Q3 Freezing new Athlon XP 1600 w/ ECS K7S5A mb

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I just upgraded my pc with a new AMD Athlon XP 1600 and a ECS K7S5A motherboard to go with it. The rest of my system has a Geforce 2 PRO 64mb, 512mb pc133 sdram, and sb live sound. I reformated and installed everything with no trouble. However, after playing Quake 3 for a little while the game freezes my computer. It freezes during gameplay and audio is heard repeating itself. At first I thought my processor was overheating but when I checked it out I found that the system temperature is running at 34 C and my CPU temperature at full load is 43 C. Everyone I've spoken to said those temperatures are about right.

I can't figure out what else I can do to try and fix this. If anyone can give me some advice I'd appreciate it.

Thanks
 
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I updated the SIS AGP drivers and it still locks up in Q3.
I tried installing the latest detonator drivers and I also tried installing the drivers that came with my card. Neither have fixed the problem.

Any other ideas?
 

HonestJhon

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what does the sticker next to the pci slots say?
it should say something like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.
mine is a rev.5
i have the latest bios that ECS has on their us site.
<A HREF="http://www.ecsusa.com" target="_new">http://www.ecsusa.com</A>
i cant find your version on that site...
maybe older than what they have listed there.
my version, according to the site my version is v.01/11/21
lemme reboot, and come back and see what the bios says.
brb.

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 

HonestJhon

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ok, here is what i am getting from the startup.
bios release 11/21/2001 s
and at the bottom, the id tag...
62-1121-001131-00101111-040201-SIS735-K7S5A
dunno how that compares to you, but it sounds like you have an older bios.
your bios, MIGHT be before they fixed the athlon xp support.
so check into that.

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 
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10/16/2001 is the date for my bios.

It detects my athlon xp 1600 no problem. I've never flashed a bios before and a lot of posts say its dangerous if not done right.
 

HonestJhon

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well, that bios date DOES support the xp...
hmm...
have you tried memtest86?
<A HREF="http://www.teresaudio.com/memtest86/" target="_new">http://www.teresaudio.com/memtest86/</A>
you put it on a floppy, and let it run a few times, and then check the error report.
best to let it run like 5 or more times.
if it reports no errors, then you can rule out the memory errors...
also, your video card fan on the heatsink...
make sure that the heatsink isnt full of dirt, and that it is dirty, clean it out.
and if the fan is not spinning when the computer is on, then the gpu might be overheating.
check into that stuff, and let me know what is goin down.

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 
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I figured out a way to prevent crashes in Quake 3. There were several posts on ocworkbench.com by other people with the same problem. By using only one stick of RAM regardless if it is PC133 or DDR instead of two stops the crashing... My question is why? Does anyone know if there is a way to fix this in case I wish to upgrade to 1 gb of ram in the future?
 

HonestJhon

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odd...my friend has 2 sticks of ddr, 256 each, and he never crashes in q3...
maybe you are setting the timing for the ram too high, did you load up the optimal settings?

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-