radeon agp voltage?

[zCypher]

my sisters computer restarts randomly and im trying to determine the cause
i was fairly certain it was just the mobo thats bad but i want to make sure im not overlooking anything
ram tests seem to indicate the memory is ok
cpu is a xp2600 fan is right, temps are right it seems to be ok and it still restarts underclocked so...
oh yea and no components are overclocked
its a radeon 9200 128... msi k7n2 delta, 512 ddr400, lg burner, floppy and 40g hd i think

very plain comp.. i built it.. i've double triple quadruple checked everything countless times now... and i've had a similar prob with this mobo (i think it was a bad batch of mobos , i used to work at the shop i built this at).

anways... any suggestions would be helpful. i noticed the voltage in bios for agp was set not to auto... so what is the correct setting? I think it was at 1.5

thanks in advance! btw if i go in windows and change the option when it fails to not restart.. it doesn't restartr.. .but it gives me a blue stop screen. not very helpful mesaage either, just a bunch of letters and numbers, then memory dump or something dump at the bottom. it said to try changing video adapters... haven't had the chance though.

 

[Algere]

1.5 AFAIK

 

[zCypher]

Originally posted by: Algere
1.5 AFAIK

damn you i was hoping the voltage was just wrong and it would be an easy fix

 

[Insane3D]

Yes, 1.5v is the default voltage for the AGP spec. I have never seen higher or lower AGP voltage affect stability or aid in overclocking. I would look at other reasons for your stability issues. MSI mobo's have gone down hill the last few years, so I might start looking there first, especially since you have encountered a similar problem with this motherboard before.

 

[zCypher]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Yes, 1.5v is the default voltage for the AGP spec. I have never seen higher or lower AGP voltage affect stability or aid in overclocking. I would look at other reasons for your stability issues. MSI mobo's have gone down hill the last few years, so I might start looking there first, especially since you have encountered a similar problem with this motherboard before.

it seemed to have been a bad batch... I'd built countless systems with the Kt4v and K7n2 boards and they were all rock solid and very fast.

oh well ... any suggestions at this point? If it's the mobo like I suspected what would you recommend ? I'm alittle out of the loop.

 

[Insane3D]

Did this system work properly before? If it BSOD's and gives you a memory dump when loading XP, my guess is memory and/or CPU. If the CPU is not o/c'ed, you might want to try backing off on the memory timings and/or boosting the memory voltage a notch. Also, switching memory slots may help to. I've seen several MSI boards develop a bad memory slot.

 

[zCypher]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Did this system work properly before? If it BSOD's and gives you a memory dump when loading XP, my guess is memory and/or CPU. If the CPU is not o/c'ed, you might want to try backing off on the memory timings and/or boosting the memory voltage a notch. Also, switching memory slots may help to. I've seen several MSI boards develop a bad memory slot.

I've tried underclocking cpu, i've switched ram slots, i've tried lowering memory settings in bios

this system has done this since the day it was built. increasing the ram voltage might help you say?

 

[Insane3D]

Yeah, sometimes boards undervolt the memory a bit, and running a lot of ram like 1GB, it sometimes helps to give it a bit more juice. 2.6-2.7v are safe operating voltages, and shouldn't do any harm. Do you have any problems when installing XP, or just once it tries to boot. I'm starting to think it's a hardware conflict.

Also, you have the power connector for the 9800 Pro connected right?

 

[zCypher]

its a 9200SE
512MB system memory (ddr400)
i'll try the memory voltage

 

[Insane3D]

Ahhh...k. Just setup a NF2 system with a 9200 (non SE), so I know their is no inherent conflicts with those two. Another thing to try, put both the memory sticks near each other so it will run single channel mode...that might rule out a problem with the memory running dual channel. Also, have you tried to run mtestX86?

Ohhh, and sorry, I should have read more carefully, I thought you had said 9800.

 

[zCypher]

I wasn't sure if I had typed 9800 and i was too lazy to check so I just retyped 9200..

anyway I put agp at 1.6 and memory at 2.7 (I think mem was actually at 2.7 already... its the highest setting next to AUTO)
there is only one stick of 512MB ... ii hvae 3 memory slots. two purple and one green... ive only put it in the purple ones.

i ran a mem test in windows though.. for about half an hour, and it didn't have a prob

 

[zCypher]

another thing i forgot to mention ... it doesn't always just restart... i mean it always will end up restarting at one point or another, but sometimes it gives me the "this is a SERIOUS error" error ... as soon as xp boots. sometimes it doesn't do it but then happens after I load a program... half hte time i can't go more than 15-30min before a reboot but once i went 1-2hrs and it hadn't rebooted yet..

 

[Insane3D]

Sounds like some sort of hardware conflict or driver issue. So, you can get into Windows, ok. What drivers are you using for the radeon? Do you see any problems in the device manager?

 

[zCypher]

no device manager probs
i just ran burn in test by passmark software
it does a bunch of gay ass tests all at the same time .. what do u know the sound freezes (like stutters on the millisecond of sound it was on) and the screen goes black. frozen! woot.
the test did a whole .. couple of seconds before that happened.

lucky for me, the program tests EVERYTHING at the same time, so I have absolutely no idea where it failed or what caused it to fail.

any suggestions what program i should try out that's quick and free?

 

[zCypher]

wait a min i just noticed there is a device man thing .. universal serial bus (usb) controller, its a yellow exclamation
other than that thers a network disabled cause we have a real network card sitting in the pci slot.

 

[zCypher]

the display drivers should be the standard ati ones straight from their website. which reminds me i should update incase

 

[Insane3D]

It sounds like it might be a sound issue, also, you say you are using a network card in a PCI slot over the one one the board...any reason why? Also, if that is the case, you should probably not bother disabling it in the device manager, just disable it in the bios.

 

[zCypher]

no i think it is disabled in the bios and it showed up in the device manager.. i'll double check that though
ok i just updated the ATI driver to the latest catalyst or whatever its called. now its called radeon 9200 series before it was named asus radeon 9200 or something like that. maybe that's a good thing

my sister says it screws up a lot more when using p2p app and playing music. i'll run the test prog now that i changed display driver.. just to see

 

[zCypher]

hmmmm interesting... been running the test since my post and no problem yet...

 

[zCypher]

http://marc.unrealpc.net/testage.jpg

 

[zCypher]

http://marc.unrealpc.net/utnowork.jpg but ut didn't work..

http://marc.unrealpc.net/utnowork2.jpg .... tried again, it started to load and did this !

 

[Insane3D]

Did you update to DX9?

 

[zCypher]

i just did... it didn't help
it just BSOD'ed again... it said IRQL not less or equal or something like that. wtf?
i dont think it could be a software issue cause it screwed up before booting into windows a couple times

now i just got another bsod saying page fault in non paged area, and caused by win32k.sys

 

[Insane3D]

IRQ errors point to a hardware conflict or driver issue. The latest Radeon drivers require DX 9, and they really should be installed after[/B[ DX9 is installed. Can you try to do a fresh install again with minimal hardware?

 

[zCypher]

you mean wipe and redo XP etc?