New Radeon based gaming PC not as reliable as I wo

[SpeedDog]

Greetings all,

Recently I purchased and built a new PC consisting of the following core
components:-

Hardware:-
Intel P4-3.0C (800mhz fsb) CPU
EpoX 4PCA3+ (875P Intel chipset) motherboard
Corsair TWIN X 512-PC3200 Low Latency matched 256meg RAM modules
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128meg video card
Creative Audigy 2 sound card
Western Digital WD1200JB 120gig 7200rpm hdd
Thermaltake Xaser III - V1000A case
Thermaltake TT480-SV 480watt PSU

Software:-
Windows XP Professional + Service Pack 1
DirectX 9.0B
ATI Catalyst video drivers v3.7
ATI drivers Smartgart default 8x AGP, Fast Writes=ON

The system performs very well with 3D Mark 2001SE scores of 18,000.
However I am encountering issues with the stability of the system at
present. The problem is an intermittent one where the system will freeze on
a reboot just as the Windows XP desktop is being displayed (no mouse or
keyboard response at all) and the system will also intermittently hang in a
game menu or during actual game play eg Vietcong, BattleField 1942 etc.
I have ensured that the system is NOT overclocked in anyway including the
RAM (set to SPD default setting), Radeon 9800 Pro default core & clock
speeds, CPU at default 3.0 ghz.

I have tried all manner of BIOS settings to no avail including the
following:
Set BIOS 'fail-safe defaults', Video and system BIOS non cacheable.
Set BIOS 'optimised defaults', Video and system BIOS cacheable.
Voltage of Radeon default 1.5v, DIMM default 2.6v, CPU default (also tried
increasing the voltage of the DIMM to 2.8v, and Radeon to 1.7v - system
would still intermittently lockup).

The intermittent lockups can occur at any time and there doesn't seem to be
any pattern which makes it hard to determine the cause. For example I might
be playing Vietcong for 3 hrs and without an issue and then leave the game
and get back in and 10 minutes later - hard lockup! That also goes for the
reboot into WinXP issue as well, it could go days without a problem and then
bang, lockup city.....

If anyone has any suggestions please pass them my way as I have just about
exhausted all the options I know. Quite frankly I am a little more than
disappointed after spending so many thousands of dollars on a new PC system
that is just not as reliable as I would have hoped for......and I am sure
that many of you out there can relate to this

Thanks and regards
Speed_Dog

Melbourne Australia
(btw mobo BIOS flashed to latest Epox version)

 

[endyen]

My understanding is that the "C' chips have some problems with low latency. Try relaxing your ram timing.

 

[Nights_L]

Fast Writes=ON

disable it

 

[htgoetz]

I had a similar problem with the new pc at work. I n my case it was bad ram. I would suggest that you get memtest86 and let it run one night. Btw. you have to create a special ( non-dos-readable ) floppy-disk for running memtest86.

Thomas