GeForce memory fried?

[mesonw]

I was wondering if anyone had anything enlightening to say on this:

After putting my GeForce DDR into my new motherboard - it now fails on (virtually) EVERY D3D game in some way and yet OpenGL games run fine.

Symptoms:
UTournament-engined games in D3D ALL crash (with D3D error) within a few seconds of starting up UNLESS they're set above 1024x768x32 (and then there are NO animations on animated textures), OR set to use AGP textures. Colin McRae 2 crashes if Car Detail set to high. F1GP3 crashes while doing a gfx calibration. ProjectIGI crashes the moment you take control. NeedforSpeedPorsche2000 crashes to the desktop before starting the actual game. RallyChamp2000 has wrong textures. Half-Life has no decals whatsoever (haven't tried for long enough to see if crashes), but is fine in OpenGL. Quake3 never crashes. UTournament is fine in OpenGL.

My machine:
Athlon 1.4g (266) not o/c'd
ASUS A7V133 m/b
CLabs AnnihilatorPro (ie.GF256DDR) not o/c'd
256mb PC133
46gb ATA-100 (Promise controller) Maxtor HD
6.8gb ATA-66 (oddly at 33) Maxtor HD
MonsterMX300 sound card (Vortex2)
OS: Win98SE

I've tried (wait for it!): -

The obvious: DX7.0, 7.1, 8.0, 8.0a; Detonator 5.16,5.32,6.11,6.18,6.32,6.34,7.17,12.41; VIA4in1 4.24 (came w/ m/b), 4.25, 4.28, 4.29, 4.32v; reinstalling OS; flashing m/b to latest BIOS; reseating gfx card.

The possible: setting AGP to 1x,2x,4x; disabling FastWrites; disabling Sidebanding; turning off ALL power management; making sure NO other programs are running in bg; setting desktop to diff. depths/res; dis/enabling vsync; enabling alt.depthbuffer method.

The arcane: dropping CPU and mem to 100, dropping CPU but keeping mem at 133, dropping both to 95, pushing both up to 140 (and a few in between); enabling/disabling ALL BIOS options; altering Pstrength and NStrength of AGP bus; installing games on different hard drive.

The only difference I can make is to plug in my old TNT, which has no problems (apart from an obvious lack of speed!). Oh, and Win88 (1st ed) is no good, as couldn't detect USB at 133fsb. And ME was FAR too slow in UT.

And my usual retailer can't get hold of GF3's until late this month

 

[MCS]

Rather than do ALL THAT I would just try the card in another PC...

 

[DARRIN]

<< Rather than do ALL THAT I would just try the card in another PC... >>



I agree. It could be a conflict with something else. You tried removing all other cards and trying it?



<< And my usual retailer can't get hold of GF3's until late this month >>



Order it.

 

[mesonw]

<< I agree. It could be a conflict with something else. You tried removing all other cards and trying it? >>



To be honest I haven't tried that - I think I'd convinced myself any hardware conflict would cause problems in OpenGL and normal 2d operations too - but I'll give that a go tonight. I feel silly now as that should have appeared under my &quot;Obvious&quot; section



<< Order it. >>



I'm after an ELSAGladiac920 (my usual source will do one £50 cheaper than elsewhere!) - which seems to be hard to get hold of in the UK at the moment.

 

[MichaelD]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is your power supply. Do you have a decent one? You are already sucking up a lot of juice with that 1.4GHz TBird; a weak PS could be the prob. Definitely try the card in another machine if possible. If not possible, just go buy another card and try it out. If the new card doesn't work either, immediately return it. All you waste is a trip to BestBuy or Fry's or whatever....not the &quot;best business practice&quot;, but we do what we have to.

 

[MCS]

<< I'm after an ELSAGladiac920 (my usual source will do one £50 cheaper than elsewhere!) - which seems to be hard to get hold of in the UK at the moment. >>



Try for Novatech for the Elsa card. I live right near them

 

[mesonw]

<< One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is your power supply. Do you have a decent one? You are already sucking up a lot of juice with that 1.4GHz TBird; a weak PS could be the prob. Definitely try the card in another machine if possible. If not possible, just go buy another card and try it out. If the new card doesn't work either, immediately return it. All you waste is a trip to BestBuy or Fry's or whatever....not the &quot;best business practice&quot;, but we do what we have to. >>



I did kind of wonder about that. I've got an AMD approved 300w'er, but wouldn't the problem manifest itself rather more obviously. Especially as I've tried dropping my processor to well below 1gig (and my prev cpu - a 650 - was happy with it)?

I've just moved house and consequently I don't know anyone to pass my card onto yet (and it means being without it for a night or two !!!!)

MCS - cheers for the link. I'll give them a ring so check their availability.