A7V133 and Geforce - Real troubles

[Guest]

Hello all!

I just upgraded my trusty PII400 to a Athlon 1200C with Asus A7V133 (300W PSU). My Geforce 256 DDR (Asus V6800) was moved from the old computer to the new one. The old setup worked great and stable.

But now, I'm having real problems with my graphic card:
When testing my graphic performance I run 3DMark2000.
* Sometimes it kicks me out before I begin saying "You need a 3D accellerator" !!
* Sometimes the overall graphics is quite dark
* Sometimes (very often) the program kicks me out to the desktop when running the Texture rendering speed test (sometimes at 16Mb test, but also at 32 and 64)
* The score is quite low (5100). Some tests are slower than they were on my old PII 400!

I have tried a lot:
BIOS 1001, 1004
VIA 4-1 4.25-4.29
Different BIOS settings (AGP speed, aperture size, fast writes etc etc)
No other cards than the Geforce in the PCI slots
Different drivers

I just can't believe this!

Please, can anyone help me?




Gzzt bzzt.
/TJ303

 

[Guest]

Oh, I forgot to mention:

My GFXtemperature is 55 Degrees C, the CPU is 47, the MB 31 in idle state - so it shouldn't be a cooling problem right?

I tested both 3.3 and 3.5V VIO - no change...

I run DirectX7.0a



Gzzt bzzt.
/TJ303

 

[Ncogneto]

did you do a fresh install on a clean hard drive?

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

 

[Guest]

Suggestion: First of all stick to 428 Via drivers , they are more stable than 429. Of course I suggest you do a clean install, and If I remember well, the best drivers for geforce so far are 6.34 (and not the latest ones)
So ...
stark

Blue Skies Bring Tears

 

[Guest]

I was having trouble with my Creative Labs Annihilator which I think is the same as the Geforce 256, and the only way I could ever get it to work was to run the 4.25 via drivers and the reference drivers from Creative Labs and disable 4x agp. I was about ready to pull what hair I have left out. I got an Elsa Gladiac Geforce2 32mb and it went away. Almost turned me off to VIA completely but I got my lil Duron 600 @ 980 (7x140) and everything screams now ; ) Good luck

 

[phsstpok]

TJ303, I have an Abit KT7 and a Visiontek Geforce256 (SDR) and I can say that the Via 4.29v(a) driver and Detonator 10.80 combined with DirectX 8.0a work great. I have found no faster drivers and these <b>are stable</b>. Try that combination.

I suggest you also take a look at your power supply's individual ratings. <A HREF="http://www.geforcefaq.com" target="_new">www.geforcefaq.com</A> recommends a power supply which can provide a 20 amps on the 3.3 volt leg for the combination of a Geforce256 and an Athlon. (Typical PSU's only provide 14-16 amps on that leg).

Your graphics card could also be overheating. If you know about the Coolbits trick try underclocking the graphics card and see if stability improves. Underclocking can also alleviate power issues, as well, so it might be difficult to sort out which. If the first test works then return the graphics card to normal speed. Open the case and set up a good house fan to blow into it. This will provide plenty of cooling. If graphics are stable now then you have isolated the problem as being heat, most likely at the video card.

If you don't know about the coolbits trick I am sure you can find it in these formums or just do an engine search. The third-party utility, Geforce Tweak provided a better way to do overclocking (an underclocking if necessary). Just remember if you use the fast settings options, you want to uncheck the <b>force 16-bit Z-buffer</b> setting in the OpenGl section. Otherwise you will get weird triangles throughout OpenGL games. By the way, the <b>Fast Settings</b> that I mentioned sets Geforce options for best performance not counting the overclock settings. You can get Geforce Tweak at <A HREF="http://www.guru3d.com" target="_new">www.guru3d.com</A>.

For more tips on Geforce problems see the site I mentioned, <A HREF="http://www.geforcefaq.com" target="_new">www.geforcefaq.com</A>.

p.s.

My system runs with all memory settings at max. AGP 4X enabled, Fastwrites enabled (this didn't work with any of the 6.xx and 7.xx Detonators), and AGP WS 1 enabled (reads and writes).

KT7, YH BIOS
Duron 600 @1007, 9.5 x 106
Visiontek Geforce256 SDR at 150/210
OCZ Monster II cooler w/ Comair 23 CFM fan
128 MB, OCZ enhanced PC-133 SDRAM, CAS2
Temp=45 degrees C with Seti@Home running.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 04/10/01 03:02 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[phsstpok]

My system crashed constantly with the 4.28 drivers but I kept getting an error during the installation. I think it was VIAgart.xxx missing or in error. I got this with the 4.25 drivers, as well, but had no problems when running those. With the 4.28 drivers HDTach and Scandisk kept giving me a DMA error so I dropped back to 4.26, until 4.29 came along.

I have had no problems with 4.29v(a).



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 04/10/01 03:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>