AGP Port Fried?

[esturk]

Hello all!

Long time watcher .. . . first time poster.

Having watched all that time I feel like someone here might be able to give me some help.

My Specs:

Dual Athlon Tyan Tiger
2X Athlon XP 1800's
2X 512mb Pc2100 Acer DDR
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Creative Audigy I Platinum
Generic NIC Card
80 gb IDE IBM Deskstar
250 gb IDE Western Digital
Sony 510a (?) Dual Format Burner 4X Internal
52X Sony CDRW
430 W Enermax PS
Thermaltake Xaser III Case
Thermaltake 5 CPU Fans
Windows XP Pro

The story:
One of the exhaust fans in the case stopped working and my machine was getting a tad hot. I had the side panel off monitoring it. I had been doodling along playing when I tried to load up a game and the machine locked up. (It's been a pretty stable platfrom for me but I have had a few virus and what not lately and have not reformated or fixed that well). When this happend I reached down and touched the 9700 to get a feel for how hot it was. I gave it a little static zap and here we go. I normally live in a low elevation humid environment where static is absolutely no problem. I moved for a summer job and am in a desert where of course it is awful. My bad . .. Anyway on with the story: I rebooted and the machine turned on fine. The pic on the monitor in color was hosed. It had blocks of colored lines through it in various places. Moving windows around on the screen caused the effect to worsen. The machine remained like this for a few days. It was running just fine save for the poor pic. I switched monitors and this affirmed that it was the video card . . (or so I thought)

The fix:
I figured the video card was the problem and so I picked up a 9800 pro and began the install being very careful about grounding myself to the case. I installed the card and I plugged the molex connector on the vc into a power string running through my hard drives. Turning on the system caused a beeping. I immediately turned off and did not notice if I had a picture at that time. I figured that the line was not giving enough power. I then plugged into one with less devices on it. Booting did not produce any beeps but no pic either. Another pertinent fact is that I had the bios set to display a summary screen after boot. At this point the board always beeps. I now get no beep.

The problem:
I have tried both the 9700 pro and the 9800 pro and each give no pic on the monitor. I have tried pulling everything out save memory/cpu/ and card and still the same. I have switched monitors and I get the same thing. The board does not have onboard video and I don't have access to a pci card to check that. My prognosis is that maybe the agp slot is fried. It doesn't make sense to me how the 9700 was working fine before though. It is possible I zapped it again. . . but I was VERY careful this time.

Can some people please give me thier opinions. Do you think the cpu's are fine? Maybe just a new board? If so what dual athlon board supporting XP's would you guys suggest?

Sorry this was so long. I wanted to give you all the details. Thanks ahead of time for any help!!!

esturk

 

[DerMonkeyhauser]

Yeah, sounds like you killed the AGP slot. Quite unfortunate, and a little rare (usually the card would just take one for the team) but it is possible for that to happen.

If you're in the market for a new board, I've had good luck running XP cpus on an Asus A7M266-D - right up until a dying power supply fried it, that is. Previously to that board, I had a Tiger S2460 which seemed to work OK, right up until a dying power supply fried that one, too. (Noticing a pattern here?)

If the board still works with a PCI video card, you can probably get some money back out of it. Not everyone running a dual system needs a functioning AGP slot...

 

[esturk]

DerMonkeyhauser:

Thanks for the reply. What do you suppose the problem with the power supply is?

How big of a PS have you been running?

I am beginning to get a bit worried about 6 case fans, 2 xp's, 2 cpu fans, 2 hd, 2 cdr's, and audigy and 9800 pro. I wish thier was a better way to watch what a system pulled in terms of power.

 

[DerMonkeyhauser]

No, there's no problem with your power supply. I was just poking fun at my limitless ability to kill power supplies - I've probably had more of those go out than every other type of component I've ever laid hands on, except possibly for fans and the threads in screw holes. They don't always take parts with them, but when they do, it's a complete pain; I'd rather avoid it altogether.

For a dual machine, I'd recommend no smaller than a 450w BRAND NAME power supply, like Antec. Never, ever buy a Deer or a RaidMAX brand power supply (they die quickly and tend to take out motherboards). A good performance metric for a power supply is how much it weighs - seriously. I have an EPS12v supply here for a dual Xeon machine that's easily a good 10 pounds, packed into the standard ATX power supply dimensions. Weighty means well built, with the extra heavy duty voltage regulators and associated chunky heat sinks.

All that equipment should do just fine on a 450w power supply, though if you're worried about it you could get a 500 or 550. Anything beyond that is either overrated by the manufacturer or overkill for your application, with your machine as it is currently configured.

 

[LiLithTecH]

You can break down the power demands this way:

2 - 1800+ Processors = 166w (83w x2)
1 - Processor Fan = 6w
6 - System Case Fans = 36w (6w x6)
2 - Hard drives = 56w (28w x2)
1 - ATI AGP video card = 15w
2 - CDRom drives = 30w (15w x2)
1 - Motherboard w/onboard devices = 25w
? - 512 Memory = 40w (10w per 128meg)
1 - PCI Audio card = 5w

Total = 364 watts

add to that any of the following extras:

Floppy Drive - 4w
USB device - 2.5w per device
PS/2 Keyboard - 1.5w
PS/2 Mouse - 1.5w
IEEE 1394 devices - 8w per device
PCI Network Card - 3.5w
DVD Drive - 20w

The rule of thumb PC Builders use is CPU + 80% of the total other components.

Using the above, that works out to: 166 + 158 (80% of 198) = 324 watts
That is the minimum needed to keep the system adequately powered.

 

[huesmann]

Not to excessively nitpick, but shouldn't he have two processor fans if he's got two processors?

 

[LiLithTecH]

Originally posted by: huesmann
Not to excessively nitpick, but shouldn't he have two processor fans if he's got two processors?

What if WATER COOLING is used or 2 heatsinks with a 180mm fan?
Another fan adds 3w. I was meant as an example.

 

[RussianSoldier]

then you'd also have to take into considerations the degradation of a PSU due to heated conditions...

 

[esturk]

An Update:

I got a new motherboard off ebay. I wish I would have gotten another board but I ended up with the same for price reasons and the usb mess.

The machine ran for a few days. I tried to do a clean install and things went bad.

Problem now:
When I try a clean install it sometimes freezes. If I get it through then as soon as I reinstall (regardless of what if any drivers I install), the machine does an endless reboot. Safemode either freezes or reboots when it loads amdagpxp.sys. VGA mode and regular mode either yield a black screen or reboots.

What I have tried:
New PS 560W Termaltake . .same symptoms
Switheroo of Ram . . same symptoms
Different HD . . same symtpoms
Various BIOS screwing with . . same symptoms
Different VC . . same symptoms
PCI VC . . didn't recognize at all
3 different XP discs . . same symptoms
Reseated cpus . .same
Different HD . . same
Had someone else do the install and then used that hd . .same


I installed Redhat Ent ES. The install went fine. I know nothing about Linux but at the end of the install it said it couldn't initialize the x server . . I guess that is the gui. I didn't mess with this as I was just wanting to see if it would make it through the install without freezing.

Anyway, I need help. I have fought with the thing for a week and I am going insane. Suggestions guys?

My diagnosis:
Agp Driver is not happy with the 9800 for some reason
Board screwed

Thanks for any thoughts guys. And also thanks for all the previous comments on power.

 

[imported_raybay]

AGP slots failing is EXTREMELY rare. You had the bad luck to get a second bad AGP card... perhaps it was an "unused return" or "refurbished."

Third time's the charm. Try one more borrowed AGP card or buy a cheapie. You can get a test Trident or S-3 agp for $10 to $20... It will always be handy as a test card you can rent out for $10.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Are you using ECC ram?
The Dual MP boards from Tiger require it.

 

[damonpip]

Get rid of the Tiger board, they have problems. The problem is that they only have the one ATX power connector, which cannot supply enough current to run two CPUs and a fast video card. My board actually caught on fire when I tried to upgrade from a old video card to a Ti4600. A dual athlon mobo needs the ATX connector and both aux power connectors to get enough current.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Originally posted by: damonpip
Get rid of the Tiger board, they have problems. The problem is that they only have the one ATX power connector, which cannot supply enough current to run two CPUs and a fast video card. My board actually caught on fire when I tried to upgrade from a old video card to a Ti4600. A dual athlon mobo needs the ATX connector and both aux power connectors to get enough current.

Take note of the items in the RED CIRCLE in this pic of a DUAL ATHLON TYAN TIGER motherboard.


Tyan Tiger MPX

 

[damonpip]

The Tiger MP, which is older, only has the main atx connector. The MPX has the two aux connectors as well. Only the MP has problems with overloading the power connector.