Brimwolf

Ok , Hello everyone im a totally newb to this site, but after surfing this board for a huge ammount of hours it seems you guys have a good idea bout radeon cards.
Wich is why i finally decided to try and get some help (again) .

Ive had this problem with my computer for about a year now . ive called ati support and all other various brands that i have computer parts from .
And as topic says if i dont get this problem sorted soon i might inflict pain onmyself due to the fact that this problem has become extremly expensive .

anyways .

The Problem: When ever i run a game , Where its Dark Age of Camelot,ut2004,Halo basiclly any game that requires a little work from my Gfx card,
My computer "freezes" after a random amout of playing . After this "freeze" iam forced to reboot computer but it doesnt start right away.
Sometimes i might have to start it up 2 or 3 times before it finally starts up and i get a message at first screen saying something like

"FSB / SDRAM SETTINGS MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHANGED, PLEASE CHECK YOUR SETTINGS " Anyways ive checked bios for this setting but i have found none .

Every now and then when the computer freezes Vpu Recoverer goes in and says something like " vpu core stopped respondigt " etc etc.

Also everynow and then when i first load up windows i get a message saying like " A promblem was located in radeon 9xxx drivers" or something like that .

Anyways when i first had this problem on my 9700pro a friend told me that due to the vpu recover thing there was problably something wrong with my gfx card. so poor man that iam i saved my money for a long time and finally bought me a brand new 9800xt when it was released.. Cry as you might hear that the problem is still there.


What i have tried to do: Flashed bios, tried everysingle driver to radeon cards that i have could find , Playing with windows open (incase it was a heat problem )


Atm im using newest Ati drivers 4.3.
system specs are something like:
Winxp Service Pack 1
P4 2672MHz, 512KB
1024 ram
9800xt

I would be verry thankfull if someone could try to help me before i waste anymore cash on this tedious problem

Veridian3

First off all, hi...welcome to DH

There were 2 or three things that came to mind when reading your post...

1: Power Supply might not be powerful enough.

2: Cmos battery on the Motherboard may be going/Wiring may be wrong.

Because its happening on 2 cards we can almost completely rule out them being at fault.

There are a few things i'd like to know before we can suggest a fix.


Firstly, is the system custom built or did it come from someone like Dell or Sony?

Do you know what model of motherboard you have? The manufacturer and model would be great.

Have you tried a non radeon card, if so what model and did/does it work ok?

Finally, when you installed the radeon did youremove the drivers from the old card or reinstall Windows?

Stu

Zardon

nice to see you posting. what power supply are you using, have you checked your rail voltages?

Brimwolf

Ok lets see ,

Additional info

the mother board is a MSI MS-865PE

I have not tried anyother card then radeon no, i was going to buy a nvidia after the first card but got prusaded to buy a 9800xt due to performance issues.

When i bought computer it was not put together so its no Dell homepackage crap i picked the parts myself and installed it at home .

The powersupply is a Topower ( top-420p4) think its a 420w due to the model name but on it it actually lists 520 as max.. not 100% sure

and for Zardon's question no i have not checked Rail Voltages i cant really say that im that good at advanced stuff :/

Also i frogot to add in the orginal post that a long long way back when i first got the computer i found some ati driver version i think it was catalyst 3.2 .. that actually did work .. or well the computer only crashed like 1 or 2 times per day ..compared to 4.2 drivers when they crash about 10-15 times per day .

Also i updated the error message . after 6 min in ut2004 with catalyst 4.3 installed it crashed.. seems below 4.x i crash less. if i cant get help here i need to get ahold of the 3.2 drivers ( they have taken them away from official page it seems ) ..

Also thnx for trying to help

Veridian3

MSI's motherboard driver disk should have utilitys on it. One of them should be a tool that gives info on your system...Asus have asus probe for example. Can you have a look at the disk and see if anything displays voltages. Your looking for things like +5v +12v etc... Let us know if you find anything. If not we can look at a 3rd party monitoring tool.

Brimwolf

Since i bought the computer over a year agoo i have no idea where that disk is :/ but give me a name of a 3rd party one and ill fetch it and get the info

Zardon

motherboard monitor 5 is the most versatile.

Brimwolf

Ok,

As i was installing Motherboard Monitor 5 it promted me asking for Motherboard model .. anyways as i was not 100% sure i downloaded cpu-z to check . there i got this
__________________________________________________ _____--
CPU-Z version 1.21.


CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 1

Code Name Northwood
Specification Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz
Family / Model / Stepping F 2 7
Extended Family / Model 0 0
Brand ID 9
Package mPGA-478
Core Stepping C1
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, SSE, SSE2
CPU Clock Speed 2672.7 MHz
Clock multiplier x 20.0
Front Side Bus Frequency 133.6 MHz
Bus Speed 534.5 MHz
L1 Data Cache 8 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Trace Cache 12 Kµops, 8-way set associative
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 2672.7 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic yes
L2 Bus Width 256 bits



Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard manufacturer MSI
Motherboard model MS-6585, 1.0
BIOS vendor American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS revision Version 07.00T
BIOS release date 07/03/02
Chipset SiS 648 rev. 2
Southbridge SiS 8 rev. 2
Sensor chip Winbond W83697HF

AGP Status enabled, rev. 3.0
AGP Data Transfert Rate 1x
AGP Side Band Addressing supported, enabled
AGP Aperture Size 64 MBytes



Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 1024 MBytes
CAS# Latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 4 clocks
RAS# Precharge 4 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 6 clocks
Bank Cycle Time (TRC) 10 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 Xerox DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Module 1 Xerox DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes



Software
Windows version Microsoft Windows XP Workstation Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)


________________________-

Sorry for the spam , Anyways the msi model suggested in this list cannot be found in the motherboard monitor list of msi boards.. can i choose some other model to get the info i need ? . or is it extremly important its the exact right model?

Brimwolf

i took a shot and installed mbm as 6577 modell .. at the voltage tab i can see

Voltage line 2.00 volt

Tolerence 5%

___

also if i look for the numbers you wanted i find something under the high/low tab that says

Sensor Current
+12 11.73v


___

--Sensor Chip Readings--

Temperature Readout[1] : 34
Temperature Readout[2] : 33
Voltage Readout[1] : 1,488
Voltage Readout[3] : 3,328
Voltage Readout[4] : 4,9728
Voltage Readout[5] : 11,7952
Voltage Readout[6] : -12,19008
Voltage Readout[7] : -4,99104
Fan Readout[1] : 2576


___

Does that help ? , if not let me know what im looking for

Densun

To find the rail voltages that your psu is supposed to be look on the side of the psu there should be a sticker with the info.

Veridian3

OK,

Firstly, looks like your bios hasnt updated correctly as the date reported is 2002, for all 648 chipset models there are 2003 bios's on MSI's site. So head over there and sort that first.

If that doesnt resolve any issues your voltages seem fine so i'd follow these steps:


1 Install and Run Drivercleaner (available from our home page)
2 Install 4.3
3 Try again...if it still crashes...
4 Uninstall Smartgart ( http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/m...lystutils.html )
5 Try again... if it still crashes...
6 Disable VPU recover
7 Try again and report back