MSI 820 Geforce2 GTS crashing! Any ideas?

[jesterbot]

First of all, I'm not happy because the card was advertised as a 32MB GeForce2 GTS PRO card. Worse than that, the BOX also claims it as a PRO card, with 350MHz core and 400MHz memory! Yet inside, it seems to be a plain old Geforce2 GTS. =(

The thing is not overclocked, it stands at 200/333. But it still crashes Half-Life regularly, at any resolution. I get great framerates, but what's the point if it locks up after a bit?
I also managed to crash 3DMark2000 when running it at 1280x1024! This is bothering me - I'd say it was overheating or something, but the thing is running at default clock speeds!

The rest of my system info is as follows in case that helps:

Biostar AMD-750 MB (old school Athlon board)
Athlon 550 @ 750 (Slot A)
256MB PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
SoundBlaster Live! Value
Linksys Etherfast 10/100 LAN Card

Any idea what the deal is?

 

[billyjak]

I beleive the Pro card has 64 megs of memmory, could be wrong though, I think you've been taken.
I would return it and demand the Pro Card.

 

[Compellor]

It could be that the driving value is set to low in your system BIOS. Try setting it to "EA" (if possible). For stability, you may also need to set the card so it runs at 1X speed.

 

[jesterbot]

Ya I know! I didnt think Pro came in anything but a 64M flavor, but thought... maybe they've just cut RAM to save cost. It's blatant false advertising in my opinion. I cant even blame it on the reseller because they wrote exactly what the retail box claims!

I would return it, but the reseller not only will not cover shipping, but demands a 15-20% restocking fee. After forking up the money for that stuff, I would then have to turn around and spend another chunk of change on a new video card! Grrrr.... I'm at least going to call the reseller tomorrow and see what they'll do if anything. Worst case scenario, I'll hound MSI about falsely labeling their product. This is ridiculous!

Another problem... The few times Half-Life runs without crashing, it experiences mouse problems every now and then (the mouse pointer appears & flickers, the mouse stops responding for a few seconds, and then it kicks back in - but slighlty less sensitive each time)... and finally just stops responding, even in the the desktop when I close HL. I'm guessing this is only driver related and a different driver version might address this?