Serious Direct X 9 problem. Clueless here.

BadAcid

Member
Apr 10, 2004
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Here's the run down of games that don't work:
FarCry when water quality set to anything but Low, always crashes within minutes / seconds of gameplay. If water's set to low, crashes about 15 minutes into play.
World of Warcraft within minutes of play. Tried windowed mode with same results.
3DMark03 and 05: crashes
Rage3D Tweak CCC Edition's OC test crashes my system

Possible Pixel Shader / Direct X 9.0 problems?

Games that were broken but seem to work somewhat now:
Half-Life 2: always crashed until I installed CCC
Battlefield 2: Game seems unstable in general, crashing in the menu sometimes, or else in game.

Games that work fine:
WarCraft III (w/Frozen Throne)
Half-Life 1 mods (Natural Selection)
Doom 3 (a few timedemos run without problems.)
Any videos / flash / desktop stuff I normally do works.

When I say crash, it usually occurs the screen freezes and I get a sound loop. World of WarCraft seemed to give multiple VPU Recovery errors and then just ends up crashing. No artifacts, no major graphical anomalies, no warning of a crash.

Full system specs:
Coolermaster Centurion 5
Enermax EG565AX-VE FMA 2.0 - 535W Active PFC w/2x 6-pin PCI-e connectors (I've checked voltages after crashing, 3.3V=3.28V, 5V was slightly higher than 5.0V, 12V=12.22V voltages checked in motherboard BIOS, and I have this connected to the motherboard for fan control)
DFI LanParty nf4 Ultra-D (Driver conflict?)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice
4x512MB OCZ Premier PC3200 (@DDR400 stock and 2.5-3-3-8 timings)
Connect3D Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCI-express
120 GB WD EIDE HDD
300 GB SeaGate EIDE HDD
NEC ND-3540A DVD+/-RW DL

Windows 2000 Professional SP4
(I've tested FarCry 64-bit version on Windows XP x64 Pro, sound didn't work, but the game still crashed)
n-Force 4 6.66 Drivers

Nothing on my system is overclocked. (FSB at 200.9 MHz, CPU Voltage usually stays at 1.360V in CPU-Z

I've tried almost everything in the book and still come up with problems!
Catalyst 5.1 (CP), Omega Cat 5.6, Catalyst 5.7 (with CP and CCC)
I've RMAed the video card, thinking it was the problem, but the new one exhibits the SAME problems!
Catalyst A.I. Disabled and set to Advanced
VPU Recover enabled and disabled
Uninstalled nTune
Uninstalled nVidia PCI program
dxdiag.exe - passes all tests, even Direct X 9
Driver cleaned between each Catalyst installation.
Super-Pi 32M completed in about 50 minutes
re-installed Direct X 9.0c
Memtest86+ passed 7 times, no errors.

I'm frustrated and losing hope. This is my first time building a system, and I've put 1070$ into the system alone, not to mention my 19" LCD. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
 

magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
14
76
I was going to say sounds like the videocard....till you already RMAed it.

you can pass memtest and i'm ASSUMING you can pass prime95...which would mean it isn't the cpu/ram

to be honest...still sounds like the videocard. the games that run fine are the older ones~ the ones that don't push the hardware. but anything that pushes the hardware seems to die (check to see how long you can get that doom3 time demo to run. can yo uget a copy of the game from a friend, or download the demo and jack up graphics and report to see if there is a problem playing it within an hour)

See what happens then. Also, just for kicks maybe check the PCIE slot and make sure nothing looks too out of order or awkwardly bent or something...even though pc would most likely not work in that situation its still nice to check to be sure...
 

BadAcid

Member
Apr 10, 2004
84
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0
Everything looks A-OK with the card and the slot (my case is crowded as heck with wires, and the Northbridge fan blows over the video card)
Prime95 for an hour and 14 minutes before I stopped it, no errors / warnings, and my PC was quiet (Hard drives and CD-ROM make more noise). That's not a problem.
I found a problem on a probe provided with Rage3D tweak, it says I have multiple video cards installed (not counting VGASAVE). I don't think this problem has always been there, however.
 

imported_ArtVandalay

Senior member
Jul 19, 2005
694
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0
The two video cards thing is normal with ATI cards. Do you use Driver Cleaner before installing new drivers? Barring that, have you considered heat as a possible problem? Seems like only the really old or vpu-non-intensive games are the ones working ok for you; the ones that wouldn't tax the HSF very much.
 

BadAcid

Member
Apr 10, 2004
84
0
0
I don't think heat is an issue, I've checked all my temps. When I had ATI Tray it idles at like 48 degrees Celsius and hovered around 55 degrees under load. Doom III also runs perfectly for me (OpenGL game)
 

Andres3605

Senior member
Nov 14, 2004
927
0
71
it sounds like the video card, dont you have any friend with a Pcie card you can try?, have you tried formatting?, have you tried underclocking the video card?
 

TomKazansky

Golden Member
Sep 18, 2004
1,401
0
0
did u get a bios update? some people had nightmares before the bios update with venice on dx9 games
 

w00t

Diamond Member
Nov 5, 2004
5,545
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0
"4x512MB OCZ Premier PC3200 (@DDR400 stock and 2.5-3-3-8 timings)"

take out two stick's of your ram and change to 1T than see if games crash.
 

munchow2

Member
Aug 9, 2005
165
0
0
I'd recommend you do the bios update first. Try all the quick software solutions before formatting. If you get too frustrated just move your important stuff to another drive and reformat it.

I see you had nTune on your system. I personally had problems with that program and caused me to reformat because of it. Perhaps that is also the cause of your problem.
 

BadAcid

Member
Apr 10, 2004
84
0
0
OMG, I AM RETARDED!!!!!
Just ran FarCry w/ Very High Water Quality, got past the point where it would almost always crash, no problem!
Ran 3DMark03, no crash
Can't test World of WarCraft (Realm maintenance)
Rage3D's OC test thingie didn't crash.

what did it take?

A STUPID MOTHER EFFING BIOS FLASH!!!!

The reason why I didn't try this earlier?
I ordered this PC, with the exception of hard drives, case, and PSU, from monarchcomputer.com
I got the motherboard combo (free HL2 ^_^ ) which says they load the latest BIOS, well I ordered 7/11/05, so I figured I'd be able to run my 3000+ Venice no problems!
BIOS on the DFI? 3/23/05
grrrr........ I was a few days early.
But, WinFlash (no floppy drive HAHAHA) helped me successfully flash to the 6/23/05 date code BIOS, and everything is hunky-dorry (I hope, I'll update again later if I still get any crashes). THANK YOU GUYS!!!!

Now, to search for all the other stuff I messed with and change that back to default.