Last night i installed an athlon 64 socket 754 cpu on an nForce3-250 based MB
(epox EP-8KDA3J and an A64 3000+ to be exact)
my temporary vid card is a radeon 7200
Just for kicks (and early verification of things working), i tried to boot into my previous kt266a based windows xp install............ this caused a blue screen. No biggie, i knew a switch in architecture should get a fresh install anyways.
So I reinstalled xp+sp1 successfully and booted into windows with the generic drivers microsoft provides on install. At this point I installed the complete package of the latest nforce drivers from nvidia. On reboot i got a quick bluescreen and an immediate reboot just as the windows logo screen appeared.
So I rebooted successfully into 'last known good configuation'.
I again install the nForce drivers, but this time I do them 1 part at a time. After trial and error, I found that the driver that will cause a blue screen is the GART driver.
Not knowing at all what a GART driver is, i researched and the conclusion i came up with is it maps system memory to the videocard when using AGP. Being that I am using an older videocard, i'm hoping that the problem is the system is using an agp frequency/mode that is not compatible with the card and hanging there when loading/initializing the gart drivers.
I knew that I should diagnose any memory problems as well, so I ran a dos memory tester which ran for 30 minutes and passed. I also left the system run overnight and performed routine tasks on it last evenings. This morning it was still running strong.
Does anyone have any experience/input with these issues? I'm trying to put together a test plan as tonight i'm going to a friends house to retrieve my gf6800 he was borrowing. I will install that card into my system. If it was a vidcard issue, hopefully that will solve it. I will also be working without internet access, and that is very aggravating when trying to resolve any system problems. Is there a program out there that will do motherboard diagnostics particulary for nforce and report any specific problems?
Another question.......this board came with onboard audio (Realtek ALC850 selectable 2 or 8-CH audio CODEC with SPDIF). During the nforce driver install, one of the options was the nforce audio driver. I assumed this would control my audio hardware, but the drivers said it could not find supported hardware. I referenced the mobo manual and it stated to install the ac97 audio drivers, which I did, and then the sound worked. However, nforce still doesn't see the hardware. From this I conclude my onboard audio isn't really 'nforce onboard audio'? Also, i have had a sound blaster live pci card since '99. How would this card compare in performance to the audio that is onboard?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
(epox EP-8KDA3J and an A64 3000+ to be exact)
my temporary vid card is a radeon 7200
Just for kicks (and early verification of things working), i tried to boot into my previous kt266a based windows xp install............ this caused a blue screen. No biggie, i knew a switch in architecture should get a fresh install anyways.
So I reinstalled xp+sp1 successfully and booted into windows with the generic drivers microsoft provides on install. At this point I installed the complete package of the latest nforce drivers from nvidia. On reboot i got a quick bluescreen and an immediate reboot just as the windows logo screen appeared.
So I rebooted successfully into 'last known good configuation'.
I again install the nForce drivers, but this time I do them 1 part at a time. After trial and error, I found that the driver that will cause a blue screen is the GART driver.
Not knowing at all what a GART driver is, i researched and the conclusion i came up with is it maps system memory to the videocard when using AGP. Being that I am using an older videocard, i'm hoping that the problem is the system is using an agp frequency/mode that is not compatible with the card and hanging there when loading/initializing the gart drivers.
I knew that I should diagnose any memory problems as well, so I ran a dos memory tester which ran for 30 minutes and passed. I also left the system run overnight and performed routine tasks on it last evenings. This morning it was still running strong.
Does anyone have any experience/input with these issues? I'm trying to put together a test plan as tonight i'm going to a friends house to retrieve my gf6800 he was borrowing. I will install that card into my system. If it was a vidcard issue, hopefully that will solve it. I will also be working without internet access, and that is very aggravating when trying to resolve any system problems. Is there a program out there that will do motherboard diagnostics particulary for nforce and report any specific problems?
Another question.......this board came with onboard audio (Realtek ALC850 selectable 2 or 8-CH audio CODEC with SPDIF). During the nforce driver install, one of the options was the nforce audio driver. I assumed this would control my audio hardware, but the drivers said it could not find supported hardware. I referenced the mobo manual and it stated to install the ac97 audio drivers, which I did, and then the sound worked. However, nforce still doesn't see the hardware. From this I conclude my onboard audio isn't really 'nforce onboard audio'? Also, i have had a sound blaster live pci card since '99. How would this card compare in performance to the audio that is onboard?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
