brc64

I just bought an 8RDA+, Athlon XP 2500+, and 512 MB of PC2700 RAM. Sounds good, right? Apparently not.

For starters, when trying to install Windows XP (SP1 slipstreamed) from a CD that I KNOW works, the computer locks up and restarts when it tries to initialize the video (after the monitor "clicks") when it goes to start Windows for the first time. If I boot into safe mode, it says Windows has recovered from a serious error and blames the 8500DV.

I can install XP using the regular CD, but I ran into some odd problems along the way (random error messages, locking up after installing the new Catalyst drivers). But here's where I know something isn't right..

I ran a whole ton of benchmarks on my P3 before my stuff arrived, so I could see the performance difference and smile. Out of all the games I had installed previously, Quake 3 was the only one that would work without having to reinstall. I ran the timedemo benchmark on that, expecting to see framerates higher than I've ever seen before... but it didn't go above 50 fps. WTF? My P3 ran faster!

Last night I reinstalled UT2k3 and ran the benchmark program there... it started off going good, but when it went to the indoor level on flyby (Asbestos, I think it's called) the framerate was extremely high then dropped extremely low (it appeared to go from 150 to about 10 about halfway through the run), and the botmatch benchmarks were horrid. The overall score was lower than what I scored with my P3!

I checked my BIOS and I noticed that CPU Thermal-Throttling was set to 50%, so I thought maybe my CPU was overheating (it does idle at near 50C, which is a little on the high side), so I turned that off (I have shutdown temp set to 65, just to be safe). I ran the benchmark again.. same crappy result.

I can't figure out where to go from here. The video card is fine.. or at least, it worked fine before. The CPU seems to be good, as I noticed that installing Windows was way faster than it ever was with my P3. I don't know what's wrong!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. BTW, I wrote down most of my BIOS settings (the ones I figured were important, anyway), so I could post those if you think it would be helpful.

- Me

craig588

Try installing the newest drivers for that mobo.

DallasStar

update the bios and then reformat and see if it helped. I remember I had to update the bios of my mobo and reformat before windows would recognize my processor as athlon XP.

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"A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night." --- Franz Kafka

HawK

Check cards & ramsticks, reseat them & try again.
Happened to me lately when building a "new computer for someone,
random lockups, stop errors, in short runnin sh*t,
reseated all and problem was gone, never found out why, but it is runnin ok now

brc64

Drivers: Was running nForce 3.44 chipset drivers found at nvplanet.com

BIOS: The board shows 2500+ when it starts up, although there is a newer BIOS version available than what I have. I'll try that, but I'm skeptical that a new BIOS version could have such an enourmous effect.

Reseating hardware: I made sure everything was in good when I put the system together (I even used that little lock thing on the AGP card), but I'll double-check it all tonight.

Any other suggestions?

- Me

BWX

Man, that sucks, that has to be the worst feeling- upgrading and not getting the desired result.

How fast was your P3? I bet one of your bios settings is causing this as it seems to be a vast difference from what you expected.

Is fast writes on? Turn it off-

Plus, I have to say, I think your video card may have been the bottleneck before, so putting it in a faster system won't make that much of a difference.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum.

I had a ti4200 OC'd/ 1800xp OC'd pc2100 OC'd.

then I got a 9700p-

My 3dmark01 scores only went up about 1500 points, because it was my system holding everything back. My games run much faster w/ AA and AF, but w/o eye candy- much the same. I knew it would be like that though- I bought the card for AA and AF performance, which isn't system dependent for the most part.

Once you get a faster card- your system will fly. Same with me, except when I upgrade rest of my system it will fly.

We are both on our way. Just taking different paths- I wouldn't be too discouraged- You have a fast system now, only thing holding ya back is one more (expensive) little video card.

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DallasStar

did you check irq conflicts?

did you remember to disable pnp os?

__________________
"A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night." --- Franz Kafka

WildChild

Sounds like a bios issue or a ram issue ....if you can get it up and runnin run memtest to check your ram...if that checks out flash the bios to the newest version available hopefully you get it worked out

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Knowledge is SCARY,Stupidity is REALLY frightening

BWX

This is a good place to check for bios questions http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=1


Also, Omega's website has a nice little bios guide to check out as well. I bet you can squeeze quite a bit more out of it w/ some tweaking.

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brc64

It was a 1 GHz P3 in my old system, and it was most definitely the bottleneck (well that, and the PC100 SDRAM). I know this because a friend of mine (with an identical system) purchased an AIW 9700 Pro and only saw a minor improvement in performance than my 8500DV.

As far as BIOS settings go, all I did was disable the onboard stuff (audio, ethernet) and turn off CPU Thermal Throttling. Well, I also set the FSB to 166 where it's supposed to be. The rest of the settings are default, mostly because I'm not sure what they do and I'm afraid to change them.

What is memtest, and what sort of results SHOULD I get out of it? I'll download the newest BIOS tonight.

- Me

BWX

One thing that might help a little is tightening up your memory timings- I think there is some good post in the OC'ing section about that-

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brc64

Even still... 40 frames per second in Quake 3? On timedemo!? Something tells me there's something bigger wrong here than some minor memory tweaks. I just wish I could find somebody else who has had similar problems and could provide me with a solution.

Hell, I'd even be satisfied with a link to some obscure compatibility issue between my motherboard and my network card, or something crazy like that.

Question: If the CPU were overheating, would it cause games to run poorly, or would the symptoms be more along the lines of BSODs and restarts in the middle of a CPU-intensive application?

- Me

BWX

Yeah, I think it would be stability problem if you had a heat problem- Low fps problem sounds like a driver/ hardware compatibility issue. But anything is possible.

Vampyromaniac

Did you run any CPU benchmarks before and after the upgrade? such as PCMark2002?
Also, what is your AGP rate set at? and AGP aperture size?

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Judas

go into the bios and go and set the "optimal settings".... usually every bios has something of the sort...... If that don't work.. turn on Bios Defaults...

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brc64

AGP Aperture size was set at 64 MB.
BIOS was already set to Optimal.

I posted all of my BIOS setttings in an identical thread over at Rage3D:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...eadid=33704509

The only non-game benchmark I ran after the upgrade was 3DMark 2001 SE, and that DID show a nearly double improvement in score (guess I should have mentioned that earlier? ), but it's games that I really care about, and it's games that are performing poorly.

I also have a post at the Epox forum at AMDMB.com that describes the order I installed my drivers.
http://www.amdforums.com/showthread....hreadid=249211

How desperate do I look?

- Me

brc64

Okay, so I broke the most important rule of hardware troubleshooting last night -- only change one thing at a time to single out the problem. Well, I changed lots of things, and the system works now. Here's what I did differently:

I ran memtest and wasted 15 minutes of my life (memory is fine). I flashed the BIOS with the one right before the newest one (people tell me the newest one has problems.. the one I used is 3209, I think). I changed a few BIOS settings based on some suggestions I received.

From here, I tried once more to install Windows from my SP1 CD, which apparently still doesn't work. It's as if my computer just REALLY doesn't like Microsoft's SP1 8500DV driver, even though it always worked before. So I installed from my regular XP CD and all was well.

More differences:
I installed DirectX 9b then I installed the nForce 2.0 drivers found on Epox's website (not the 3.44's at nvplanet). Also important to note, I DID NOT INSTALL SP1 this time around. I got a message telling me that I wouldn't have USB 2.0 support, but that's okay for now since I don't have any USB 2.0 devices anyway.

Next I installed the Catalyst 3.5 drivers, NOT the 3.6's. A friend of mine reported some similar problems installing the 3.6's in his system, so I figure that may have been a factor for me. I installed my Audigy 2 drivers from the CD and did NOT update them like I did previously.

I tried the Quake3 timedemo, and this time instead of 40 fps, I hit damn near 200. I ran the UT2k3 benchmark, and instead of 20 fps on botmatch, it was around 50. Yay!!

The two main things I suspect that caused me problems are SP1 and Catalyst 3.6.. or maybe the combination of the two. I don't know. I may try updating to SP1 tonight and see what happens. Thanks again to everybody for your help!

- Me

BWX

Now try SP1 and the newest Omega's and see what happens- Just creat a restore point or something if you get reduced performance.

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Judas

Actually, i find installing SP1a seperately cause more problems.... and the USB2.0 support doesn't make sence... Maybe that intergrated cd is messed up, you should make another....set the write speed to one of the slowest to guarantee a good clean burn....

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Judas

BTW, with my 8500LE, i'm getting 212fps @ 1024x768 maxed... in demo 44 ( i think)... and on my map... i'm hitting 77fps in the demo....it's sweet compared to my 1900+ (now Barton 2500+)

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brc64

That sounds about right. 1024x768 detailed maxed (and no tweaking yet), I scored about 190fps in that demo. The 8500DV is clocked a little bit slower than a regular 8500, and I think the 8500LE has 128 megs of RAM instead of the 64 mine has. So my score there looks to be around where it should be.

Just for fun, I ran timedemo on Quake2. I think it maxes out at 299.9 fps.

Regarding SP1, I dunno.. I guess something could be screwy with my CD, but I've used it so many times before I find that difficult to believe. It does appear that the SP1 video driver is what causes my computer to restart in an infinite loop, though.. so maybe when I make a new CD, I'll use the guide that was posted a while back to automatically install the new Catalyst drivers.

Now I just have to decide if I want to slipstream a SP1a CD or try to track down the latest SP2 beta. Decisions, decisions.

- Me

Robert McClelland

I have np running omegas 3.6 drivers with sp1 getting about 8850 defult score clock on 3dmark2001se If you gotton p4 you wouldn't had the problem at all. hehe I'm glad you gotton working. Sometimes it could be the power supply to much is bad thing cause hackov on the system minds only run at 160 watts I got small mother board.

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"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
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brc64

Update #527

I made a new XP CD, this time with SP1a (since SP1 is no longer available). I also decided to get a little crazy with it and do an unattended install. I had it install the Catalyst 3.6's automatically, along with DX9b and WMP9. Oddly enough, the WDMs didn't install correctly, but I fixed that easily enough after Windows finished installing.

Everything seems to be running okay, and I apparently even gained about 10 fps in that Quake3 timedemo. I think after 6 or so Windows reinstalls, I'm finally happy with the way everything is working. The only thing that bugs me is that the game port on my Audigy 2 is disabled due to lack of resources (IRQ conflict?), but I don't even really care about that since I never use that particular functionality of my sound card.

I'm in the process of reinstalling all of my applications and reapplying all of my system tweaks, so you should be seeing some benchmark comparrisons soon.

Thanks again for helping me out. I really appreciate it.

- Me