GeForce3 TI200 Problem

[nitrogen69]

I'm putting together my first computer (laugh here), and i just navigated my way through the realization that i got sold dead ram (enter warning against buying from sofistic.com here). I quickly alleviated the problem by getting some crucial ram (love these guys). I booted up the system (well, the mobo, the processor, and hsf, and the ram) and the led's on the mobo indicated that it made it past the ram check, and halted at the video initialization, obviously because i had left the vid card out until this point. So i drop in my MSI Geforce3 TI200, and boot up again. This time, it hangs at the ram check (according to the led's on the mobo) and does nothing. no beeping, nothing. I was wondering if there have been any issues with geforce3's doing this before? If so, please help. If not, still, any help would still be greatly appreciated. I can be reached here. Thanks a ton. Oh, btw, important thing, the specs of the system...

CPU: AMD AthlonXP 1800+
mobo: MSI K7T266-PRO
ram: Crucial DDR PC2100 2x256mb
hsf: thermaltake volcano 6cu+
video: MSI G3 TI200-pro (geforce3 ti200 if you can't figure it out)
Power Supply: Enermax 330 watts

the rest i'll leave off, seeing as it doesn't matter (yet). Oh, btw, the mobo and chip i won at the XPP giveaways by AMD in boston - any known issues with those packages? *shrug* i'm a total newbie when it comes to building comps from scratch, so feel free to educate me (even if you gotta throw in a couple "you're an idiot" comments). Any help is greatly appreciated. thanks.

-nitrogen69

 

[WarCon]

You could try upping the I/O voltage a bit, and maybe try turning the memory timings down all the way to see if it makes it past the memory check. If your getting video, but it locks at the memory check I would be quessing memory and since adding the video card increases the load on the I/O voltage, that might have something to do with the problem.

I have also read about the Enermax supplies having issues with processor's over 1.4ghz.

Good luck.

 

[nitrogen69]

as for your first suggestion (turning down timings and all that), i frankly have no idea about how to go about that. If you could gimme a very broad walk-through or something, that'd be great. As for the second idea, about the powersupply being the problem, is it a problem with not enough power? i'm really new to building my own computer, so any elaboration would be great. thanks again.

-nitrogen69

 

[WarCon]

I am not sure how your mobo labels it but mine labels it Bank X/X DRAM Timing and ranges from SDRAM 8/10ns to turbo in settings. Another control is the cycle length or CL and mine does 2 or 3(2 is more aggressive). I realize your mobo is DDR and will most likely not be labeled the same but the setting for memory is typically under the Advanced chipset features for that motherboard. Another setting is for the interleave level where no interleave is the lowest setting and 4way interleave is the highest.

I hope this helps.......

 

[KGB]

Have you tried booting with another video card?

 

[nitrogen69]

in regards to booting with another video card, i'm gonna try that when i get back to my other computer back on campus (i'm home for turkeyday). I have a geforce256 there (the first original geforce, nothing fance) so i'll give that a whirl. Hopefully it'll go work with the 256. But my question is, even if it does work with the 256, what then? Would i have to replace the vid card i bought? And on the flip side, if it doesn't work with another vid card, where would i go from there? Keep the info coming guys, it's a huge huge help.

Thanks,
-nitrogen69