Epox 8KHA+ hangs with ATI Radeon 8500

[Per Hansson]

Ok, this time I'm going nuts, here is the deal:

When I ran the card in the Abit mobo the memory got as hot as 90°Celcius yes you read that right, 90C! That's about 194°Farenheit for you Americans "over there"

I don't know the temp of the GPU because the thermometer just showed "HHH" this means that the temperature was higher than what it could record, which is 100°C!!!

Now what you must understand is that the card really was completely stable at this temperature, I didn't see a single visual artefact and 44h of stability tests should be enough to prove that the card really is stable now shouldn't it?

But anyway:

I put back the card in my Epox mobo and the problem all of a sudden got even worse, more visual artefacts in 2D than ever before.

So I thought I'll see what "some" extra cooling can do, (I did try with a 120mm fan blowing air across the card as one of my first attempts at fixing this problem a month or so ago but it didn't help then)

Though this time I went "a wee bit higher" with my cooling ideas...

5cm above the card: 80mm Delta fan blowing 60cfm of air
5cm below the card: 120mm Y.S. Tech blowing 120cfm of air!
and from the front side blowing across the card: 220v Pabst fan blowing ca 100cfm of air.

There is also the 120mm Pabst fan blowing about 60cfm of air on the radiator on my watercooler, and my Enermax PSU has double fans to...

As you probably can guess my comp sounded "quite a bit now" I could actually hear it outside of our house!!!

After 6h there where no visual artefacts or crashes, after 9h it had crashed to the desktop, this I believe was not a fault of the GFX card though, just my high tweaked computer signing of...

So what does all this mean? Do I have to buy a small windtunnel to get my GFX card working on my Epox mobo but on the Abit it just runs forever with no extra cooling?

..It sure seems so...

Per Hansson; going to bed with yet another question in his mind, (and the bad feeling of our Swedish test in school tomorrow...)

 

[Per Hansson]

Today I tried to increase the voltage the memory and core gets, I increased memory from my previous 3,51v up to 3,73v (about 0,1v above recommendation)

And the core from 1,61 up to 1,74v which is exactl what it should get

This however didn't help, the card still crashes in a matter of seconds without my "windtunnel"...

 

[SuperCheetah]

I must say Per Hansson that you are one of the most dedicated people I know. I would have given up a long time ago if I were you, I get frustrated very easily.

I honestly can't believe the card ran at that temp for so long in your Abit board. Consider yourself lucky, most other cards would have probably fried.

Don't give up on this though, you've put way to much effort into to stop now. I'm still looking around for other people with a similar problem as yours, but they are few and far between. If I find anything I'll be sure to let you know.

 

[lokem]

Cheetah: I'm sure everyone will be as persistant as Hansson after spending your hard earned money on a piece of hardware and only finding out that it can't work as it should. There's nothing as frustrating as that

 

[Per Hansson]

...Yea, and I would send the thing back for an RMA if I could only figure out what it is that is faulty but it's as simple as this: I can't...

 

[Per Hansson]

I just started thinking (a first)

..and came to the conclusion that perhaps it's not the GFX card that is overheating, it might be something else in the comp...

I'm gonna do some more testing tonightand see what I conclude on...

 

[SuperCheetah]

My immediate reply to that would be that it is your chipset more than likely. Motherboard Monitor can tell you your chipset temp if you have a probe on board of course. Via chipsets are notorious though, it seems that you either get a good one or you get screwed big time. Thankfully I seem to be of the former.

 

[Per Hansson]

Ok, thanks for the "insider information"

I just went over to my cousin and tried out his RAM in my comp and viola; it crashed after a few seconds just as before...

Though I left my GFX card in his comp and borrowed his Geforce2 card, so now we are both going to "hard test" them and see what we conclude on...

 

[Per Hansson]

My first conclusion is this; the 2D picture quality of this card really sucks!!!

After just a half an hour my eyes are starting to hurt... Martin; I want my ATI card back

But on another sidenote I ran stability tests for 8 hours without a single crash...

Oh, and did I mention that I'm not using any extra cooling at all either, this really is wierd!

 

[D-bast]

Hi there!

After reading all your post and seeing the hard work you put in this what I can say is that I understand you perfectly and that I'm glad im not the only one having this trouble.
You see, I have an Epox 8KHA+ too, with a Radeon 8500 retail version. One thing I noticed was that it takes more time to crash in 3d games or apps when I put less aperture size and from all ive tried its the only thing that show me a change in how long it takes b4 my system crash.
Anyway, if you need a hand for a comparison of anything just tell me and ill be glad to do it. I'm getting desperate too you see =). I just dont know how you did those voltage test.

Some reslults I had in Quake 3 in 1024 32bits texture and color with AA set to Quality 4x:

with AGP4x 256 it hangs in about 2 min
with AGP2x 128 it last for about 15 min
and with AGP2x 64 megs it took about 45 min b4 crashing

all tested in the same levels with the same amount of bots

I've tried changing OS (Win98, winME, WinXP), different games(Quake3, UT, Anachronox,Max Payne), different settings (lots of them) and the stupid thing always end up by crashing... And it's always the same thing: the more visual effects I put in with the more aperture size, the faster it hangs.

I'm now trying to see if the mb memory settings would change anything in my results, downgrade my bios and see if the bug stop wich would surprise me and try to get an RMA from ATI after that to try out another card. The thing is, if its not the card in itself but the card with the motherboard that messes up im really clueless cuz I dont know what else to try.

Here's my config:

Antec SX840 400w
Athlon 1900+ XP
Epox EP-8KHA+
512 m. RAM DDR
Maxtor 80 gig ATA 133 7200rpm
LiteOn 40x12x48x CD-RW
DVD-rom LG 16x DVD
Guillemot Game Theater XP
1.44mb floppy...
ATI RAdeon 8500 Retail box

currently on Win98 first ed

One last thing... I've just tried with my memory at turbo mode while writing this post with AGP2x 64m and it crashed in 16 min. instead of 45min in normal mode... any1 have an idea about this? And remember, my system dosent crash with my geforce 256 ddr...

 

[Per Hansson]

Originally posted by D-bast
I just dont know how you did those voltage test.

Those are only for the very technically inclined of you.

The thing is that if you do it wrong you might fry the card...

First thing you need a Multimeter and then you set it for measuring a two digit voltage amount, now just make contact with the minus pole (-) to ground (the cards case screw will be fine) and the plus pole (+) to the positive leg on the capacitor (indicated on the page I also gave an URL to with yellow dots...)

If you are within the max limits of the card you are fine, if you aren't you should contact ATI and complain to them, doing the "mod" I did is extremley dangerous and voids the warranty, therefore I wont do any hand-holding here...

But basically what happens when you take a lead pen and draw a few lines on the resistance is that it doesn't reduce power as much as it's rated for (the lead conducts electricity...) and thus the capacitor will get more power and thus send more power to the core/memory...


And now lastly also a question for you D-bast, do you also get visual artefacts (like I described a few posts back)???

 

[D-bast]

Answer #123462

Yeah, I do get honrizontal artefact like anyone who had this trouble and like anyone who had this trouble I just sent back my card to ATI hoping to get a new one without any bugs. I've read a lot of post and most of them come to that conclusion and I heard from ppl owning this card AND the epox that this combo works if both cards are fine... just try downcloaking to 250 and do your test with AGP 4x 256 meg in quake 3 with all graphics pushed up. Mine used to hang aftre just 2 mins, I got it running forever! so I stopped it and sent back the card. =)

btw, the visual artefact were still there... Report of no more artefact from ppl who changed their card. Let's see. . .

 

[Per Hansson]

FIC has offered me to review their new AN17 KT333 based mainboard, and with some luck the ATI card will function perfectly on that, thus the article about ATI drivers is delayed untill I get that mobo...

So for now this case is closed, thanks to everyone who tried to help, it's just unfortunate that nothing seemed to get this combo running... (Epox 8KHA+ and ATI Radeon 8500)

 

[Per Hansson]

On a completley different topic; You might remember that I burned my first 8KHA+ when I tried to voltage mod it (look for the thread in the old forums)

Well I thought that I should try to bring life back into it but it seems to be impossible to get my hands on the required MOSFET.

The manufacturer is Fairchild Semiconductor and the name of the product is FQB60N03L

The product is listed as being in "Full Production" and with right; 6 of these are needed for every 8KHA+ mobo produced...

But still I've looked through a good portion of their listed resellers but none of them lists the MOSFET on their site...

So if anyone knows of a site that sells em be sure to tell me ;-)

 

[Per Hansson]

A small heads up on what's going on; When I looked at a really old Super Socket 7 mobo I have laying around here I found that it uses MOSFET's which are quite similar to the one on the 8KHA+ mobo...

The model of these are FDB6030L and when I compared it to the "correct" MOSFET their ratings are within 20% of each other...

I've already soldered it onto the 8KHA+ and run it completely bare, no funny smells or anything, and the MOSFET got a very nice temp of about 30C...

Later today a friend to me is coming over with a "Test bunny", his Duron 750 CPU, and well see if it blows or not