at my wit's end (short trip)

[robphelan]

decided to go Dual core so I sold my perfectly-working gaming machine and bought:

AMD AM2 3800+
MSI K9N platinum mobo
2x1Gb sticks of OCZ high performance DDR2 533 i believe
Enermax PSU 550W
eVGA 7900 GT CO

all of this stuff was BNIB i bought from another ATer. He had built 2 other identical machines.

I put it all together, and reformatted my hdd and loaded XP SP1. XP recognizes the dual core and 2gb RAM just fine.

I currently have only loaded XP SP1, Oblivion, Nero, latest nvidia drivers, & antivir - that's it. And, I copied over my Oblivion game saves from a USB drive.

I'm having all sorts of problems playing oblivion. it crashes to the desktop all the time. Also, earlier today (before my latest XP install) i had tons of crashes in Firefox, IE - just about everything. I loaded Farcry and that crashed, too.

Am i missing something? I ran memtest yesterday for 3-4 hours and no errors were found.

could it be my graphics card? are there any testing tools for it to make sure it's memory etc.. is fine?

the wife is out of town and I was hoping to blow through a few levels in oblivion while she is gone:beer:

thanks alot,
robert.

 

[mechBgon]

If you're only using XP SP1, then I hope you have firewall protection? Also, fully enable your... oh wait, you can't enable DEP until you install SP2.

As for the problem, try boosting DIMM voltage by 0.1 volt as a fact-finding step.

 

[Severian]

more importantly, you need to install the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer and the AMD cpu driver which are located on this page :

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Tec...alResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html

some games will run like hell without this, and Far Cry and Oblivion are two known examples. If you continue to have problems after installing these fixes, you'll want to google for setting affinity through software for your games. You can limit them to one core, if that's the only way they'll run.

Good luck

 

[Navid]

If you are sure your CPU is stable (Prime95), you can use ATITool to check your graphics card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/341
This version works with Nvidia.
Click on "Scan for artifacts" and let it run for 20 minutes.

 

[robphelan]

i've installed all the way up to SP2 earlier today but had too many issues so I tried doing a minimal install of what my XP Cd was - SP1. after I rule out SP2, i will install it.

and i forgot to mention that I do have the dual core optimizer loaded. i didn't see it in my programs list so i forgot to list it as being installed.

I haven't used Prime yet... I'll do that next - can i use ATITool on an Nvidia card?

thanks,
robert.

edit: another 2 hours of memtest-86 v3.2 and no errors found.
double edit: just saw that you said ATITool can be used with nvidia. thanks.
triple edit: not sure if this makes a diff, but i have mostly been running in Dual-View mode using my 2405fpw and 17"LCD

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: robphelan
can i use ATITool on an Nvidia card?

You can if you install the right version as stated already in my post.

 

[robphelan]

uh-oh.. i'm getting an error running prime95.

i chose torture test -> Blend -> OK ....
within 20 seconds i'm getting an error - here's the results.txt file

[Sat Nov 04 22:37:10 2006]
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
[Sat Nov 04 22:42:23 2006]
UID: robphelan, User: robert phelan, robphelan@gmail.com
UID: robphelan, User: robert phelan, robphelan@gmail.com
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

any help?

 

[mechBgon]

Did you try raising the memory voltage a bit?

 

[Navid]

What is the CPU temperature?
What is it when running Prime?
What have you set the CPU core voltage to in the BIOS?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Did you try raising the memory voltage a bit?

I thought he said he was passing memtest.

 

[robphelan]

using the MSI mobo utiliity, I see my cpu temp is 42C and hits 43C when prime terminates with an error.

core voltage is defaulted to 3.36v - the MSI utility is showing me this, too.

is there another utility that measures CPU temps better?

 

[Navid]

The motherboard utility is fine.
Are you overclocking the CPU?

Edit:
What do you mean by what you said about VCore? I hope you mean 1.36!
Just check to see what it is set to in the BIOS.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Did you try raising the memory voltage a bit?

I thought he said he was passing memtest.

He did say that. Now I think he should try raising the memory voltage a bit anyway

 

[robphelan]

Originally posted by: Navid
The motherboard utility is fine.
Are you overclocking the CPU?

Edit:
What do you mean by what you said about VCore? I hope you mean 1.36!
Just check to see what it is set to in the BIOS.

sorry, yes.. mobo utility shows 1.34v as the current voltage. I must have been looking at mem voltage?

FSB shows 200MHz - shouldnt' this be 266?

i'm not OCing the CPU at all.

mechBgon,
when I raise the voltage on the mem, you want me to run memtest again to make sure it's still stable?

 

[Navid]

I wonder if the chipset sink is not seated properly!
What are the other temperatures that your motherboard utility shows?
If you touch the chipset sink, is it hot, warm or cool?

 

[robphelan]

Originally posted by: Navid
I wonder if the chipset sink is not seated properly!
What are the other temperatures that your motherboard utility shows?
If you touch the chipset sink, is it hot, warm or cool?

i set the fsb to 266 and was able to run prime95 much longer. I canceled it manually.

I started oblivion and played for about 1.5 hours. CPU temp shows 41C and GPU hit 61C max.

cpu heatsink is cool to the touch after all this.

i'm going to run prime for a few hours now, to see what happens.

 

[robphelan]

Problem fixed.. it was the FSB - set to 266 to match the DDR2533 and it works perfectly..

thanks a lot everyone for the advice.

robert.

 

[Navid]

So, your FSB was 200 and your system was unstable. You increased your FSB to 266 and your system is stable?
That doesn't make much sense, does it?