Dually rig is horribly unstable!!!!!

[butch84]

I just got a MSI 694D pro mobo from someone here on the forums. I first had 2 celeron 400s in it, and i have since migrated to dual PIII 700s. With the celerons, i had problems with lockups, and lots of hard restarts that seemingly happened by themseleves. I got a new antec 350watt powersupply, and that (along with a format/reinstall) seemed to fix the problem. Unfortunately, i just got another unwelcome restart with the PIIIs. I have no idea what it is. I have pc133 memory running at 100, so i dont think the memory is running out of spec or anything.

What could this be?? Is my mobo a piece of shiznit, or is my ram bad, or what?? I doubt its still powersupply, since i got the new one, and my voltages are really close to given values. SOMEBODY HELP ME!! I really dont wanna have to buy another motherboard - they are expensive and i am goin to college soon (need $).

Thanks,
Butch

EDIT: yeah, they are the same stepping, so that isnt the problem. i am however using a Radeon LE. Is it possible the radeon doesnt like smp?? The last time it randomly restarted i was playing a game- is there a way to tell if this is a graphics problem or a mobo problem??

 

[Agamar]

Do your CPUs have the same steppings...Dual's usually run better with the same stepping.

 

[Bradford010]

Have you flashed with the latest BIOS?

Are you using mixed (ie 100 and 133) RAM (bad)?

How about seeing if MSI has recommended components for this board? eg prefered PSUs

and what was said aout similar CPUs. Identical are best.

 

[Markfw]

I can only speak to one possible problem, and only in one way. I had a radeon 7000 LE (I think), and it have me nothing but problems and lockups in games only, so I took it back. The Radeon 8500 retail that I have now works perfectly though. First thing to try is a different video card from what you have said, IMHO.

 

[bjc112]

I may be mistaken, but i thought that MOST dually setups would chew up even a decent 400 watt PSU..

That could just be Athlon MP's though...



Its a bit more likely that your getting random reboots from a PSU than a Video Card...

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: bjc112
I may be mistaken, but i thought that MOST dually setups would chew up even a decent 400 watt PSU..

That could just be Athlon MP's though...



Its a bit more likely that your getting random reboots from a PSU than a Video Card...

I'm running dual 1200MP on a QuietPC 300W PSU. It just meets Tyan's minimum requirements and it works fine.

I actually accidentally used my ancient 250W supply and installed Windows 2000 with it just fine. I noticed that I had used the wrong power supply later that night.

 

[CZroe]

Dually rig is horribly unstable!!!!!

BP6 users know this!

 

[benjamit]

i have the same board but use 2 p3 866

could it be a conflict with a pci card?

an ata 66 pci prevented my g450 agp from working right on on the same board

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: joohang

Originally posted by: bjc112
I may be mistaken, but i thought that MOST dually setups would chew up even a decent 400 watt PSU..

That could just be Athlon MP's though...



Its a bit more likely that your getting random reboots from a PSU than a Video Card...

I'm running dual 1200MP on a QuietPC 300W PSU. It just meets Tyan's minimum requirements and it works fine.

I actually accidentally used my ancient 250W supply and installed Windows 2000 with it just fine. I noticed that I had used the wrong power supply later that night.

Cool, thanks for clearing that up JooHang...

 

[butch84]

Actually i think i may have figured it out. I switched AGP mode from 4x to 2x, since i remembered the original radeons didnt like 4x agp for some reason. since then, i have had no further lockups. Anyway, now that it works, i am finding that i can only overclock to 800mhz (114 fsb). The next step up for this mobo is 133fsb, and apparently some component(s) in my system just cant take it. Even so, you think 2x PIII 700@800 would play cs better than 45-50fps. When i had a pIII 933 and the same vid card (radeon le) i got 70fps, but now i only get like 50. I know smp is worthless for games, but i thought an 800mhz pIII would still be sufficient. I remember playing cs on a celeron 433 for cripes sake!!

So, will droping in a better vid card help -radeon 8500 maybe, or should i just never game on my smp system again? Dang it, i think i got this system goin to say a had a dually setup, now i dont know what to do with it. And NO, i wont give it to you, even if you ask nicely. Gimme suggestions on uses.

Butch
Also, does that memory enabler tweak program thingy work? Its for via chipsets, and it forces the mobo to interleave the memory or something. I just dont wanna fry anything. heres the link: http://www.viahardware.com/memoryenable.shtm

 

[FishTankX]

When you play CS do the guys arms look puffy? If so, your RadeonLE might be enabling truform. Look around for the switch to disable truform. The drivers resort to using software emulation for Truform and that eats up CPU time like there's no tommorrow. It was only in recent drivers that truform was enabled.. soo... whatever. That's probably why you didn't notice it with your 933.