x800 Pro Crashing! Help!

[Peebs]

Just recently built a new system and so far I have loaded three games onto it. Battlefield: Vietnam, UT2K4, and City of Heroes.

Battlefield: Vietnam crashes within 10 minutes everytime I play it, and sometimes completely reboots my computer.

City of Heroes has never rebooted or crashed on me yet, but has some 'flashing' problems (some buildings flash everytime I take a step).

UT2K4 crashes periodically, sometimes I can play for over an hour with no crash and sometimes it happens within the first half hour. This has also crashed and rebooted my PC.

This PC was just built and I installed the latest ATi catalyst drivers (4.6). I have tried disabling 'fast write' but UT2k4 still crashed and rebooted my system. Whenever it crashes windows typically reports a driver error as the cause.

I have installed the latest VIA 4in1 drivers as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated!


My specs:
Asus A8V-Deluxe Via K8T800Pro Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard
AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+
ATI (Sapphire) Radeon X800 Pro 256 MB DDR
SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Corsair XMS 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200
Windows XP Pro

 

[edtsui]

the city of heros thing is documented, thats a driver issue for sure. dunno about the rest

 

[fsstrike]

No idea, but I have to comment on your system! Nice work, I'm looking into something like yours! Very Impressed over here! Sorry I cant help though :'(

 

[SgtZulu]

You did something wrong.

Nobody has trouble with ATI cards their drivers are perfect

</sarcasm>

 

[Luthien]

Yep, ATI drivers are so good you have to be an expert in using a dozen driver remover programs to get them to work right and you have to use countless driver revisions to play the game you want. One driver per game. Bahahahahahaha

Joking... kinda lol

 

[ChkSix]

LOL! :beer:

My own 9800Pro is testament of that! (not joking)

 

[eastley]

What PSU do you have running on that mighty fine system?
My Computer use to do the same thing but aint doe it for a while.

 

[Bucksnort]

If you have aggressive ram settings then put it back to normal performance setting in bios.

 

[nitromullet]

No experience with most of your hardware myself, but Anandtech had some stability issues with their first socket 939 tests as well - I think they decided it was due to voltage issues.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=2065&amp;p=4

I would suggest at least making sure you have the latest BIOS for your mobo and/or maybe messing with the voltages.

Nice rig, I hope you get this straightened out.

 

[Peebs]

Thanks for the kind words about the system. Haven't built a computer in a while, but I have to say it was a lot of fun. Now if I could just get this crash thing figured out...

The PSU I am using is a 'Thermaltake W0014 Silent Purepower 480W'. I thought that would be plenty of juice for the X800, but maybe I was wrong. I'll look into it.

As for memory settings, you are correct I did indeed change some memory settings (only to what my memory was rated for). I ran MemTest86 v3.1a and it didn't detect any problems, but I can try and set them back to the default to see if that fixes anything (I also enabled one of the memory options as it increased my bandwidth).

When my computer reboots from these games and restarts, the error report indicates that it was a driver error (although I'm not sure which one). I am assuming it is the video card, but I suppose the onboard sound card could also be to blame (or maybe the chipset, urgh).

I'll try lowering my memory settings. Would it be worth trying an older version of the catalyst drivers perhaps? The newest ones (4.6) are the only ones it has ever had, so I know it isn't a driver removal problem. I tried disabling 'fast write' as well (meh, you never know) but that didn't seem to help.

Thanks!

 

[squidly]

I am getting the same errors as well..> Even CS has crashed and a window pops up that says "ATI Video Is unrespsonsive"

I have the card RMA'd and it is going to outpost on monday. My first, and LAST ATI Card. BFG 6800 GT is pre ordered at Best Buy

 

[Insomniak]

Well it IS an ATi card....



/troll

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: squidly
I am getting the same errors as well..> Even CS has crashed and a window pops up that says "ATI Video Is unrespsonsive"

I have the card RMA'd and it is going to outpost on monday. My first, and LAST ATI Card. BFG 6800 GT is pre ordered at Best Buy

So you thought everyone was full of it when they said ATI has had, and obviously still has issues with compatability and drivers? Sorry you had to find out the hard way. I'm sure these are isolated incidents though and nobody else will have these problems. /sarcasm

Seriously though, bummer about your card. Congrats on the GT pre-order. I am envious.

 

[stnicralisk]

One time I had a problem with my geforce driver! I was 10.0 behind the current driver using the first driver with FX support!

I am sorry that you bought ATI and are experiencing problems.

However, I must ask if you did a clean install of windows before installing your card.

ACTUALLY I just read your post and realised you are using a VIA chipset. I owned one of those once. It would not allow me to have a soundcard and a graphics card installed at the same time without conflicts. Dump the VIA. I know you bought them because they get good fps with athlon 64 however I think if you do a search youll find their products are the source of many problems.

 

[Luthien]

Why does ATI have problems with VIA when Nvidia doesnt with any chipset. Also he built a new system so it is a fresh installed OS... My advice is to dump ATI and get a 6800 whatever.

 

[squidly]

I am also on a fresh install... fresh machine actaully... and a nvidia chipset Its the card guys... sorry.

 

[imported_Aelius]

Did you go beyond the default settings for your CPU in the BIOS?

If you Overclocked even just a bit it could easily cause instability since those VIA chipsets have a broken AGP/PCI lock and it can and will crash your system.

I'm still waiting for a stable nForce3 250GB chipset to come out. ABIT apparantly has stability issues with that chipset so stay far away from them.

It may be the video card. That is very possible, but it can still be other computer parts as well, including poor voltage in the rails from the PSU (documented problem that very rarely occurs with your PSU or any for that matter) that can cause this.

It can be defective parts on the motherboard itself (a bit less unlikely with ASUS but not impossible with the VIA combination).

It can be a poor BIOS build (or hardare issue) that isn't properly keeping settings. Check to make sure they are all as they should be. Go through everything.

All else fails grab a friend's compute that you know works and stick this video card into it to see if it acts up like yours. If so RMA it. At least you found the problem.

If it doesn't then you may have to put each part into your friends computer one at a time to test them to see which one fails.

Truly that is the only way you will be able to tell 100% what is causing the problem.

I would offer more suggestions but I gota go to work so I can do the same thing there. =)

Good luck.

P.S. Some people here are full of crap so don't listen to them. There are plenty of people whom have no problems with these video cards, but you are using a lot of early revision tech for socket 939 so its expected that some parts may not be what they should be for this new socket.

 

[darkoroje]

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem, there seems to be an incompatibility between VIA chipset and the video card. The way I fixed it was to switch AGP to 4x mode in the BIOS.

Regards,

Darko

 

[Peebs]

Thanks, I'll give that a try tonight!

Yesterday I actually had a chance to switch to the Catalyst 4.5 drivers. UT2K4 still crashed periodically BUT my computer never reboot itself like it did with the 4.6 drivers. Each time UT2K4 spit out an error and asked me to submit it over the web (not the Windows one). Although it didn't fix my problem, it certainly affected it. Maybe that would be a good clue for somebody out there trying to fix it.

What is it with VIA chipsets and messed up AGP settings anyway? Years ago I had a VIA based motherboard that had a similiar problem (2x to 4x or something), but the symptoms were different so I didn't even think of it (of couse, the OS was different as well).

 

[ChkSix]

Peebles,

This isn't a new problem. I can recall having the same issues when I was AMD/VIA two years ago with my 9700pro not working in 8x. Do you have the latests 4in1 drivers?

Mike

 

[PrayForDeath]

You can try the latest Omega drivers (omegadrivers.net)

 

[Peebs]

ChkSix,

Yes, I installed the latest Hyperion (4in1) drivers I found on the VIAArena site when I put the computer together about a week and a half ago. Hopefully they will be updating them soon because the latest seemed rather dated considering the age of the motherboard.

 

[Peebs]

Well, I tried reducing my AGP to 4x and I still crashed in UT2K4, and it also took down my system. Windows once again identified it as a device driver error.

I'm starting to run out of ideas. It's looking like I may be out of luck until VIA or ATI decides to fix their drivers. I'm hoping this isn't the case, but for the moment I'm dead in the water.

 

[Peebs]

Just wanted to update this post in case anybody is having the same CTD/lockup problem.

On June 18th ASUS released a BIOS update for the A8V motherboard (version 1006) that seems to have fixed my problem. I let UT2K4 run for close to 4 hours straight last night (spectating a bot match) without a crash. I haven't yet tried BF: Vietnam.

The release notes of the new BIOS indicated a stability fix for some AGP cards, so apparently it was not the Catalyst drivers after all.

 

[grogers]

Well, looks like I'm having the same problem as you even after updating to the 1006 BIOS. Our systems are almost the same. Differences being I have a 3800, 2 gig RAM and a 37gig Raptor HD. What I'm seeing when playing CoH is a 5-10 second pause and a few times my screen just goes black with horizontal lines and at this point I have to reset the computer. It's also done this while playing SWG and the WoW beta though in the WoW beta it could just be the game (and SWG too heh). I'm running Windows XP Pro/sp1 have the newest 4in1 drivers and the CAT 4.6 drivers for the X800 Pro.