ATI Radeon Lock-up problems

[JonUK]

I am getting lock-ups after 10-20 mins of play in most 3D games, The machine will be running perfectly, no corruption or artifacts then bang it will lock-up. The image will basically just freeze and the machine will not respond to ctrl-alt-delete and has to be hard-reset. The tempreature at the crash is normally quite low (29oc sys / 46oc CPU) and there is absolutly no problems before the lock-up.

I have found that if I change my agp speed from 4x to 2x it seems to stop the lock-ups also if I leave it at 4x and go into the advanced smartgart control panel and turn both AGP read and writes off then the lock-ups don't seem to occur.

I am running the latest 4.6 Catalyst drivers but I have additionally tried previous versions and the latest Omega drivers (I re-formatted after each diffrent set of drivers). There was no benefit from trying the other drivers.

Could this be a compatability problem with the mobo and card?

I have managed to run a Geforce 2 mx200 at 4x agp with no lock-ups and also a Geforce 4 mx440 at 8x agp with no lock-ups using the latest Nvidia drivers. (Again re-fromatted after using nvidia drivers)

Some additional details on the mobo are that its a Jetway N2PAP Ultra based on the nforce2 chipset (without on-board video) and is connected to a 300w psu. It fully supports AGP 8x/4x and seems to be a universal 3.0 AGP interface as it can run the cards at 2x as well.

The latest BIOS is in use and AGP aperture size is set to 128mb, I have set it both lower and higher and this doesn't seem to make a difference.

The video card is an a no-name OEM thingie that is "powered by ATI" It is a non-pro Radeon 9000 128mb ddr. This replaced my Connect3d 9000 card that also had lock-up problems, this though went back to the shop as they thought the lock-ups were due to a faulty card (which it obviously wasn't). Also a new, more powerful PSU was tested by my local shop. I still had the lock-ups even with the new card and PSU.

If anyone has ANY ideas as to why this is giving me so many problems please help as I am at a loss. My only other thought is to maybe use the ATI Smartgart uninstaller. Could smartgart be causing the problems.

Cheers
Jon

 

[Mem]

I have found that if I change my agp speed from 4x to 2x it seems to stop the lock-ups also if I leave it at 4x and go into the advanced smartgart control panel and turn both AGP read and writes off then the lock-ups don't seem to occur.

Sounds like you`ve fixed the problem already,I always run with fastwrites off anyway,believe me it`s better for stability and the performance increase is so small that`s not worth the hassle,check in BIOS you`ve fastwrites disabled in there as well.

You can try slower ram timings that might help and uninstalling SMARTGART is an option .

Btw the difference between 4x and 8x AGP is virtually big fat 0 ,so I wouldn`t worry about it especially with a 9000 card.

 

[JonUK]

Ok relating to the AGP writes Fastwrites, I have disabled fastwrites in both the bios and the Smartgart dialog, but under the advanced Smartgart there is a AGP read and writes setting, is that the same thing. Additionally could this be bad memory related? My biggest fear is buying a new card and getting the same problems. I will be looking at getting a Rad 9800 256mb or maybe a decent Geforce, also at the same time I will be getting more memory.

 

[nRollo]

To you Jon I say, "Good luck".
The 9000s are based on the R200/8500 tech, which was always flakey, not to mention had AA/AF issues.
1. I see your motherboard is a "Jetway". Cheapie motherboards often have substandard AGP slots. When I had a 8500 and had replaced about everything in the computer to try and make it work, I got down to "replace your Epox 8KHA+" and I said, "F*** that", put in an nVidia GF3, lockups no more. That was with a good name brand motherboard.
2. Cheapie OEM and "Connect3d" may not be the way to go. You might try ATI if you have to have a god-awful 9000.
3. 300W psu is bad, but as noted above, your slot might not supply sufficient stable voltage to run this card.
4. Try underclocking the core/mem of video card 25MHz. That worked for me and many others with 8500Pros.
5. Don't OC anything.

Good luck. If you want it to run right, straight out of the box, sell POS 9000 and buy a Ti4200. It will perform much better, and actually work.

 

[JonUK]

lol, my thoughts exactly the card is a POS, I will most likley be getting a nice high quality PSU next and a real ATI or Nvidia card next. Sadly the mobo is brand new, taking it back isn't really an option as there is "technically" nothing wrong with it as it can run the Nvidia card with no problems. The bloke in the shop reckons its just the "crappy" state of ATI cards thats causing the problems (he refuses to stock any ATI cards now) .