[Emrysk]

I just bought a new motherboard and Athlon XP 3200+ (specs below) to replace an aging Athlon/ASUS pair. The new stuff seems to run fine even though it runs about 130 Farenheit. But whenever I launch a 3D game, the system locks up within 1 or 2 seconds. I've tried both Half-Life and Asheron's Call 2, and the DXDiag test and GLXGears in Linux. All of them crash the system.

My MB and CPU:
- ASUS A7V600 (ATX, PC3200, AGP 8x)
- AMD Athlon XP Barton 3200+ Socket A, Model 8, 400 MHz FSB

I've been running an nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600+ for awhile now.

Here's the weird bit... if I go into the BIOS and move the CPU Speed down from 2200 MHz to 1466 MHz, it runs fine at 114 Farenheit. No crashing at all.

Also, my heatsink, while running, only feels mildly warm to touch.

Any ideas, guys? Could it be a voltage or AGP problem? Thanks in advance.

[MRD]

Try running something else that stresses the processor but does not use directx, such as console mode folding. If that's still crashing it, then it's probably heat. If not, it's probably graphics related.

When I had heat problems, they showed up most often in gaming because that uses a lot of processor power.

[Emrysk]

I ran Toast, which managed to get my 2200 MHz processor up to 152 degrees, but it didn't crash.

[Papsomax]

Best way to check hardware vs software instablilities is oc it to your max and boot to bios and come back 2-3 hours later. If the system has crashed then it's a bios (ie dram speed, cas latency, bios problem), if it's running, then it's a hardware problem. However, I'd bet it has something to do with the video driver compatbilites with the new mobo/cpu combo. Get rid of the old nvdia driver, boot to vga mode, download the latest and greatest from nvidia, and try again. If it still crashes, you might be looking at getting a new video card. Is you Ti oc'd?

Let us know.

Hooah!

[Emrysk]

I've found a much better lead. If I run dxdiag, I can disable AGP. If I disable AGP, the tests all work fine. No crashing. Perfect.

Any ideas? I've tried manually setting the AGP speed in the BIOS to both 1x and 4x already, to no effect.

[OC Detective]

Welcome to the forums. What kind of RAM do you have and what kind of psu do you have?

[Emrysk]

Not sure what a PSU is.

I have a 256MB DDR333 Kingston stick and a 256MB DDR400 Centon stick.

Just tried reformatting, installing WinXP, and applying the AMD patch, by the way. No luck.

[OC Detective]

Your DDR333 is not rated to run a 400FSB! You will need to remove that as your RAM can only run at the lowest possible of the two sticks you have. If possible also try and find out what the 3.3, 5 and 12V rails are on your system

[Ian]

PSU = Power Supply Unit

Your Kingston DDR333 might be the culprit, since you're overclocking your RAM to DDR400 with the AXP3200+.

[Emrysk]

Thanks, guys. It turned out, soon after my last post, that it WAS the DDR333 stick. A friend told me the system would automatically clock down to 333, but that's apparently not true.

Thanks again!