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K8T800 causing Radeon 9700 Pro heat problems?

A

alexrolko

Junior Member
First time posting here, so don't flame me guys.


First off, I have NOT OC'ed anything yet. And just about every setting is at default settings/speeds. And I consider myself a pretty computer savvy guy. I just did an upgrade on my main gaming box, and I bought:

ASUS K8V Deluxe
Athlon 64 3200+
OCZ EL 512mb PC3200 (DDR400)

and a nice new case... (not aluminum 🙁 ) anyway. And I have my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro i got awhile back. And was running fine in my old P3 1Ghz box at 4xAGP. (new box using an Enermax 300watt PSU by the way...)

I did a fresh install of Windows 2000 Pro SP4 on the new Box. Drivers: Catalyst 4.3's, Hyperion 4in1 4.51 And i updated the BIOS to 1005. Everything was fine, till I started up 3DMark 03 and tried to bench it. Somewhere half-way thru the first test the video locked up, I rebooted. I tried benching again and it happened again roughly around the same spot, this time VPU recover worked, and I was back in the desktop. I thought maybe it was limited to just 3DMark 03, but I threw on FarCry, and the screen locked up again a few mins in. Same thing happened with 3DMark 2001SE. There were no visual artifacts or anything of the sort before the lock-ups... But i was running GTA: Vice City fine for 2 hours with no lockups... so i'm at a loss.

I thought it was maybe the drivers, tryed 4.2's and then 4.4's and tryed some older 4in1's on the ASUS CD, still the same thing. Everything is running cool, except my Radeon which was pretty hot... so i used powerstrip to underclock it to 270/280 and i was able to bench with 3DMark 2001SE all the way thru? And was able to play FarCry several times without any lockups till it happened even at the lower speeds.

Earlier I tried setting the AGP in the BIOS to 4x only and at stock speeds i was able to run the full bench in 3DMark 2001SE. (18K score 🙂 ) And play FarCry and benched again... and all was fine. Then i tried 3DMark 03 and during the bench at CPU Test 1 the video locked up again. but VPU recover came in and got me back on my feet. During that session i got the temps on my card, the backside of the core was at 61C/141F !! and worse the ram was 69C/156F ... the card was SERIOUSLY HOT. but the bench finished and i got a mild score. (5200 :frown: ) I ran 3dMark 03 again and it locked up in the first 2000 frames of test 1.



So i don't know if my Radeon is screwed up?
Or if my Radeon and K8T800 Chipset don't want to play nice?
Is the card getting too much voltage? pushing up the wattage making it overheat?
Not enough power?
Something with Windows 2000 causing this?


So does anyone have any ideas? any suggestions? or knows what the heck is going on? I'd like to think i could get this solved without having to call up ATI and have to deal with the customer service! and or getting a brand new video card... 🙁


Thanks, Alex.
 
Er, call me stupid if you want, but running an Athlon64 AND a Radeon 9700 on a 300Watt PSU is just plain daft. The Athlon64 sucks waaaay more juice compared to your old Processor, thats why you get instability I would say. Give yourself a treat, and a new 400-450Watt Antec/Enermax or whatever PSU.

Edit: I sould read all of a post before I reply, lol - bad habit... If the cards getting that hot sounds like the card may be at fault, but I would suspect that your Athlon64 is heating up the card actually....
 
Thanks Guys. Sorry about the long post, tried to get everything across.

I'll try out a new 400Watt. But like i said everything was running pretty cool except my radeon. my Athlon 64 was only pushing 45C under load.

Also what would you guys think about if i got heatpipe cooler the Giant II or Giant III from Thermaltake? Waste? Or maybe some other bigger cooler than the stock?
 
I hate to bump, and i'm not sure if this is allowed here on the forums.


But would PSU be the only real factor in all this? anyone else have a say? anyone have a simular system setup and they don't have a problem?
 
Why it sounds like a psu wattage problem:

1)Radeon Didn't overheat previously
2)From a cold start computer locks up when running 3dBenchmarking utility

Its very unlikely that a mobo would cause a video card to overheat. Overheating would
be caused by poor ventillation, bad heatsink contact, or OC'ing. the mobo agp settings
if within stock will not cause the overheating. Further it should take some time for the
video card to overheat when stressed in a benchmarking utility. Freezing or locking immediately
in the beginning of a bench, indicates that when the 3d routines were called there was an error most likely due to
insufficient power being supplied.

Also your system specs certainly indicate a lack of psu wattage needed to run those devices.
A suggestion before you buy a new PSU would be to make sure that line to your Radeon doesn't
have any other devices on it, in order to maximize the power available to the card.
 
I also suspect that its a PSU problem. I have almost the same config (K8T800 + 9700Pro) running w/ a Enermax 465w PSU and it works just fine (unless I OC the snap out of it 😉 ).
 
I know you tried already but early 9700 Pro's don't work well with agp 8x (the first run of em apparantly, try rage3d forums for more info). Also try turning fast writes off and a new psu is a good idea. May also want a better cooler and ramsinks on that card, tr a vga silencer maybe. 60+ Celsius on a gpu isn't anything extreme though.

Some people on rage3d have documented a problem with crashes/vpurecover errors that's related to the 9500/9700 and 4.x series of drivers. A lot of people had problems with CoD and had to revert to 3.1 cats which solved the problem, you seem to have a slightly different problem though but you can try the 3.1 cats anyway.
 
Thanks all.

I spent a few hours trying to calculate the wattage being used. how much each rail uses... and it seems that's it's the reason. You're all right. (should of figured it out myself 😛 )

I purchased my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro last spring/summer (just around the time they released the 9800 series) so unless i was given pretty old stock my card's revision seems to be fine. I'll be testing it in a friends box, Athlon 2500+, Asus A7N8X Deluxe, and test his card 9800XT in my box to confirm things. I'm a little short on cash since the purchase of everything else. So i want to get things right.


Thanks again all.
 
Download a hardware monitor, works like a charm. My K8T came with Asus Probe with the Software CD it comes with.
 
Originally posted by: alexrolko
I'll try out a new 400Watt. But like i said everything was running pretty cool except my radeon. my Athlon 64 was only pushing 45C under load.
Click to expand...

Ok, look, as far as I know, your Athlon 64 no matter what temperature it is will be drawing anywhere up to like 90Watts from your PSU, depending upon the load it has, and as your load increases (ie. benchmark), the less power is avilable to your Radeon card, ergo, card fails.
 
Old 9700 Pros have an issue running at 8X AGP. Try dropping to 4X AGP and raising your AGP voltage to 1.7, if you can.
 
Hey guys

I've come to the conclusion after borrowing my friends box (Asus A7N8X Deluxe, Athlon 2500+, Radeon 9800XT) that my Radeon 9700 Pro is definatly overheating, and also it seems that it maybe 8x AGP may be a factor as well. (though i'm still not sure cause the overheating might be the reason for all the lockups) And also that maybe the K8T800 chipset (ASUS K8V Deluxe) is also a cause of my problems. It's not a power issue for sure, with an Enermax 350watt PSU with only 1hdd, the motherboard and the video card plugged in it still was locking up.

Anyway I switched our Radeon's up and mine ran a little more stable in his Box at 8x AGP but it was still running pretty hot and locked up still. But VPU Recover worked the few times my card did lock up in his box. But i was able to get thru 2 benches and get a score while the 3rd and 4th were just complete lockup's.

But here's the funny thing, my buddies Radeon 9800XT did lockup in my machine. During the 2nd run of 3DMark 03 (build 3.4) 4.3 Cat's... it happened breifly. and on the 3rd run it fully happened where the machine needed to be rebooted. but the 4th run was fine. Which is why i suspect the K8T800 chipset. Or maybe the mboard itself. (Maybe something bad happened during the flash process even though everything was reported fine? and the computer still runs. i just don't know)


So i'm going to be doing a bit more testing, and i'll get a new cooler for my 9700Pro and see if my card lock's up anymore. Any more comments?

Also any suggestions on a new cooler for my card? reply here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1291022&STARTPAGE=1&zb=416929
 
I am having ZERO problems with my ATI 9700 ( 8x agp ) and Asus K8V

Have you tried different ram or power supply ?
 
Yes, EARLY versions of the 9700 Pro have 8X issues, and ATi has a knowledge-base article on it.
 
i'll know once and for all if i install a new cooler on my card. but if u guys didn't see... my friends Radeon 9800XT locked up as well in my system...

But no i haven't tried other RAM. but i have played with some other power supplies.

I'll keep playing around. Also i might give ATI a call or even a visit to their headquarters since i'm only a 30-40 min drive away.
 
Originally posted by: Cat
Yes, EARLY versions of the 9700 Pro have 8X issues, and ATi has a knowledge-base article on it.
Click to expand...

I've looked around the ATI website and can't seem to find any real informatio on what you've described.
 
Try testing your memory with memtest86. Also sometimes the R300 core radeons have trouble
sometimes with 4.* series drivers. Try using the 3.10 catalysts.
 
Thanks everyone.

I've got all my problems solved. It was a heat issue all along. And not enough voltage to the AGP. 1.7v at 8x AGP.



Problem's solved.
 
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