Locking up in games

[jwr2763]

I recently got a Sapphire Atlantis 9500 with 128mb. Installed it in my system and had all kinds of problems. My system was old and ailing anyway, so I elected to upgrade pretty much all the way around. I will list the components in a bit. But basically my problem is that my system locks up in games, sometimes installing, sometimes a few minutes into the game. Games I have installed and tried up to this point include,,, Ghost Recon, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier of Forture II, and Deer Hunter 5. New system include the following, some are new components, marked with an astrisk, a few are old. As I said it is only games I am having problems with, nothing within the OS which is XP pro, have given me problems, I have also installed Norton Firewall, and Antivirus, as well as Office 2000, and Tax Cut software. I have downloaded the latest bios for the motherboard and have flashed it, I have also downloaded XP SP1, and the latest video drivers. Anyone have any suggestions?

*Thermaltake X5000 Plus Case
*Thermaltake Aquarius II Liquid Cooling System
*Samsung PC2700 DDR memory 1 Gig
*Abit SR7 8x Motherboard with SIS 648 Chipset
*Sapphire Atlantis 128mb 9500 Graphics card
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live Platinum
*450 ATX power supply
Western Digital 60 Gig HD

 

[ckayahan]

Hi,
I had a AIW 9700 Pro and I had the frequent lockups and random system boots during 3d games such as Mafia,Warcraft III so forth and so on. I had Windows Xp Service Pack 1 as OS and latest motherboard,sound card and ati catalyst drivers as well but the problem persisted. What turned out to be the cause is my Power supply. I had a no name 300 watt psu (max 300 watts but 280w continous) which was not enough to support my system which had the following components:

Athlon 2100 Xp+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Mob
512 Mb samsung ddr ram
Audigy Soundcard
All in wonder 9700 pro
52 x cd rom
48x24x48 Lg cdr
16 dvd rom

So basically my system needed more power. However in my little resarch to diagnosing the problem I learned that your ram's may not be working well with your moboard or drivers might be a problem or some irq settings (like the vga card and another pci device) are conflicting etc etc. So if you had the latest drivers then I would recommend you to check your rams with memtest first. Then check the irq conflicts (sharing is ok though). And although your power supply seems to be mighty, you did not write the exact details of your system so it might be the reason as well. One last thing is the heating of your cpu. Check the heat generation in your system and if you have overclocking for example then it might be affecting the stability of your system... Hopefully you find and solve the problem asap.

 

[Crashman]

I don't know much about the SR7-8X motherboard, but I do know that some 648 boards are great (Gigabyte) and others are terrible (Asus), depending on the manufacturer.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[jwr2763]

Mine is an abit, have pretty much decided at this point after many changes, and attempts, that the video board is bad. Gonna RMA it, and upgrade to a true ATI 9500 pro.

 

[Crashman]

I just reread your post. Initially I thought you were hadn't purchased the new board yet, but you already have the SR7-8X? OK, I have some news for you;
Many people have complained about instability with AGP8x or PC3200 on the Asus P4S8X. A few have complained on the MSI board of similar problems. This is why I've been recommending the Gigabyte boards as the only stable 648 boards for use with ATI's latest cards or with PC3200.

My suggestion on that board? Try turning off AGP8x in BIOS. Also check your voltage levels through power monitoring software.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[ejsmith2]

Sounds like what I was getting when I was trying to use a Ti4200 4x card in an Asus A7n8x board. And a Gigabyte 7vaxp.

I don't know anything about the Sis chipset. But if that's not an 8x video card, if it were me, I'd seriously consider the videocard as a problem.

It could very well be mainboard drivers and the Ati drivers just haven't started working together yet.

"I personally think filesystems should be rewritten from scratch every 5 years..." --- Hans Reiser

 

[slvr_phoenix]

You have a system with a SIS chipset and you even have to ask what the problem is?

<font color=blue><pre>If you don't give me accurate and complete system specs
then I can't give you an accurate and complete answer.</pre><p></font color=blue>