GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and WinXP Pro glitch???

[MrCairo]

Hello ALL,

I have a question that I "hope" someone out there can shed a light on for me!
I just pust together a new system," WinXP Pro, Shuttle AK35GT2, AMD 1600, 256 PC2700, 80gig WD HD", and I swapped out my Gainward GeForce4 Ti 4200 that I had in an older system. Now this card has been running for about 2 months with no problems at all in my Win98 sys. That mobo is a Shuttle AK31 with same ram and cpu.
I put it in the new sys and everything's fine till I try to play a 3d game like SOF 2 or run 3DMark2001 SE...It will run for a short bit then the screen go to either lots of different blocks of color or the last time everything was a orange color. The program freezes and I have to reboot. Then XP give me a message about how it's seen the problem and thinks it a driver issue. And sends MS an error report about the problem.
Well after that happened the 1st time I changed the driver from the most resent Nvidia XP driver to the Gainward stock cd driver that it shipped with. Some problem. I then shitched to the Nvidia driver that I had been running in the Win98 sys...same problem.
So I put the GF4 "back" into the win98 sys and it runs fine. I put my older GeForce 2 GTS in my new sys and IT runs fine to...no lock ups and both the games and 3DMark run perfect! ??? So now I'm pretty much at a loss for what's going on. My power supply in both are 400w
Is there something I'm overlooking or missing?

ANY help with this would be wonderfull, I'd really like to take advantage of the faster new board!!!

Thank you,

MrCairo




ps - I also installed the latest via 4in1 drivers too.

 

[AnAndAustin]

I'd say it's almost def one of the following:

1. PSU is inadequate (need a better PSU pref a good brand too).
2. Mobo is inadequate or slightly faulty (GF4 needs more/better power).
3. Residual drivers from old gfx cards used (fresh OS install or destroy old driver/reg remnants).
4. The Infinite Loop Bug (see below).
5. A wierd incompatability (try removing non essential cards and disabling unused/needed o/b goodies).
6. Other driver prob (ensure you have the latest official drivers & BIOS' for all your hw checking both manu and chipset).

General advice for ILB:

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) certainly the latest VIA 4in1 drivers if you use a VIA chipset, the VIA PCI Latency Patch is a very useful thing to download and install too.

Check your BIOS settings, disabling 'PCI Master Read Cache' is VERY wise as it kills your L2 cache to give the PCI like a 1% boost! Esp bad for Celerons and Durons. Other settings that may help but which will effect perf a little are RAM Latency settings (make them higher), Bank Interleave (try diff settings) or even lowering the clock speed of your RAM.

Enabling IRQ for VGA/AGP and setting AGP Aperture to 64MB can also help. Setting AGP1x or AGP2x (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 / 133mhz instead of 266mhz, not too bad at all, esp in the short term.

Ensure you have reinstalled DX8.1, esp if you're running an older OS. You may need to run DXDIAG, go to Diplay Tab, DISABLE Direct3D Accel & CLOSE the app. RERUN DXDIAG & ENABLE Direct3D Accel. A click of the TEST button may show if this solves your partic quirk.

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

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 try setting PnP or reserving resources manually or resetting the PnP may also help. If you do change any BIOS settings, do keep 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
http://www.softnews.ro/public/cat/12/1/12-1-8.shtml (WORKING 09-2002)

Finally try different driver versions, with some nVidia cards older drivers like 21.83, 23.11, 27.xx, 29.xx can help.

 

[techietam]

The card is not Golden Sample version, is it?
This is a known issue with these cards.
Read these reviews
and you'll see what I am talking about.

Golden Sample version has better memory on it and doesn't
have those problems.

Sorry, man

 

[MrCairo]

Thank you both for the info...AnAndAustin, I'm going down your list and checking everything! I do believe that it's a "GoldenSample" card, I'll have to chech that when I get home from work today. I read the reviews at Newegg.com, which is where I purchased the card! At the time I purchased there wasn't the large amount of complaints there like now. I do get the "checkerboard" color pattern when I try to play 3D games though, only takes a few minutes before it happens. I have been running the card for about 4 months now in my other machine(win98)AK31 with the same cpu and ps and memory and it ran fine. Got like 8344 score on 3DMark2001 se with it. It's just since yesterday when I tried to run it in my new sys (AK35) WinXP Pro that I've had a problem with it? Go figure? I guess I could RMA it if I can find the paperwork, but I have a hunch it's not the card since it runs perfectly on the other board.
Could it be memory related? Like when I run a mem intensive program or game, could it be hitting a bad sector in the stick? I might swap out a few and test that today. Cooling is not a problem, cpu is at 38. I'll check my voltages and post them later today and see what you all think. Maybe I can boost it some from the bios.

Anyway thats again for the ideas, I'll keep hammering away at it till something happens and I have an answer!

Best Regards,

MrCairo