Anyone know why my new graphics card freezes my system? (1 Viewer)

[TheoGB]

Right, I just moved from a Mtrox g400 Max to a Hercules 3D Prophet III 200 Titanium card.

I have a PIII 800, 256MB RAM and a Tyan Trinity 400 S1854 mobo (VIA Apollo 133A chipset). I've just downloaded the latest 4in1 drivers (4.37) and installed 'standard' AGP mode as recommended. I've tried with and without DMA mode on.

However, up to 2 mins into the Windows 98 SE startup the machine freezes with the new card. I uninstalled all the drivers of my old card. I know because I just had to put them all back in again to put it back and now everything works fine again.

I have the latest Hercules certified drivers.

Does anyone know of any issues that there mioght be with this motherboard and gfx card that the manufacturers are unaware of? Cheers.

Theo

 

[Jason Handy]

I just read here that your motherboard has an AGP Driving Control function which supposedly allows for better compatibility with various video cards. It doesn't sound like a m-board problem, unless it is an undocumented problem.
I wish I had something more intelligent to offer.
Jason

 

[Jeff Peake]

If i run my video card in 4x AGP mode my PC freezes up also. It is a known issue with the Via chipset we both have.

Try going into your mobo bios, and setting AGP mode to 2x and see if that solves the problem.

Jeff

 

[TheoGB]

Cheers guys. That review of the Tyan talks about onboard sound - my version doesn't have that. I've already tried taking out the AGP 4x too. No joy :frowning:
I'm close to doing the complete install of Windows thing but that's such a pain in the arse. *sigh*
Guess I'm due one anyway. Best get to it and see what happens. I'm loathe to take the card back, though. I guess I'll have to wait until I have the complete set up thing going - P4, et al.
I'm really missing Matrox. Those guys really know how to do on-line support.
Cheers.

 

[Romier S]

Have you tried using reference Nvidia drivers instead of the Hercules certified ones?

The reference drivers might fix the problem for you. Just a thought.

 

[TheoGB]

Yeah, just tried. Newest ones don't even give me a proper output. I am thinking about flashing my BIOS. OW!!!

 

[TheoGB]

BIOS Flashed and that seemed to do something to the stability but the Hercules 3D Tweaker reckoned it couldn't find a video card ID. So I'm now going back to the latest nVidia drivers to see if that's any better...

Nope. Spoke too soon. still seems totally unstable. No idea what's going on. *sigh*.

 

[Oscar_R]

I have an Asus A7V motherboard that became erratic and unstable when I upgraded to the newest 4 in 1 driver from Asus. A reformat of the system cleared that up for me.

 

[Max Leung]

Hmmm, could be an incompatibility with the sound card?

Try removing the soundcard from the PC, and see if the computer boots up fine.

Also, make sure that your video card is not sharing its IRQ with anything else. Also make sure your sound card is also not sharing the IRQ.

I find that 99% of the problems are caused by the video card and sound card sharing IRQs with other devices on the system.

Windows XP has even more problems with that because XP insists on installing the ACPI support which really fucks things up. I had to fix my friends PC because XP assigned IRQ 9 to EVERY DEVICE on his system. He would get lockups all the time, and IL2 Sturmovik would studder instead of running smoothly.

Once I told Windows XP in the device manager to use the "Standard PC" kernel settings, I was then able to assign the devices to their own dedicated IRQs, and all the system hangs and performance issues disappeared.

 

[Graeme Clark]

Ewww, everything on 9. that's gotta be fun.

 

[TheoGB]

Cheers. There were never any IRQ probs, I forgot to mention that. The card was all on its own on 11.
Every time I install the SB Live I have to disable SB-16 emulation because it refuses to use anything other than IRQ 5. This totally throws everything else out. I reckon I could get round this by rearranging my cards but frankly, who needs bloody SB-16 emulation taking up an additional IRQ anyway? :rolleyes
Now the card seems okay but unlike my Matrox it doesn't show my monitor as Plug and Play so I've had to install a specific driver for it. However that isn't giving me 85Hz refresh. Does this mean the card's broken, do people think?
Cheers
Theo

 

[Jeff R.]

Some high performance video cards generate quite a bit of heat. I had a video card that kept freezing my computer until I installed an aditional fan to keep it cool. You might try running the computer with the cover off to see if it is possibly a heat issue.

 

[Max Leung]

I assume the sound card has a dedicated IRQ as well? If so, um, well...guess it could be a heating problem like Jeff said, although that is unusual since it crashes before even the desktop appears. I'd expect a crash when running a 3D app, not when it is idling displaying a static desktop!
Maybe you have a registry problem/device driver problem? A reinstall of windows might help in that case.
When in doubt, reinstall.

 

[TheoGB]

Yep, reinstall has solved it. I am so impressed. It's taken everything I've thrown at it and breezed through. I've never seen 3D run this good on my PC. Indy at 1280x1024 32-bit and it just glides. Blimey. Highly recommend this card!
Incidentally, I've been told that if you run a PC with the case off this creates more heat - the design is such that convection within a closed case is dealt with far better, or something...
Cheers for the support everyone!

 

[TheoGB]

Ahh, the culprit...

I just whacked Norton AV on there and that was it - total system hang.

This puts me in an arse of a position.

Guess it's down to one of the two of them (Symantec or Guillemot) to give me an explanation tomorrow. *sigh*.

 

[Max Leung]

Oh geez, you should've mentioned the virus checker! If we knew that, we would have told you straight away to remove it and send hate mail to Peter Norton.
They suck, no question about it...you're better off with a real virus...your computer will be more stable!

 

[TheoGB]

Feel the love!
I think there must be some way to get the two to function. What I really want is to make it only run on my incoming emails and to be able to check CDs/floppies, I guess.
I'll look into it.
Cheers.

 

[Jason Handy]

Incidentally, I've been told that if you run a PC with the case off this creates more heat - the design is such that convection within a closed case is dealt with far better, or something...

True - heat the convection layer inside the box is larger because the overall air velocity is higher (convective heat loss is a direct function of air velocity over the surface). If you take the case off, this convection is lost and you are now building up a huge boundary layer which involves a temperature gradient. This translates to very high temperatures on the surface of the card. FYI.

Jason

P.S. Who would have thought that graduate heat transfer would have paid off in real life?

 

[Gordon Moore]

www.free-av.com
why pay?