have crashes and random restarts, although no more crashes giving me funky colors on the screen.

Under Win98SE and under XP I went through the 2.2, 2.5, and 3.0 Catalysts, with DirectX 8.0-9.0, and still had crashes in games- most notably in Medal of Honor, Spearhead, and Quake3. Under XP, I was able to play both Medal of Honor and Quake3 multiplayer for a while, but still had crashes/restarts in Medal of Honor, and could no longer play Medal of Honor single player (crashed to the game's loading screen all garbled up).

I also tried AGP Fast writes on/off, tried all the AGP arperture sizes, and no luck. At this point I thought that it HAD to be my card, and that the Radeon drivers just plain sucked, as OpenGL games crashed, but I could play as long as I wanted in ALiens vs. Predator 2 (Direct3D game), with no problems whatsoever.

I exchanged my 9700 Pro for the $$ difference and a BFG Tech Asylum Ti4600 128MB AGP (same card as Visiontek's, since its made by the Visiontek refugees). Now, I am using the latest Dets and I lock up in Medal of Honor multiplayer after a few minutes, and the machine randomly restarts in about 1 minute in single player.

I am beyond frustrated at this point, all I want to do is have some crash free gaming! I am not sure what else I can do here. To start, my system specs are:

Epox 8K5A3+ (Hyperion 4in1's)
Athlon XP 1700+ @ stock
512MB Corsair XMS 3500 CAS2 @ PC-2700 speeds
Asylum Ti4600 128MB AGP (latest Dets, DX9.0)
80GB Seagate Barracuda HD (WinXP)
52x Creative CD-ROM
Built in Audio, Ethernet

In MSinfo I noticed that there are four things under IRQ 11- is this normal?

Cut & Pasted from MSinfo:
Resource Device Status
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 11 NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 OK
IRQ 11 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 11 Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller OK
IRQ 11 VIA Compatable Fast Ethernet Adapter OK
IRQ 10 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 Multimedia Audio Controller OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard OK



Any help or ideas as to why I am having this freakish crashing would save my day. I am incredibly frustrated and have already spent a lot of time trying to fix it. I even missed my first LAN game today because of my instability.

Many thanks and then some to anyone who can help me figure this out.

[toastedzergling]

Yeah the IRQ sharing seems to be the culpit, NIC for example, likes its own slot, try to disable it and see if that works

[i810 Forever]

Can I manually assign IRQ's in the BIOS?

[toastedzergling]

Originally posted by i810 Forever
Can I manually assign IRQ's in the BIOS?

Yeah, if you have that option, do it, actually I believe you can change video card IRQ

[funnyperson1]

yeah try turning off acpi and reassigning the irqs.....also is your system stable running cpuburn or prime95, maybe your system itself is unstable

[i810 Forever]

Originally posted by funnyperson1
yeah try turning off acpi and reassigning the irqs.....also is your system stable running cpuburn or prime95, maybe your system itself is unstable

It has no problems under Prime95, so I really think it's video-related.

In the BIOS theres an option to "Auto Assign Video IRQ" or something along those lines. I disabled it and it gave the Geforce4 its own IRQ, but it still crashes in Medal of Honor, havn't tried Quake3 yet.

[james.miller]

what powersupply is it? whats the rating? what are your voltages?

[i810 Forever]

Originally posted by james.miller
what powersupply is it? whats the rating? what are your voltages?

Its a 350W Antec PSU, the 12v, 5v, and 3.3v lines all read a little over what they should be so the PSU seems good.

I got an illegal instruction error and I had page fault errors in Win98SE- one thing I havn't tested for sure is my RAM. I received my 512MB stick of XMS 3500 a week before Christmas, and hadn't played any games until I had gotten the Radeon. Could those errors link to my RAM possibly being bad, or is there any way to test my RAM via software to tell if it is bad or not? (will a bad stick of RAM cause the behavior I have been experiencing?)

[james.miller]

a bad stick of ram could cause anything from random errors to hard-drive corruption. it could well be that ram. try relaxing all the timings on the ram and see if that helps

[i810 Forever]

Originally posted by james.miller
a bad stick of ram could cause anything from random errors to hard-drive corruption. it could well be that ram. try relaxing all the timings on the ram and see if that helps

Thank you for that last idea!

I turned the RAM timings down to the crappiest settings available, and whattaya know- system is stable again. Played through an entire mission in Medal of Honor and started another one, then left it idle for a while, didn't crash. Played some Quake3- didn't crash. Went on to play some more Medal of Honor multiplayer- no crashing.

Right now it looks like I have a bad stick of RAM- not a bad video card.

I exchanged the 9700 Pro for a Ti4600 + a 19" Samsung perfect flat monitor. Should I bring the Ti4600 back and use my next paycheck to buy a 9700 Pro again?

[Evnas]

I would go back to the 9700 Pro

[funnyperson1]

it depends, if the 4600 makes you happy then i see no reason why you need to trade it in NOW

[i810 Forever]

I'd have to exchange the card and $88.13 for the 9700 Pro.

Speed wise- it may not be hitting framerates as high as the 9700 Pro, but games are just as playable. Pretty confused over what to do.

As far as the RAM goes- should I exchange it for another stick of XMS3500CAS2 or return it to get a different brand or speed- a little nervous of getting another stick from the same batch.

[PreservedSwine]

for $88 bucks, that seems a pretty reasonable upgrade....

[Deathknight]

Pains me to see someone ditch the 9700 due to a non vid card related issue. My 9700 pro is one of the few products I have ever purchased and not second guessed myself forever afterwards.

[james.miller]

get the pro. for the love of god, get the pro. man even the 9500pro is upto 100% faster than a ti4600. imagine how much faster the 9700pro is. get it back man!

[Evnas]

Originally posted by i810 Forever
I'd have to exchange the card and $88.13 for the 9700 Pro.

So basically u get a 9700 Pro for $88.13....hell yea take that! hehe

[ferria]

i would RMA that stick of ram back that corsair is pretty expensive so you deserve a good one

[Tygur]

I would keep the Ti4600, because you finally got the computer working again. There is a risk of getting more problems if you try changing the video card again. Small or not, it's there, and you're computer's working fine now.

It's ultimately up to you, though.

[CrackeRheaD]

Just a suggestion. Goto www.memtest86.com and try that memory tester. Let it run through for a while with mem settings as is and turned up a little. You'll know if the mem is actually bad or not, or if your system just cant handle the higher settings. This is the memory tester that is recommended by Corsair. Their forums are at www.houseofhelp.com
Hope this helps
CrackeR