Strange Video Card Problems

[whalen]

Ok, you can see my setup in my signature. The problem started one morning when I booted into win98se for a game of quakeIII. I was moving along, when all of a sudden, the game locked. I rebooted my computer, booted win98, ran a timedemo....locked again. It's kinda funny because my system has been running with this configuration for 6 mo. without any locks in quake. Thinking I may have hosed my Quake install, i reinstalled quake to no avail. Still locks after about 15min. At this point, i was pretty ticked off, so I booted into trusty ol' win2k........and it says something about not being able to log in user and something about the display...i can't remember it exactly. I figured now was the time for a format.

After the format and the install of 98/2k, I loaded quake and it ran the timedemo's, but I got about 20 fps slower than I previously had gotten. All the via 4-1 and det. 3 drivers had been loaded, just as before. Even when overclocked, i'd get the same thing as stock core/mem. Quake worked for about a day, but today, Counter-strike locked up on me, and my computer suddenly rebooted in the middle of some casual internet surfing!?!?

I'm thinking either the video card or something w/ the motherboard's AGP may be messed up, but I'm not sure.

Thanks in advance,
Ryan

 

[Vinny N]

Whoah...before any reformatting, did you try setting your CPU back down to normal, and your video card too if it was overclocked?

What about your powersupply? or the power in the building, could it have been a couple of brownouts or sags in the recent day(s)?

 

[whalen]

Yeah, forgot to meantion that I tried both of those things. I'm running the video at default right now, and counter-strike locked up earlier and my computer suddenly rebooted while browsing the net. I haven't really tested too much with the cpu at default speed, but it seems more like a video problem. I'll give it a whirl though.

Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated!

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There hasn't been any power outages recently, and I'm not sure about the powersupply. I could see a bad powersupply causing the random reboots, but not a drop of 20 fps and 3d lockups suddenly. I could be wrong though.

Ryan

 

[Vinny N]

Are you using the reference drivers for the Geforce?...

I remember something about the Asus, when using its own drivers+software, automatically down clocks the card when gets too hot...maybe it's overheating (causing lockups) but also because of the overheating the card drops the clock rate of the core and mem, dropping framerates? A stretch yes

 

[whalen]

Nope sorry...using detonator 3 6.something I've tried several flavors, and still the same result.

 

[whalen]

Ok, I went into the bios and sent my CPU to default speed and voltage, my memory to cas3 133...Everything is at default.

I ran some Q3A timedemos and found an interesting result....At the fastest setting, I get 70 fps. Then, if I set it at High Quality@1024x768, I get 65 fps!!! What's the deal. Is it my CPU?

I was getting quite tired of this ordeal, so I shut down the thing and went to sleep....only to wake up to the sound of my system powering on!!! First random reboots, now mid-night powerons!!!

 

[Vinny N]

It'd be good to have more signs of bad power supply rather than jump from cpu to video card, or even motherboard...

Everything is at default? Does that turn on some alarm that makes the system power on at a certain time?

 

[whalen]

No, the CPU and video card's are not overclocked (at their default speeds). This is the thing. I just cant believe that a Power Supply could cause drops in FPS, or even lockups ONLY in 3D apps. The random reboots and starting up in the middle of the night sound like a p/s problem, but I cant see how the power supply could be related to all of them. I agree with you though, that the power supply is the most likely problem. When i get my new Antec SX380 in a few days, i'll use that power supply in my main system and see if that helps. I'm also getting the Gladiac GTS when it gets off backorder from buy.com so i can test to see if its the video card then.....Any other ideas/comments?

 

[Vinny N]

Don't discount a bad PS causing all sorts of weird things. It's usually things like 3d apps, or use of the video card that draws a lot of power. Bad PSs can cause floppy drives to appear bad, etc...

Yeah I'm waiting on one of those Gladiacs as well...

No other ideas for the time being, hope that powersupply from the SX830 works out.

 

[whalen]

Thanks for all your help man. GLADIAC GTS 4 LIFE!!!!

 

[Yknot]

Back up there! "... now mid-night powerons!!!"

'Sounds like an indictment of the turn-on switch circuit -- either on the M/B or the wire & button. A P/S shouldn't be capable of causing a poweron, right? Nor should the RAM or Video card or anything else I can think of save the M/B power-on circuit. Even a weak P/S shouldn't have problems maintaining the voltage-levels of a computer that's turned off -- that's only supporting the poweron circuitry.

Sadly, the M/B seems a more likely culprit than either wiring or switch. Testing the switch and wire is trivial, however: just boot, then pull the switch-wire off the M/B, right? (It's normally "open", so pulling it just leaves the circuit open and the wire and switch out of the loop.) If your crashes are predictable ("within N minutes&quot the wire and switch aren't part of the problem if you can run 10xN minutes w/o a problem.

With my A-Bit boards, if the M/B appeared responsible I'd set the M/B to "ignore the power switch" as that -might- let me ignore the problem for awhile -- one can still hold the button in for 5 seconds to use it.

Good luck... hope the above made sense...

 

[whalen]

No, there's no set amt. of time that the computer will restart. Could you clarify what disconnecting the power switch would do? How does that relate to my video card problems or lockups?

 

[jugornot]

It does make sense of the ps causing a night turn on. Many atx mb can turn on power by just hitting some keys. The smart ps supplies 5v to the mb at all times and when a couple of keys are hit the transition or sagging of the 5v power turns on the ps. Sort of like a real deep sleep mode. So it seems to me I would try another ps. The graphic cards also draw much more power in 3d than 2d. Just give it a try.

 

[whalen]

I agree. Most of the time when I shutdown the computer, the num lock etc. keys will stay lit on the keyboard, indicating a small flow of power from the computer. Last night however, all the lights turned off....no midnight power on!!! My power supply must be getting flaky.