KT7 and an overheating TNT2 Ultra

[Mag]

My damn computer's really annoying me. It locks up about 10 minutes in to any game that uses 3d acceleration. So I figure, hey, my TNT2 Ultra's probably overheating. I got slot 1 free, but I have two other PCI cards, an SB Live and a netelligent ethernet card. Neither will work in any slot other than 2 or 4. Does anyone know why this is? How to fix it? And barring that, anyone know how I can get more circulation to the vid card?

 

[Adul]

clock it down. i had to do that to my tnt2u guillemot card. it stable at 165 now, not the 175 it use to be at.

 

[Rellik]

U wrote: Neither will work in any
slot other than 2 or 4. Does anyone know why this is?

Well, the pci slots on a mainboard are given certain resources. These
resources can differ from the generation of boards, but most of the boards in the last 2 years have it this way:

There can be only 4 bus master capable devices in those slots at the same time. if a mb was equipped with 5 pci busmastering cards and used simultaniusly, it would shut down one of those cards.

The new MSI K7T master has 8 pci master config, so the 6 slots are fully usable...

Another problem is that each slot is given an irq. If there are irg conflicts, it may cause trouble with the card or windows wont detect it at all.

The pci stuff I mentioned first comes from the way the pci slots are configured on a mb. While there are for example 5 slots, there are
only 3 PCI BUSMASTER CHIPS)( they are not called like this, but im too tired now..read anands k7tmaster review and u will understand)

These 3 chips now are working like this: Slot 1 and 3 SHARE THE PCI RESOURCE. Chips 2 and 4 SHARE another. and so on... See? This explains
why cards would work in one, but not in another slot. And Sound and Networking cards can be busmaster capable. The soundblaster pci are
and the intel network cards are too..

hope this helps(check that review i mentioned, somewhere in the last part is a mention of the 8pci devices and the slots, )

 

[Budman]

Try it this way,AGP tnt2y(duh),PCI empty, PCI 2 Network card, PCI 3 SBLIVE!, that's my setup & they have their own irq.

 

[Mag]

That's the problem, right there. I've got TNT2 in AGP, empty PCI, ethernet, empty PCI, sblive. Everything _works_, but I think the video card's overheating. It stopped when I had both PCI slots beneath the AGP empty.

 

[Budman]

agp & the 1rst pci Share the same irq , pci 2 & 3 has it's own irq ,pci 4 shares with USB i think .

But this will not help if it's overheated,but it would help if you're getting ramdom lock-ups.

 

[ColdTech]

Slot fan under the AGP works great

 

[John P]

I had the same problem. Clocked the TNT2U down to 155mhz and it works great.