Gainward GF4 4200 128mb Causing Reboot

[Pospodo]

I just received the card today and during gameplay in GTA3 and America's Army, the card forces my system to reboot after about 5 minutes of playing. There is no freezing at all, it is an instant reboot.
I have downloaded the latest drivers from NVIDIA's website and I am using a DFI AK76-SN mainboard that supports 4x AGP.
1.4 ghz Athlon
256 MB DDR

Any advice is appreciated!
Thanks

 

[Pospodo]

And just now, the same thing happened when I played Soldier of Fortune 2 and when I also tried to run 3dMark2001 SE.
Any ideas?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Almost certainly a heat issue. That Athlon 1.4ghz kicks off a lot of heat, even if you aren't o/c'ing anything. Try to ensure there is good ventilation inside your case, also ensure your case fans point the correct way and have adequate local ventilation in order to get at the cold air or have somewhere to push out the warm air. Obviously reseting any o/c's to their default settings is always a good idea when trouble-shooting.

Other possibilities are:

* An old or incompatible AGP slot (unlikely).

* Mobo BIOS settings or old BIOS (try flashing with the latest).

* Incompatabilities with gfx card (possibly infinite loop problem, but unlikely).

* PSU not supplying enough current or lacks adequate reliability (350W+ should be no prob, but beware if it isn't Antec, Enermax, Topower or Flower).

* Windows drivers for your hw, try the latest official drivers for all of your hw from both the manu AND chipset websites (whilke there check for any incompat info). Also try deinstalling all gfx drivers, run Detonator Destroyer, reinstall official driver, reinstall DX8.1. Also check M$ WinUpdate.

* Faulty hw, if everything runs fine without the GF in then it could be the GF is faulty, try it in another PC if poss.

I would strongly suspect the case (inadequate ventilation or airflow) and PSU (low Wattage or unreliable).

HTH!

 

[Pospodo]

Thanks for the help, Austin!
I don't think heat is the problem, the case is pretty well ventilated by one intake and one exhaust fan.
But, I do have an Antec 300w power supply Is this the reason why the card resets the computer? Because it is unable to get enough power?

 

[Pospodo]

Oh, and also, I just flashed my BIOS and it seemed to help a little bit. But it's still restarting after 5 minutes or so of gameplay.
How much wattage in a power supply is optimal?

 

[Jeff7]

Yes, it could be the power supply. Geforce4's suck a lot of power, and the faster Thunderbird processors were also power guzzlers.
Also, do you have the latest chipset drivers installed for your motherboard?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Antec are a great brand in PSUs, certainly up there with Enermax, ToPower and Flower. 300W should be fine, but as said your Athlon1.4ghz is as power hungry as an AthlonXP2200+ and when used alongside fast gfx cards, lots of RAM (both system & gfx) and many people have multiple IDE devices (HDs, CDRW, CDROM, DVD etc). The optimal Wattage rating of any PSU depends upon what it is needed to power so there is no hard and fast amount, but unbranded/unknown 400W+ PSUs are as bad or worse than your current branded 300W PSU. Essentially it would be wise to get a new 400W+ PSU, preferably dual fan and certainly of a good quality brand as mentioned above. Even if it doesn't solve your problem now, it is well worth the investment for the future, IMHO.

 

[Pospodo]

You guys rock, especially Austin
Yes, I did upgrade my BIOS. (Which was very scary for the first time)
Also, I changed the BIOS to disable fast-write, and selected only a 1x-2x AGP speed. It seems to be running pretty damn stable now. I'll just have to continue my "testing" to see how it works!

 

[AnAndAustin]

Hey Pospodo, thanks and that's great that it's now running stable.

Both 'fast-writes' and 'side-band' reportedly don't offer much in the way of perf, and even running 1x AGP mode won't hurt your perf as much as it sounds. Continue testing, but in the long term you really do want AGP 2x or 4x mode, make sure you have the latest official drivers for ALL of your hw (esp mobo) if you haven't already.

It could be an 'infinite loop' thing, disabling AGP 4x often remedies this problem. To help things in any case:

* Try to ensure any probs are not down to faulty hw, sw, corruption, viruses etc. Having the latest OFFICIAL drivers and BIOS' is always a good idea (be sure to check manu and chipset websites).

* Check your BIOS settings, disabling 'PCI Master Read Cache' is VERY wise as it kills your L2 cache to give the PCI a 1% boost! Esp bad for Celerons and Durons. Enabling IRQ for VGA/AGP and setting AGP Aperture to 64MB can also help. Setting AGP1x (ie disabling AGP4x in BIOS) will hit perf, but not as badly as it sounds. The gfx card will continue to run at full speed it just limits the speed out of the AGP slot to 66mhz instead of 266mhz, not too bad in the short term as most of the time 133mhz is never reached.

* If you're running an older OS ensure you have DX8.1, good idea to reinstall it anyway regardless. You may need to run DXDIAG, Diplay Tab, DISABLE Direct3D Accel & CLOSE the app. RERUN DXDIAG & ENABLE Direct3D Accel. A click of the TEST button will show if this solves your partic prob.

* Leave the PCI slot next to the AGP empty, maybe try swapping your PCI devices through different slots, it's a good idea to have the PCI blanking plates at the back removed for ventilation anyway IMHO.

* You could try disabling 'PnP OS' from the BIOS if you're using WinXP, apparently WinXP likes to do things itself. If you use any OS then perhaps setting PnP manually (reserving some resources) or resetting the PnP may also help. If you do change any BIOS settings, do make a note so they can be changed back if it doesn't help.

* Try downloading NVMax. It has the infinite loop fix and other things for nvidia cards. http://www.nvmax.com/ http://www.charnleys.co.uk/NVmax4.exe

* Try different driver versions, with some cards 21.83, 23.11, 27.xx, 29.xx can help.

HTH!

 

[Pospodo]

Austin, I was unable to find an option that resembled "PCI Cache". Are there other terms for it?
I wanted to ask you about the Aperture setting. You recommended it to be 64 whereas other online sources that I have searched through say move it up to 256. What exactly does this setting control and how do these two different values effect the system?
All drivers are official and the mobo's BIOS has been flashed and updated.
I also discovered that hundreds of other people are having this exact same problem and it seems like the problem may actually lie within card itself. I guess we'll see about that.
Once again, thanks for your help!

 

[AnAndAustin]

Regarding the AGP Aperture Size, 64MB is a very safe default and won't hurt perf much, if at all. It can overcome some limitations or incompatabilities, usually relating to mobos. The general 'best' setting is half of your RAM up to 128MB, but beyond 128MB you really don't notice any perf gain, in some cases it can even cause some slow down and memory waste. Some people have found setting larger AGP AS seems to help perf, it doesn't hurt to try but I say go with 128MB, with 64MB being a good trouble-shooting setting.

To keep it simple AGP AS pretty much just relates to the amount of system RAM which can be used if the gfx card runs out of it's own RAM for storing textures and does make perf slower but is much better than running out (a lot like using the HD for virtual system RAM). However some of the AS you state is taken up by an address table and other stuff so you only end up with just under half of what you state. So if you specify 128MB AS you're gfx card will have up to 58MB of actual extra emergency storage space. At 64MB it still gives a maximum true extra amount of 26MB and at 256MB it simlarly actually gives 122MB. Note it is dynamic and as such the gfx card will only utilise system RAM for aperture use only as needed. So it does depend a little on your own system and config, if you have plenty of system RAM or a gfx card with a small amount of RAM then a larger size certainly helps.

'PCI MAster Read Cache' is usually found under 'Chipset OPtions' in your BIOS, but remember differnet BIOS' allow alteration of different things, and as you say some use different notation. It makes sense to disable this if you can as it does hit overall system perf, esp on Celerons and Durons due to the decreased amount of L2 cache, and it is pointless anyway, it is unlikely to be noticable so don't worry too much.

While on pointless and usually detrimental BIOS settings it is worth disabling 'BIOS Shadow', 'Video shadow', 'System BIOS cachable', 'Video BIOS cachable' and 'Video RAM cachable'. These are really hang overs from previous and very old techniques derived way back when PC archy and OS was very different and L2 cache sizes were ovely large for what they needed to do. Basicly they don't speed up perf at all and actually slow down perf by abusing things like your L2 cache in order to give the PCI bus or DOS text programs a very small boost, completely pointless now.

 

[BigD01]

I have the same problem with my Abit GF4 ti 4400
It's totally a heat problem as if I take my case off the crashes go away. This is strange as I have 4 case fans, 1 PSU fan, 1 CPU fan, and the video card fan. I think the hot air is getting trapped as the GF card goes the length of my case. I've just gotten a bag of zip ties to see if cleaning up my cables helps. Paring that I'm going to get a PCI slot fan to but right beneath my Video card.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Don't forget to mount any case fans in the correct locations, anywhere else and you simply inhibit airflow. Another point is to ensure adequate VENTILATION, esp near to case fans, you can't suck in cool air through a steel wall, neither can you push the warm air out if there's no where for it to go. Another thing to check when using an older case is that the PSU isn't too close (as in covering) the CPU HSF. I have personally found a LOT of success by removing spare PCI slots and never mounting PCI cards next to each other, this significantly improves ventilation and I have helped many people to run fast CPUs and fast gfx cards (both kick out LOADS of heat) to avoid having to buy a new case simply by adding 1 case fan and maximising ventilation.