Betcha can't work this one out... :)

[RobUK]

OK.

I have a nasty problem.

I've got a PNY GeForce 4 Ti4600 that I've had for about 18 months. The card has worked great and I've not had any problems with it... until about a week ago.

I started seeing the following symptoms:

- Corruption on Windows desktop (2D) within a minute or two of getting into Windows.
- 3D apps lock up within a minute or two - no noticable corruption of display though.
- Display signal randomly dropped. E.g. game keeps running in background (sound effects, mouse click->fire etc.) but the monitor is blank.

If I try and reset the machine when I encounter any of the above, I get a nasty corrupt/trashed BIOS POST screen and the same when Windows tries to load. Rinse, repeat. Once the BIOS POST screen goes corrupt, it stays corrupt, even from a totally cold boot. The only way to get a clean post screen is to re-seat the card (at which point, as soon as you get into Windows, you get one of the above 3 problems within a minute or so).

This is running with an Abit KT7A, TBird 1.4Ghz, 2x256Mb Crucial PC133 and an Enermax 330W PSU.

I have not changed any BIOS settings or drivers between it working and not working. There are no heat issues with the card either - the case temp doesn't rise above 34C under full load. This has been the situation all the while I've had this card too. Nothing has changed here.

If you take all the above as read then you'd probably conclude that either the graphics card is screwed or the AGP slot on the motherboard is knackered. Perhaps a power supply issue...

Well, I've tried the following combinations:

- Abit KT7A/TBird/512SDR + Ti4600 with Enermax 330W PSU, E-Buyer 300W Cheapo PSU, Nexus 350W Silent PSU => no combination works.
- MSI Combo-L (SiS integrated chipset)/256Mb SDR + Ti4600 with Cheapo 300W PSU = WORKS!

Hurrah, I though. The AGP slot on my KT7A is broke, so I merrily trotted off and got the following:

- Asus A7N8X-X/Barton 2500+/512 PC3200

Rigged it all up with my Nexus PSU plugged in my Ti4600 and... bang. Exactly the same problem as the KT7A! I had to reinstalled Win2k in between here too.

WTF?

Between the Abit and Asus systems, the only common components are:

- 60Gb Seagate Barracuda (was re-installed from clean between systems, never had any hint of errors with this disk).
- 52x52x24 Lite-On CDRW that's never burned a coaster in its life.
- PSU (Nexus/Enermax).

The MSI rig has an older Maxtor HD and just a bog standard 52x CDROM. The only component shared between the MSI rig and the Abit rig was a 256Mb Crucial PC133 DIMM (and the 300W E-Buyer PSU). Also, the irony is that the MSI rig is totally crammed, has no exhaust fan (apart from the PSU) and is mATX - heat just cannot be a factor here.

So, at the moment, I'm sitting here with £200 worth of Asus/Barton/DDR guts that I don't need and am going to have to return (and take a hit on).

The really annoying thing is that I know my Ti4600 does fundamentally work - it ran in the MSI system for over 40 minutes without problem - but I just can't use the damn thing with any hardware I seem to have or buy.

I've tried cleaning the contacts on the card with an eraser, cleaning out the AGP slot on my Abit and have re-seated this card literally dozens of times. This whole thing just does not make sense to me.

The only conclusion I'm coming around to is that 9600 Pro's are only around a £100 here... but I really hate forking out £100 for a card which fundamentally is pretty much the same as the one I have now.

If anyone has any idea what is going on here and how to fix this, I will bow to you a true guru of hardware! Hell, I'll even crack out the soldering iron if that's what it takes!

:evil:

 

[dguy6789]

It is possible that the card is covered in dust, overheating(which is unlikely for reaons you said) it is also possible that you may have broken a few tracers or something. Take off the cooler, dust it real good, dust the whole video card real good, make sure there is no dust. Look all over the card for any possible damages, if you see some connecters or tracers broken, get a pen with conductive sutff, designed to fix these kind of problems. i hope this helps.

 

[MacBaine]

I'd agree that it may be a problem with dust/dirt on the card. My computer started freezing up/not booting recently, and I discovered that the fan on the GPU wasn't spinning at full speed... it was making noise/stuttering, etc. Dust wasn't the problem, it was just getting old... so I rigged another fan up pointing at it and it works fine now. Make sure your fan is free of dust/dirt, as it can really build up over time.

 

[RobUK]

Thanks for the tips guys.

The card is pretty clean and the heatsink seems mounted OK (it does get hot during operation). The fan not behaving properly though is something I will check out.

The thing I did notice is that on my KT7A the fit in the AGP slot is pretty loose. The Asus board is tighter (and also has a retention clip) but still not that tight. The MSI slot was tightest of all, and took some force to fit the card in (and again, has a retention clip). My suspicion at the moment therefore is centering around the AGP slot/connector.

The conductor pen thing is a useful hint. There doesn't appear to be any obvious damage to AGP connector on the card but I may try applying a conductive pen/paint across all the traces (very carefully!!) and see if this has any effect (aside from maybe killing the card!).

It's just so frustrating as I know the damn thing DOES work and is a great card when it's going!

I was really hoping that someone else may have hit this same problem before and perhaps knew a way out.

Thanks again for the pointers though, there's a couple more things for me to think about.

 

[Serp86]

Erm - this may sound like stupid, but is your agp speed set to 66mhz? If you have a barton processor (2500+) with 166mhz fsb, and you accidentally set the divider on 3:2:1, the AGP speed will be 99mhz!

Maybe it also got changed somehow in the old mobo?

Other than that, i can't think what the hell is going on.

 

[RobUK]

Thanks for the tip.

I'm pretty sure that it's not the AGP bus speed. I've not fiddled with the FSB settings on either motherboard, so my old TBird on the KT7A is running at 133/66/33 (4:2:1) and I've never played with FSB overclocking on this machine. The Asus board is also running stock with an XP 2500+. As this kit is brand new I've not yet tried tinkering with any of it, so it's all running on defaults at the moment: 166/66/33 (5:2:1).

Other than that, i can't think what the hell is going on.

Yeah - it's got me too

 

[TourGuide]

Here's my vote - put it back in the MSI rig and let it run for 24 hours before you say it works. 40 minutes probably isn't enough to say for sure that it is golden in that rig. For that matter, loop 3Dmark with it during that time and see what results you get. It should still be running when you come back to it the next day. If not, then I'd say you've got a bad card.

 

[Richdog]

I'm thinking you may have a faulty card. It deosnt sound like an overheating problem, my fan on my overclocked Ti200 isnt working and my rig is fine even though the card is absolutely boiling (it's getting replaced with a 9800PRO tomorrow so i dont care). Try borrowing a graphics card off a friend or something and trying it in there, if it works fine you know you have a bust card. Failing that, remove all drivers using driver cleaner and then try re-installing them.