cblacque

Recently bought an Abit Siluro GeForce 3 DVI 128mb graphics card

spec
amd amron 850 mhz
512mb ram
windows 98
abit motherboard
crt monitor


Problem:
Card works ok until I play any game (MS Links 2001, Links 2003). Game starts fine, even gets underway....about 5-6 minutes after it starts the screen goes completely blank (with a tiny hint of colour on very top of screen). Computer is frozen, nothing works, must power off to restart.

downloaded latest drivers from abit (june 2002) and they didnt fix it. I've heard rumours that it might be overheating, or maybe move the sound card further away from video card.

Can anyone help? Will download 30.82 drivers tonight, but will they work?

GREEKRAGE

OK lets see:

A) does this card come with a fan ??(some dont have fans)

B)have you overclocked it ??

C) before this card did you have a much smaller one and if so did you also make sure your power supply can handle it?(GF3 and 4 cards require alot more power than an older gf2 etc).
D) what directX drivers are you using?

.................................................. .........................
some of the above questions are to see your setup but im sure its an overheating problem.
Question: if you start up and just let it sit there will it crash??...or does it do it in games alone(can you try some other games also?)

Have you run a benchmark(like 3dmark2001sec) and if so what was your score and did it crash?

Ok lets try out some stuff:

1) if your overclocked go back to defaults and try to play
2) try removing the case covers and see if it takes longer to crash(if it does)
3) if you have an extra fan direct it at the vidcard.
4) go to properties/advanced and disable V-SYNC and set to "best performance"(im sure you will find the right tabs)
5)uninstall (i said uninstall) the old drivers and try version29.42 or 30.82 from nvidia.
note: dont try the latest betas yet cause if your not experienced enough your gonna run into other problems.

And if your PSU (power supply) is a 230-250 watt get another one at least 300w or up

GoodLuck and keep us posted

cblacque

Thanks very much for the reply. Looks like at the moment its my psu. Its only 135W !! Typical shoddy gateway gear it looks like...Anyways picking up a 450w unit tomorrow and hopefully everything will work from there....

digitalwanderer

Damn! I'm surprised the thing even boots with that PSU!

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GREEKRAGE

i dont think its a 135w

maybe he missread it and its a 110-135v and at least 235 watt.

I couldnt get my old rig to boot with the gf2 mx200 with the old 200 watt.

And a 135w would be a AT rig that wont even have a AGP...(me thinks)

He also has 512ram so he has to have a ATX rig and i really dont think ATX PSUs come that small.

Ryoko

1. they do make 135w psus, for babyatx cases (1 or 2 cdrom bays, 1 floppy bay, 1 hard drive mount)

2. 135w psus are only atx. at's have 230w normally.

3. 512MB ram could go easily in at computers (4 x 128MB pc100 sdram, for instance)

not trying to discredit you, but i have actually worked on computers with 135w psus. they are not normal size psus, and you can't replace it with a normal size psu without replacing the case.

cblacque

well guys...thanks for all the posts....

heres the story now...

my old psu had
'max. combined power on +5v and +3v output is 135W'

I think it might be 200w though.
Its a newton power ltd
Model: NPS-200pb-119A REV:00

Still though, I've replaced it with a 400W psu.

I've also installed the 30.82 drivers....

yet I still have the same problems


I am going to move the soundcard further away. The card does have a fan.

What else can I do??

Ryoko

what temperature is your cpu running at?

digitalwanderer

...is that one of them VIA boards that needs the right 4-in-1 driver thingy I keep hearing that causes so many problems for peeps?

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WTF is up with the sigs?

GREEKRAGE

Actually Dig you have apoint but its not an AMD related one.

On Win98 its a MUST to install the 4 in 1 drivers IF your running a VIA chipset.

Though the random reboots would be the least of his problems as he wouldnt even have proper IDE fuctions (no CDROMS etc.).

It still sounds like our first assumption of OVERHEATING.

As for the sound card we have posted many times that it should be placed at least in slot 3
for compatibility reasons (irq conflicts).

cblacque had stated in his first post that he gets a hint of color before it dies on him so im sure its a vidcard problem.

@Ryoko
Hey buddy like i said in my post i wasnt sure also for the reason that ive never seen one here in greece .
Micro atx systems are as rare as the case i have (Globalwin) that noone had seen before
i got it.
Basicly i assumed the same as Digi "im suprised it even boots up"...

Ryoko

i've only seen em in HP cases, so they aren't very common... but they were common enough for the shop i worked for to have a minimum of 3 135w psu's in stock

Ryoko

i've never used the 4 in 1 drivers before... under win98se

never had a problem...

GREEKRAGE

Really ??
Im curious but what mobo is this and didnt you install any drivers that came with it ??

I had both a QDI advance10 and an ASUS cuv4x that had via apollo chipsets and without the 4in1 pack would not function 100% till i installed those drivers.(and i do mean on win98sec).

weird...

cblacque

Looks like the card must be faulty. Have underclocked it to 155/370 and its still crashing....

Not a happy camper....

I'm in ireland and have to return it to England (i.e pain in the ring)

Thanks for your help guys.....

cblacque

and the saga goes on.........

Havent sent the card back to engerland yet. Reinstalled my old 32mb tnt2 card. Same problem after a slightly longer period of gaming.......maybe 25 mins. Screen disappeared with a tinge of colour on the top of the screen.

So i downloaded the latest (v.4.43) driver of the via 4 in 1 series and also removed one of memory banks of RAM (so there is now a space). I only had 384mb of RAM installed then. Suddenly the machine came to life, it was like it was twice as fast as normal with less RAM.

i am going to install the new card again, to see if it works. Maybe the key is to keep one memory bank free of RAM.

Any thoughts?

Ryoko

could be a virtual cache error... but that rarely happens with 512mb or less ram...

Ryoko

a7v133 w/ via kt133a

installed the vgartd and no other drivers. everything runs like a dream...

G@MeBoY

most likelly, the memory you have removed was either faulty or wasn't liked by rest of RAM cards. If your card starts working now, try mixing memory modules, chnaging their banks, somethimes that can solve a problm. Read out your memory spec on memory modules, e.g. slowest memory MUST go in to the BANK1, that way, other faster memories are slowed down to catch up. If problem reapears, than memory module might be faulty, enable memory check in bios, so the test tests the memory 3 times, if all goes well, then momory is not faulty... No more ideas, your problem with RAM is not uncommon to peeps with cheeper mobos and cheeper memory modules.

good luck

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-= G@MeBoY =-
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XP2000+ thoroughbred @ 10x230FSB - watter cooled by home made sistem - EpoX RDA3I - ASUS V9950SE/Td @470/820 - 2x256 DDR400 V-Data - !Live Player - 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax9+7200rpm - Tagan TG-380 black PSU - chieftek Matrix case -
WinXP SP1

Ryoko

actually in my experience, the bios memory test is never an indicator of faulty memory. the best way to check is to open MANY fairly large .wav files, until your memory is completely full. use sndrec32.exe to open them. if your memory fills up without error, your memory is fine.

G@MeBoY

Memory test in BIOS can only show A REALY faulty mem, or on older systems, wheter the current mem combination of mem modules is or isn't going to work.... =))) Filling memory with .wav files is a very good idea, but I am not sure that .wav files will "push" memory fast enough like a video game or something, since .wav requires "only" 128kb per second, make that times 10 because of lot of wav's, and divide by 1000 to get milisecs. not much of a streaming )) Perhaps video files ??? Just kidin' . If mem fills up fine with no "crash" os system, it's 99% chance that mem is OK.

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-= G@MeBoY =-
::Full color with 3DNOW! tech::
XP2000+ thoroughbred @ 10x230FSB - watter cooled by home made sistem - EpoX RDA3I - ASUS V9950SE/Td @470/820 - 2x256 DDR400 V-Data - !Live Player - 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax9+7200rpm - Tagan TG-380 black PSU - chieftek Matrix case -
WinXP SP1

Ryoko

filling it with .wavs will tell you if you have a truly faulty stick of ram. games will tell you if your ram is running too hot for its current speed.

digitalwanderer

Could you explain this method in a bit more detail? Using simple words please, I'm feeling extry stupid this morning.

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WTF is up with the sigs?

G@MeBoY

HA HA HA

__________________
-= G@MeBoY =-
::Full color with 3DNOW! tech::
XP2000+ thoroughbred @ 10x230FSB - watter cooled by home made sistem - EpoX RDA3I - ASUS V9950SE/Td @470/820 - 2x256 DDR400 V-Data - !Live Player - 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax9+7200rpm - Tagan TG-380 black PSU - chieftek Matrix case -
WinXP SP1

Ryoko

if your memory stick is bad (aka, trace fried or circuit joined), it won't store any data at any speed or temperature. if windows loads a .wav file into memory, once it hits the location with the defective trace/circuit, it will crap out. if your memory is fine, run a game to get the memory to maximum temperature. 3dmark is the best memory stresser. if the memory gets too hot, the circuits will join and short, causing a memory error, but only when the memory is hot.

G@MeBoY

So, -- Whaaaaaaaaatssssssss upppppppppppp ??????? - -

__________________
-= G@MeBoY =-
::Full color with 3DNOW! tech::
XP2000+ thoroughbred @ 10x230FSB - watter cooled by home made sistem - EpoX RDA3I - ASUS V9950SE/Td @470/820 - 2x256 DDR400 V-Data - !Live Player - 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax9+7200rpm - Tagan TG-380 black PSU - chieftek Matrix case -
WinXP SP1