Sapphire Radeon 9550 - Driving me insane with System Hangs

[Sapphire]

Well I get 191Watts for your power requirements. What wattage is your PSU? You can read this off the label. See the example in my sig line below.

Have you set AGPX4 in Bios and turned off fast writes?
Did you update your chipset drivers and try another video driver from ATI? Sometimes u have to use a slightly older driver. You can find these at ATI's website.

My power supply is 330W, at least that's what I think it says..
I'll quote.. "+5V & +3.3V Combined load 215W."
"+5V & +3.3V & 12V Combined load 330W."

And no, how do I set it to AGP X4, or turn off Fastwrites? ANd what is it?

And yes, I've the latest drivers for my video card. And for my motherboard, I just installed what was on the CD that came with it. On the official ASUS website I could only find BIOS updates, which I have already gotten.

 

[SunshineBert]

Hi Guys,

A big hello from Mozambique. See if you can help out an illiterate in Africa.

I recently had to install a new videocard and bought a Club ATI Radeon 9550.
Simultaneaously I installed a new 160GB harddrive.

I have the same problem as many.
Sometimes the system hangs at the first mouse movement,
sometimes it hangs after 3 hour work, (not gaming, but simple graphics work).

So I think the problem is more a conflict, or combination rather than heat or powersupply. But who am I.

I'm not a gamer nor a specialist, but from your discussion I understand I'll have to become one in order to make this work.

Can anyone distil from the above discussion a simple "manual" what to verify and what will work or is that question as insane as the card.

My computer is already a little older, but was fine for the work i was doing when the video card started showing "lines" and I read on the web that the best upgrade for any system was a new videocard. Not mentioning possible difficulties.

From other discusssions I understood that any new card might cause different problems, so i rather give it a try to solve the problems with your help and become a specialist.

Motherboard: ACORP 694TA
Processor: Intel Celeron 1 GHz
Memory: 768Mb

Graphics card: Club ATI Radeon 9550, 256MB DDR 8XAGP
HD: ST340015A (40Mb)
Samsung SP1604N
DVD: BenQ DVD DD DW162

PSU: 250W

Hereunder a whole set of bios settings that are absolutely chinese to me:

DRAM timing by SPD enabled
DRAM Clock Host CLK
SDRAM Cycle length 3
Bank interleave disabled

Memory hole disabled
P2C/C2P Concurrency enabled
System BIOS Cacheble disabled
Video RAM Cacheble disabled
AGP Aperture 64M
AGP-4X mode enabled

AGP driving control auto
AGP Driving Value DA

AGP fast write disabled
CPU to PCI Write buffer disabled
PCI Dynamic busrsting disabled
PCI Master 0 WS write enabled
PCI delay transaction disabled
PCI#2 Access# retry disabled
AGP Master1 WS write disabled
AGP Master1 WS Read disabled

I did not update the BIOS and simply installed the card.
The card is AGP4X compatible, but I do not know if i should set a jumper or something.

A big elephant hug for who can help.


Greetings,


Bert

 

[kirock]

Hello Sunshine

Let's try some basic stuff first.
You need to update your mobo chipset drivers. You can download these from the manufacturers website. (do you know the make/model of your motherboard?) You can dwnload CPU-Z to gather that info.

Then go to ATI's website and dwnload the latest driver for the 9550 (the one that comes on the CD is already way outdated).

Finally go to PSUcalculator and calculate the to watts you need for your system. At 250W I think you need a new PSU too.
Edit: Added this quote from their website:

The total Watts is important but the Total Amperage Available on the +12V Rail(s) is the most important, followed by the +5V amperage and then the +3.3V amperage. Because of the increased power consumption of the new high-power video cards the recommended minimum for +12V is 26A, for SLI 35A.

To see watt amps are on your 12/5/3.3 volt outputs, you can read this off the label on the unit. Take the left side panel off the PC to see it. Click on the Label link below for an example. In that example the 12V has 28Amps out.


Finally read the BSOD links in my sig for some further insight into BSOD problems.

Cheers.

 

[SunshineBert]

Mobo files

Hi Kirock,


Sorry, Im waned you I'm illiterate.
I got stuck at your first advice.
I have downloaded the programs you suggested, gathered the info of my computer.

I've got an ACCORP International Motherboard, but I cannot find any ACCORP website. I only get referred to websites that charge me around 30 dollars for a program to update my bios. Is that what I should do?

Your BIOS Agent Results:
BIOS ID: 11/08/2001-694T/X-686B-6A6LJX3HC
OEM Sign-On: 694TA BIOS Ver:1.1 11/08/2001
BIOS Date: 11/08/01
BIOS Type: Award
Chipset: VIA 82C691 rev 196
Super I/O: VIA 686 rev 64 found at port 7h
OS: WinXP SP2
BIOS ROM Socket: Yes
BIOS ROM Size: 256K
Memory Installed: 512 MB
Memory Max: 2048 MB
CPU: Intel Celeron(TM) 1000 Mhz


Greetings,


Bert

 

[kirock]

Hello again SunshineBert,

The chipset drivers are the VIA chipset located HERE.
This is a pretty old mobo and the driver date for this is late 1999, I'm not sure this will even help you. You might search for other sites with VIA chipset driver updates for your Acorp-694TA mobo.

It might just be your PSU, at 250W and being a little old it's just putting out the power it use to. It's a guess I know, but it's a very common problem.

 

[SunshineBert]

VIA Chipset update

Hi Kirrock,

I'm starting to get some literacy on the issue.
The link you send me didn't work. The ACORP site is not accessible anymore.

I found chipset updates on www.viaarena.com
They have two updates. I think I need the "4in1" as they call it.

I also found the following info:

Northbridge VIA Apollo Pro rev. C4
Southbridge VIA VT82C686 rev. 40
Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Revision 2.0
AGP Transfer Rate 2x
AGP SBA supported, enabled
Memory Type SDRAM
Memory Size 768 MBytes
DRAM Interleave 4-way
CAS# 3.0
RAS# to CAS# 3
RAS# Precharge 3
Cycle Time (tRAS) 6

My card can handle AGP 8X and AGP 4X
When I go to my bios settings, i can enable AGP 4X.
But as i enable AGP 4X, the cpu-z still sees AGP 2X only.

Will the VIA chipset update make AGP4X available?
Can I uninstall any chipset update?
I do not want to make irrepairable damage, but rather look for an older viedo card somewhere.

Greetings,



Bert

 

[kirock]

AGP Transfer Rate 2x . So your chipset is only AGPX2 or at least the drivers are only able to run them at that. The link i sent you still works for me, here it is in the full address form:http://www.driverstock.com/Acorp-694TA-driver-download/16-9-227-35510/index.html

Copy and paste it into nav bar of your browser. The 4in1 drivers are the only one I found there too, so maybe the site you found is the same drivers anyway.

Just download those 4in1 drivers and unzip and run the exe install. U don't have to uninstall previous drivers for the chipset.

Hopefully your mobo is not really AGPX2, because then your can damage both your gfx card and motherboard. The voltage of AGP interface can be 3.0V, 1.5V and 0.8V depending on X2, X4, X8. Read HERE

Cheers.

 

[SunshineBert]

Cipsets found

Hi Kirock,


Your link does work, but it then refers to the ACORP website that i cannot access. Anyway the www.viaarena.com seems to be a good place for the VIA chipset updates.

So now I have installed the latest VIA 4in1 chipset update

There is still a so called hyperion pro option, but I'm not too sure if that is what is not too new for my board. If I try that one can I still roll back to the older one if it doesn't work?

I have also installed the latest Catalyst ATI drivers

My AGP is now running at 4X.

But screen still freezes. Sometimes upon startup, some times after hours.

Before I try out a power supply some more questions about the bios settings, should i set any one of these differently?

And what is the PCI bridge setting people are referring to as something that seemed to help them in the end?

Memory hole disabled
P2C/C2P Concurrency enabled
System BIOS Cacheble disabled
Video RAM Cacheble disabled

AGP Aperture 64M
AGP-4X mode enabled

AGP driving control auto
AGP Driving Value DA

AGP fast write disabled
CPU to PCI Write buffer disabled
PCI Dynamic busrsting disabled

PCI Master 0 WS write enabled
PCI delay transaction disabled
PCI#2 Access# retry disabled
AGP Master1 WS write disabled
AGP Master1 WS Read disabled

Thanks so far.

Sunshine_Bert

 

[SunshineBert]

Loosing faith

Ok.

Now i'm about to throw the card away or to buy a new Mobo.
After I installed the mobo drivers and the latest ATI drivers, it first worked fine.

The next day however, the compu would freeze or black out after the windows start up screen. I didn't get it started again for a week, until today.

I decided to check the power consumption flaw.
I took out all my cards (networking, parralel printer card, usb card, etc.)
I also disconnected all my periphericals (DVD writer, 2nd hard drive) so my power consumption would be a minimum.

I was running a naked mobo, with only boot HDD, the AGP card, a keyboard and a mouse. Everything else was physically disconnected.

I also uninstalled all drivers and my antivirus programme and reinstaled everything (except for the AV).

My compu would start and work over and over again for 5 times in a row.
It didn't start once in the last week.

I put the parellel port card back in on the motherboard and it wouldn't start. Horay, I found the concflict I thought. It must be, as Kirock had said, the power consumption on the mobo.

So I took it out again, convinced that my mobo would start.
Wrong, I was back to zero.

It won't pas the Windows start-up screen. and then return a black and white stripes pattern, or a black screen.

Anymore ideas?

Bert


.

 

[mailpup]

It might be that the power supply is not just weak but it might be failing so the subtraction and addition of components do not give consistent results.

 

[kirock]

I agree, sounds like the Power supply is dieing. A fairly decent one with 400Watts is under $40. It's very common after upgrading a video card to max out the PSU. I think you said earlier you had only a 200W PSU, which is pretty tiny for most PC's today.

 

[SunshineBert]

All working fine, but ...

Hi Thanks to everyone that has helped me through this. Especially Kirrock.
I got finally everything to work. Still do not know what the problem exactly was, but here is my journey for whom it might help.

So after upgrading the chipset drivers and installing the latest video card driver, I got still had a problem.

The problem actually seemed to be anotherone. Before it would freeze sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after a few hours. Now all of a sudden it would freeze after the windows start-up screen.

I installed a new 530W (had a 250W) PSU and the problem remained exactly the same. By the way, I found out that the net was only giving us 170-180 Volts instead of the promissed 220V. So for all africans among us check your power socket voltage!

Now I started to think that I maybe had two different problems at hand and started to doubt my windows installation.

Last Saturday, I found out that my comp would start in the Save mode, but not in the normal mode.

I found in my device driver, under network adapters, a series of devices that are not there: direct paralel and several WAN miniport (IP, PPOOE, etc.)

I also found in the Services tab a file ANIWZCSd service.

I tried to uninstall and disable, but that was not possible.
I do not know what I did, but suddenly the adapters had disappeared and everything worked fine.

The next day my compu had the same problem again. It would start in save mode, but freeze in normal mode. And the network adapters were there again.

No matter what I tried, i couldn't convice them to leave my compu.

Finally I remeberred that i could do a system restore. I restored my system back to last saturday and all works fine now.

I have disabled the ANIWZCSd service in the tab and that is it.

I have three compu's linked up via a wireless D-link router. But two are actually not wireless and have a normal ethernet card and cable. Also the one that was giving me trouble.

My other compu that is also linked by a cable to the router doesn't show the ANIWZCSd application and the networkadapters.

I'll visit another post to find out about this problem.

Once more. THANKS from a warm Maputo.