Troubleshooting - What would you do?

[denmar]

Ok.. I am just looking for ideas from anywhere I think may produce good ones..I'm at a loss.. here's my situation:

Hi all!
Well, I built my system in early March and have had nothing but problems ever since, first my setup:
EVGA 680i
BFGTech 8800 GTX OC2
4x Mushkin 1066 memory
2x 250GB WD HDD configed in RAID 0 (OS Installed here)
1x 500GB WD HDD
Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality
Thermaltake 750W PSU
C2D E6700 CPU

Not overclocked, everything running at factory defaults.

So, the issues:
I was getting lockups in all 3D apps, including NTunes stability test
-RMA'ed the Video Card
-RMA'ed the Motherboard, just to be sure

Installed the new hardware, reinstalled my OS (Vista 32 first, then switched to XP Pro)
Vista had massive issues, constantly telling me my video driver had to be recovered
-switched to XP Pro

Everything ran fine in XP for a while, then I started getting errors and lockups, contacted EVGA support
-was advised to clean/reinstall my nForce drivers, this fixed some of the issues
-was advised to clean/reinstall my video drivers, this fixed the rest of my issues

Things ran fine for a couple days, then I started to get lockups in 3D applications, or even opening a web page.
-Contacted BFG support, was told that it may be a GPU memory issue.. BUT after some searching on the net, I found other people were getting the same error after installing the 158.22 drivers, which is exactly what happened to me.

Re-installed the OS to be sure everything was fine and dandy; wanted to test further. Things ran fine for a day, then I started to get lockups in 3D apps/webpages.. upgraded to 162.15 drivers (I realize these drivers have some sort of issue, but my performance generally seems better with them.. waiting on the update). Things ran fine for a day, then I started to get lockups in 3D apps/webpages.

I can't figure this one out, here are the diagnostics I've ran:
Memtest86+: Ran for 24 hours with no errors
nTune Stability test (GPU, PCI-E): Ran for 6 hours with no errors
nTune Stability test (CPU, Disk, Memory): Ran for 2 hours with no errors
Disabled my X-Fi in device manager

After doing all this and it all ran fine, I fire up a 3D app and it locks up in about 20 seconds..I am able to CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill the task and things return to normal.

-------UPDATE------
I posted that message a while back on the EVGA forums, since then I have:
680i board RMA'd
8800 GTX RMA'd
--Problem persisted--
PSU RMA'd
CPU RMA'd
Dropped down to 2GB memory for kicks
--Problem persists--
With this current build, I have:
Ran TAT without issue (35C idle, 48-52C under 100% workload)
Ran Orthos without issue (blended mode)
3D mark and other 3D applications lock up typically within 5 minutes of starting them

Misc Info:
P30 BIOS
162.18 Nvidia Drivers
No Overclocking
Windows XP Pro

 

[Mousemonkey]

I don't know if this will 'kill or cure' but there are new drivers for your card.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_163.44.html

 

[denmar]

I'll give em a whirl.. always worth a shot. Not gonna get my hopes up, though.. been burned too many times with this system. I've given serious consideration to getting a different motherboard.. anyone out there have experience with other boards of equal gaming/performance grade? I was thinking maybe the Striker Extreme? I really don't want to buy another one unless I earnestly believe it will fix my issues, though.

 

[Mousemonkey]

The ongoing consensus at the moment is 'wait' as the time of new stuff really is just around the corner, as I have not played about with any of the Intel Sli boards I cannot give any recommendation as to the good or bad ones, lets hope some owners of different boards see this thread and share their experiences. For the moment perseverance and patience may be your only options I'm afraid.

 

[denmar]

97.95 resulted in BSOD during 3dmark (suggested by someone else), I also tried the beta 163.44 which also blue screened. Oddly enough 162.18 doesn't blue screen, it just hangs. I do have an ATI X600SE card laying around I could use to test another card, but ugh.. thats quite a downgrade from the 8800 and I'm not sure it would stress the system enough to really be that good of a test.