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hi guys,

previously i posted regarding video card upgrade from ati 9800 pro to xfx nvidia 7600gt. i did the upgrade but after a week of usage i ran into this weird problem.

my spec

Intel Northwood 2.6ghz
1.5 G of PC400 RAM (crucial)
300G ATA 100 Seagate HDD
on board SoundMAX sound
Windowz XP sp2
Seasonic s12 330 PSU
Asus P4P800

xfx 7600gt 256MB

i uninstalled all of teh ATI drivers first, then used driver cleaner to check for any remaining ATI files. then installed the 162.18 Nvidia forceware.

everythign ran great for a week. But now whenever i play Lineage 2 or WoW the whole system would lock up. no error message at all. the whole system woudl just freeze and i have to manually reboot it.

i checked and my MB bios doesn't support fastwrite and i did not over clock my CPU or video card. I changed the AGP apeture size ebtween 64MB to 124MB but still freeze. I tried previous version of forceware but still freeze.

i checked nad teh video card's fan is running fine and it is not going over 65 degree at all time. CUP usage prior to the freeze is at 80 to 85% via task manager.

could it be my PSU - when it coems to PSU i have no clue. If i am upgrading it to a 430 S12 from seasonic again, it will give me 14A at +12v1 and 15A with +12v2, is that enough?

Or could it be something otehr than my PSU taht is causing teh freeze? 3dmark 2005 ran ok and no freeze at all.

Add a reply

First of all how long did you run the 3dmark for... just one test? was it on a setting close to what you run in WoW or Linage 2? Because im betting if you stress the Video card in 3dmark for long enough it will die the same as the games do. More than likely this is a PSU issue, you are overloading it and judging from your specs, its a fairly old PSU too which do loose an amount of usable Wattage over time.

Options:

Test with 3dmark longer and stress your system out

OR

Test with another PSU preferably a decent brand around 400W

------------------------------ "This thread made me strap on my lolerskates and head for my roflcopter."
Reply to chookman

i ran it for under 1 hour the very first time i got the card and thought it would be fine. Then again i had disconnected a DVD+_ drive and two fans. I might try to run it longer and get a 400+ PSU. Hopefully it is juts the PSU.

Reply to nisryus

Disconnecting other components in the machine may not help the issue... this is because different components run off different rails, your DVD drive will be on a 5V and the 2 fans i believe will be on 3V dont hold me to that though. Whereas the card will be running off motherboard supplied off the AGP and with a 7600GT i think a 12V connector. Besides the DVD drive will hardly utilise any while gaming and 2 fans will hardly draw a huge load.

a good 400+ should resolve issue.

------------------------------ "This thread made me strap on my lolerskates and head for my roflcopter."
Reply to chookman

Fans almost always run off 12V rails too, but as you said, they dont draw alot.

@nisryus: Get this, cheaper than the seasonics and more power.

Reply to randomizer

FSP group.. haven't heard of it before, i might check it out.

I might go for the

CORSAIR CMPSU-450VX

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139003

it had good reviews and the price is reasonable.

one thing that had me wondering is that my current seasonic 330 was able to power the (now dead) sapphire x800gto for over a year, why not the 7600gt? is 7600gt really uses more power?

Reply to nisryus

FSP is a reputable brand. That was a good choice that randomizer linked.
Corsair is also a reputable brand.

The Seasonic you have is also a good PSU. The 7600GT does not draw a lot more power, but if the PSU has been weakened by age, it may not be able to handle the load any more.

Before you arbitrarily replace your PSU however, this may also be a RAM problem. I'm guessing you have three 512MB sticks (bizarre, but w/e...). Try a memory test with only one of them at a time and see if one of them is no longer reliable. Ditch it for a matched pair of new sticks; WoW will love you for adding the RAM.

Message edited by jtt283 on 08-14-2007 at 08:49:34 PM

------------------------------ There is ALWAYS a drone. Exactly where, or how many drones you will encounter may vary, but that there will be at least one will not.
Reply to jtt283

my memory are actually 2 pair of 512MB and 2 pair of 256MB all in dual channel. The current PSU is only 4 months old... i got it because people claimed to be running 7600GT and C2D no problem so i thought it could work for me.

yeah, i am going to test the ram stick by stick and see if there is any problem.

Reply to nisryus

Hopefully it's the RAM. That PSU ought to be good enough.

------------------------------ There is ALWAYS a drone. Exactly where, or how many drones you will encounter may vary, but that there will be at least one will not.
Reply to jtt283

I agree with jtt283 that the psu should be up to running that card the 7600gt is one of the lowest power users around i have seen people post that it uses less power than a 9800 and could easily believe it but don't know for sure.
There is a guy on the forum who runs a 1950 on a 380psu so a 330 should easily run a 7600 unless as has been said its really old and has degraded a lot.
Def try the ram first.
Mactronix.
Oh and by the way i have read a lot about WOW users having issues with these cards you could do worse than going to one of their forums if you don't manage to get it sorted here.

Reply to mactronix

Hi nisyrus,
I doubt it is the PSU.

I'm running a P4 prescott 3.2 GHz with 2 GB of RAM (2 x 1 GB), 2 x 250 GB SATA HDD, DVD writer and a xfx 7800gt on a 270w FSP PSU.

And it works like a charm. No problems in NFS carbon, Oblivion, etc.

I would suggest checking the RAM as jtt and mactronix suggested first.
memtest is a good utility to check your ram.
All the best.

Reply to Eru

IMO it wont be RAM, ram issues usually result in BSOD and will present in windows as well.

A good testing tool i find is Prime95 and do a stress test this will throw calculations through CPU as well as RAM heat things up without stressing GPU to much. If it locks up its more likely RAM or CPU related, if it dont id be back on the GPU or PSU.

------------------------------ "This thread made me strap on my lolerskates and head for my roflcopter."
Reply to chookman

after running memtest 3.4 back to back three times on each ram stick it didn't detect any problem with the memory.

so i ran prime95 as chookman suggested and i left it run for several hours, cam eback and it was at test 7 and no problem report too.

i will check the voltage again and possibly try to borrow another PSU to test.

Reply to nisryus

Nobody ever blames the video card - they go bad too! Even new ones. Try another video card.

------------------------------ "How can he possibly resist the maddening urge to eradicate history at the mere push of a single button? The beautiful, shiny button? The jolly, candy-like button? Will he hold out, folks? Can he hold out?"
Reply to utaka95

I found the 162.18 drivers to be crap!, double the frame rates in Lost Planet sure but slow and laggy everything else, they were also a complete pig to remove, major regedit session, try 94.24 once you have got the 162.18's out of the system. Cheaper thing to try than a new PSU.

GL

Reply to mousemonkey

See if with all vid drivers removed it will still boot up and work with the OS drivers,if so then install the new drivers.

------------------------------ *While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*
Reply to ZOldDude

That CoolerMaster PSU is in Tier-5 ("Do not buy" ) on this list:
http://www.tomswiki.com/page/Tiere [...] ngs?t=anon

I wish I'd known that before I bought one last year. Its cheap sleeve fan got noisy and then croaked, and so did another fan I put in to replace it.
If it is the PSU, choose one from Tier-3 or better.
Utaka could easily be right too though, it may be the video card.

You say temps aren't high, so I will assume you have reasonable airflow through your case.

Another distinct possibility is your sound drivers. Disable sound in your games (boring, I know, but just to test) and see what happens. If this fixes it, reload the sound drivers and then select a slightly lower acceleration setting. That may fix it.

------------------------------ There is ALWAYS a drone. Exactly where, or how many drones you will encounter may vary, but that there will be at least one will not.
Reply to jtt283

i got a 600 PSU from my co worker and now the card ran fine (so far).. (i took the system to work today, damn the antec solo is heavy)

but while talking to him and burning in with memtest, the IT guy happened to walk by and mentioned that he saw similar issues with other 7600GT users at work. And he asked was refresh rate i set the card to and i told him 75hz. He then told me he fixed the 7600GT freezing issues by lowering the refresh rate to 60hz!! At my work the other 4 7600GT and GS systems all used antec earthwatts 380 PSU and run multiple HDDs and fans (except they all have creative sb card while I don't) so he said it is worth a tried as the spec are very close.

i am going to swamp back the old seasonic PSU in 30 mins and lower the screen refresh rate to 60hz and see if that has any impact....

it is weird but he swear it worked for him.

Message edited by nisryus on 08-15-2007 at 11:18:19 PM

Reply to nisryus

update:

i treid the screen refresh rate and it was stable for 1 hour of intense 3d gaming.. then system hang.

but when i had the 600 psu yesterday it was very stable. i am goign to order a new psu now. hopefully that would resolve the problem.

thanks everyone for helping me!

Reply to nisryus

oh well.. update..

it started to freeze again. i guess i tis the video card after all. i just submitted a ticket with fxf support. since it has a lifetiem warranty, i am sure they will replace it if all else fail.

i tried the 94.24 too but no help. at least it takes longer to freeze now.

BTW, the P4P800 has a 1.5v AGP (only and can't be change via BIOS), i wonder if thats the case? afterall the MB is farily old and Asus stop updating the BIOS (the last BOIS was a beta but they never finalized it) 2 years ago.

Reply to nisryus

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