3D Graphics Mystery

[sel2002]

July 5, 2004

System:
AMD Athlon 3200XP+ (2.2GHz - Barton)
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe Motherboard
- 400MHz FSB
- nForce2 chipset
- Dual DDR 400
Corsair TwinX1024-3200C2PT RAM (2x512)
PNY GeForce FX 5900 AGP (128MB DDR)
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS
(2) 80GB Maxtor SATA drives (Raid 0)
Mitsumi 1.44 floppy drive
Sony DWU18A DVD +/- RW 8X
Microsoft Keyboard and IR Mouse
Antec 1080AMG w/420 watt true pwr supply
Windows XP Professional w/ SP1

Patches:
ASUS BIOS 1011
Current nVidia nVidia GForce2 driver (WHQL)
nVidia graphics driver 53.03
MS DirectX 9.0b

Problem:
Originally I had an ATI Radeon AIW 9800 Pro graphics card installed. Windows Desktop viewing and television viewing

worked fine; however when running MS Flight Simulator 2004 or Rainbow Six games the system would crash. Either a bluescreen or just exiting back to the desktop. Sometimes it would note there was a serious error and it wanted to send a report to Microsoft. PC is not connected yet so I've never sent a report.

Replaced the ATI graphics card with a PNY GeForce FX 5900 and completely rebuilt the OS. Again Windows Desktop viewing was okay, however MS Flightsim 2004 and Comanche 4 games would run for about a minute and then crash giving either a bluescreen or error report.

Troubleshooting:
I have removed the SoundBlaster card using instead the onboard audio, and then rebuilt everything - still have same problems. Also I've tried either RAM stick by itself to no avail.

A local PC shop performed diagnosis and concluded that both sticks of RAM were bad or incompatible and that the system worked okay with one of their 512MB RAM sticks and their GeForce 4 graphics board. Though with their RAM and their FX5900 card the system still would not work. They suggest new RAM is needed and that either the MB is incompatible with the FX 5900 card or MS FS 2004 is not compatible with the FX 5900 (not likely).

Conclusion:
The prospect of 'dumbing-down' the graphics card is not an option since this machines primary purpose is to run MS FS
2004. A high-performance graphics card is what is needed for this type of simming. Also, I was under the impression that all of these components are fairly high-end / high-quality, so running a lower-end graphics solution is something of a waste.
I suppose the Corsair RAM could be 'too' tweaked, if so the RAM can be replaced easily enough. Why does the system crash in 3D games? The Antec 420 watts truePower should be enough. Could this be BIOS settings?

I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.
John

 

[BrownPaper]

What are the memory timings settings in the BIOS?

Too aggressive ram timings can cause crashes. Also, maybe raise the Vdimm a little bit to 2.7 volts.

Btw, could you post the specific error message you got when WinXP bluescreened? It can help us identify the problem.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you put in the extra power-cable to feed that card?

I've also read that the cooler is not making contact very well with the GPU. Perhaps overheating because of this?

Have you installed DirectX9.0b?

BTW Welcome to TechSpot

 

[lf036447]

hello,

The blue screening could be a wide range of issues. Faulty CDrom, Faulty Hardisk. Ram is normally easy to figure out. So i wouldnt think that is the cause. An extra power cable for a Nvidia 5900 is not required. Its one of the lowest cards nvidia do.

Try swapping out the Hardisk, Cdrom and floppy drive to see what happens. When you say goes back to the desktop. Do you mean Flightsim crashes?

I also dont think the ram is to high specc for your motherboard as asus are normally alright.

i would definetly recommend getting a better GFX card. anything below a 8800 is pointless. then again if your still running a single 32bit cpu, is it worth it?

Try looking through your event viewer. that can give some good clues. also look for conflicts in your device manager.

 

[LNCPapa]

Wow - we really need to do something about the resurrection of 5 year old threads.