R9700 + 8K3A+ dont work! HELP

[lhgpoobaa]

HELP! 8K3A+ and 9700 Pro. quote:

Ive just got a new shiney Powercolor R9700 pro.
And it doesn't boot.

What happens is:

I plug the card in, connect up the power connector and it boots ok, visuals a-OK... but freezes after the onboard Highpoint RAID drive detection.
BIOS LED boot code is '86'.
But the manual aint much help, saying
86-92h = reserved

I put back in the old Gesuck2pro and it boots normally.

Whats going on? Anyone experiece this?
The card has enough power, running on a lightly used molex line with a 550W PSU.
I NEED the raid as i have my two IDE hard drives on it... and boot off the first, but its not even getting to the point of booting windows. (after RAID drive detection comes the list of IRQ's in use THEN the windows boot)
As far as i remember im using a 2A25 bios flash and 2.31 highpoint drivers.

Trying to think of anything else important....
help please



<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[endyen]

I'm sure you took everything nVidia out before hand right?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Course... but the issue it its not even getting to the point of the OS boot, so that doesnt have a connection.

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[TKH]

So you finally get rid of your GeForce2. But that's bad you can't get a new graphic card to work, especially one likes the expensive R9700P
I think it might be hardware conflict even though unlikely... You really have to try using normal IDE controller wihtout RAID to see if that's the problem lies.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TKH on 05/21/03 06:49 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Indeed. At this point i see the most probable cauzes are:

A. conflict with RAID drivers
or
B. IRQ conflict.

need more info though... need to work out how to disable onboard raid LOL.


<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

OK... so i fixed that issue and its now working.
Suprisingly enough i needed a bios update, even though the previous one was from late last year, when the R9700 was around.

But now ive got a different issue.

It locks up with a blank blue screen and cycling sound within 5 mins of gaming...
on serious sam second edition and freelancer.
I made sure i got rid of the nvidia detonators first, rebooted THEN installed the catylist 3.4's.

so what do i do now to get game stability?

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[phsstpok]

Don't you just love VIA chipsets!

Clean install of drivers in the following order.

- Uninstall then reinstall VIA 4-in-1 (Hyperion) drivers.

- If you are using Win9x/ME use Detonator Destroyer to clean up extaneous nVidia files. For Win 9x/ME/XP/2000 get Detonator R.I.P (haven't tried this utility myself). Get both utilities at <A HREF="http://www.guru3d.com" target="_new">http://www.guru3d.com</A>

- Uninstall then reinstall Video Drivers. Omega drivers (<A HREF="http://www.omegacorner.com" target="_new">www.omegacorner.com</A>) are easier, because Control Panel is integrated and overclocking 9500 & 9700 is supposedly built-in. Omega has also included a 9500-->9700 softmod into his drivers.

- Uninstall/Reinstall DirectX with DirectX Eradicator (get at <A HREF="http://www.freewebs.com/firecat/" target="_new">www.freewebs.com/firecat/</A>. WinXP is supported only in the beta version at this time).


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Well i did all that you said.
reinstalled hyperions, removed and reinstalled DX 9.0a, got the omega's and hunted for all traces of nvidia. all gone.

But it still crashes, though not quite as quickly i should add, more like in 20mins opposed to 5 before.
Hmmmmm

I also checked the heatsink while the card was running full load... its warm, not too hot or anything.

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by lhgpoobaa on 05/21/03 08:51 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

A clean reinstall may help?

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new"> My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new"> My Rig</A></b>

 

[phsstpok]

Are you still getting a blank blue screen?

I've seen BSODs but not a blank screen. This is puzzling.

Any chance the GPU is overheating? Did you try underclocking? Can you do this with the Omega drivers?


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

ok... ive been busy for MOST OF THE DAY trying to work out this problem... and i think ive narrowed it down!

But i was still getting lots of hard freezes in games, sometimes blankblue screens with cycling sound, other times just freezes.

And have now got to the point where i know what the following drivers do:
ATI cat's 3.4 :- freeze
ATI cat's 3.2 :- freeze
ATI cat's 3.1 :- freeze
Omega unified 3.4 :- freeze
ATI cat's 2.4 (from CD supplied with card) :- NO FREEZES.

So for some damn reason the only drivers that seem to work without freezing are the very old 2.4's.
But of course being old drivers they are slow and jerky with certain games.
I checked the Powercolor website for card specific drivers, but they just use standard ATI Catylists.
I also tried the drivers with Maximum eyecandy then minimum. Makes no difference.

And i know that i can get it to freeze in virtually the same place in serious sam each time... certainly makes it easier to problem solve rather than waiting around for a crash.

but.... What do i do now???

FYI: I have also done the following.
Reinstalled Latest Via hyperion drivers.
reinstalled DX 9.0a.
done detonator destroyer to remove old geforce2pro drivers.
Regedit and removed all registry traces

At least now i know its got nothing to do with hardware issues... its just something with windows and the drivers.

WinXP pro + SP1
SB live + latest drivers
512mb ram
8K3a+ mobo
512mb PC3200 ram
550W psu



<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[phial]

upgrade to SP3?



-------

<A HREF="http://www.xgr.com" target="_new">XGR-Game Reviews</A>

<font color=red>"I cheat, therefore I am" - Nvidia</font color=red>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

eh? i thought XP was only up to SP1???

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[phial]

nooo lol i dont htink ...


i think XP goes up to SP3 liek win2k

someone correct me if im wrong. ill check out M$ web site in the mean time

-------

<A HREF="http://www.xgr.com" target="_new">XGR-Game Reviews</A>

<font color=purple>Enter my Matrix, from behind </font color=purple>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

I had win2k before.
its sp3 for 2k, sp1 for XP.
and ive gone to the MS page and got all the updates allready.

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[melb_angel19]

I'm pretty sure XP only has SP1.

<b>THGC's <i>Innocent</i> Angel</b>
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/melb_angel19" target="_new">
<b><font color=purple>Angel's Photo Album</b></A></font color=purple>

 

[phsstpok]

Yup, you've pretty much ruled out hardware, heat and overclocking issues.

That leaves Windows and driver issues, some sort of conflict. With VIA, ATI, and DirectX drivers cleanly installed it's probably something else.

Just thought of something. Did you rember to uninstall the ATI Control Panel in between each ATI driver install?

Since you mentioned cycling sound why not try investigating that. In Serious Sam you can disable sound. Start there see if the game plays past the point you mentioned when sound is disabled. If that doesn't work try completely disabling sound devices in Device Manager.

For help from a larger base of users you might try the Epox newsgroup, alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.epox if you have a news reader. If you don't have a news server (like me) you can access through Google Groups. Click <A HREF="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.epox" target="_new">here</A>.

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[jaythaman]

I dont know anything but try it without SP1???

<font color=blue><b>OKK!! Which one of you wise guys stole my sig! :frown: :tongue: </font color=blue></b><font color=red><b><i>Jay Kay</font color=red></b></i>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Not that easy. My copy of XP pro has SP1 slipstreamed into it.


<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

A. yes i did uninstall the ctrl pannel between each driver revision
B. Allready posted on www.aoaforums.com (they have a specific epox forum)

moving on

ok... howz this for wierd.
Ive been playing serious sam for long enough to recognise that it ALLWAYS reliably freezes in one place (and lots of others too of course)

I have a savegame just before that location.
Just for fun, i turned around and walked through the location backwards and it didnt freeze LOL.
Must be something do to with some sound/rendering glitch.

I also did a winXP repair last night, which is as close as i can get to a complete reinstall.

Repair -> new hyperions -> DX9.0a -> omega's 3.4 then try games.
And guess what. exactly the same crash.
The sound driver's WERN'T installed either, so it was running off the default drivers that MS auto-installs.




<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[phsstpok]

Pretty weird.

Sorry, but I'm out of ideas short of trying another OS like 98SE.

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Thanx for the help man

<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[Twitch]

Go into ATI control panel and turn Hardware Acceleration down a click, and then see if it still crashes...

Does VIA include George Breeze's Latency Patch in their drivers now? If not, you might consider installing it, because it fixes a lot of PCI latency issues, some of which specifically involve SB Live and RAID controllers...



<font color=green>The Netherlands is where you go when you're too good for heaven.</font color=green> :tongue:


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Twitch on 05/25/03 05:05 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Thanx mr twitchie.
I must say this bug/issue/feature certainly has me perplexed... and there is nothing i like more than a challenge.

Done more serious sam testing and found something curious;
A. It never crashes in windows mode, regardless of resolution.
B. Fullscreen 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and 1152x864 crash, <b>BUT</b>
C. Fullscreen 1280x960 and 1600x1200 don't.

Pretty wierd huh?
Detail levels and eyecandy settings have no effect.

Also ive only tried 1024x768 and 1280x960 with Freelancer and it seems the same, one crashes, the other not.

Oh and ive tried this issue with and without the latency patch.

Will try the hardware accel setting now.


<b>My PC is so powerful it developed AI and enslaved me in a make believe virtual world... called Freelancer</b> :lol:
<A HREF="http://www.picturetrail.com/master_poobaa" target="_new">PooBaa's Pics!</A>

 

[Twitch]

ATI also has a refresh-fix, but I didn't mention it because it didn't seem to me that it would fix any crashes, but according to ATI's website, there are occasional carshing problems that it patches. So you may want to try it if all else fails.


<font color=green>The Netherlands is where you go when you're too good for heaven.</font color=green> :tongue: