Asher, I conceed!

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:11

Why oh why do I bother with Athlon. My comp is constantly running at 65C. As soon as it reaches 70C I get the good old blue screen of death. I'm using GlobalWin CopperHeatsink too, best you can buy. I've put just the perfect amount of arctic silver thermal paste on the chip. I carefully put the heatsink on, knowing how Athlon's will break down if you even breath on them. But still it refuses to run at a lower temp and I crash every time I try do a benchmark or run a game at anywhere near a decent level.

If anyone can diagonse the problem, I'm running on the ALi chipset, Athlon 2100, GeForce 3 with 1G DDR.

When the blue screen comes on it says a problem with NV4_DSP.DLL which is strange as that is a graphics driver. I have tried all the drivers from the 12.xx to 40.xx range and still have the same problems. I have the side of my casing off too which dropped it a degree or two (if indeed the temperature is the problem)

What can I do ?

(and a P4 is definitely my next purchase)

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:14

You can try improving air flow. How many case fans do you have and how are they set up?

If the NV4_DSP.DLL is crashing your computer, maybe the video card itself overheats. I actually had a problem with this with my GF4, those things get very hot and are located very close to the CPU. You can buy things called Slot Coolers which sit in the PCI slot next to the video card and suck the hot air away from the video card and out the back of the case, which cools it off considerably...

I've got an Athlon 2100 as well, and I've found the only way to keep it completely stable during room temperature operation is with 4 80mm case fans (2 intake, 2 exhaust), a slot cooler for the video card, and a great HSF.

My motherboard still shuts the thing off when it's above 25C room temperature after a bit, so when it gets hot in the summer I've gotta underclock it to 1300MHz to keep it stable.

Giancarlo · September 5, 2002, 17:18

Well you might need a better cooling system...

My CPU runs at a good 43C and the system is at 29C. Overall really good. However some of my fans shut off because of lose connections and then I had a similar problem.

chequita guevara · September 5, 2002, 17:19

My Athalon is stylin' even when it gets over 80 in the apartment. My old celery would die at that heat.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:20

Quote:

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
My Athalon is stylin' even when it gets over 80 in the apartment. My old celery would die at that heat.

Celeries don't exactly run hot, especially the old ones.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:22

The I have one of them PCI slot coolers planted infront of the GeForce. I've also under clocked it to 350MHz. God I hate underclocking stuff I feel so dirty

I've got 2 case fans but they sound like hoovers, and I keep my computer on 24/7 in my bedroom. The HSF cost me £50 alone

At the moment I have one intake fan, PCI slot fan and GlobalWin Copper HSF.

I've even unscrewed the power box and placed it next to my computer as that was pretty warm and quite close to the flow going through the heatsink.

God I think I'm gonna go get my 486 DX4/100.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:23

Oh I also bought a 350W PSU, thinking a lack of power may have been the problem. Alas it wasn't.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:25

Quote:

Originally posted by MattHiggs
The I have one of them PCI slot coolers planted infront of the GeForce. I've also under clocked it to 350MHz. God I hate underclocking stuff I feel so dirty

350MHz? Your GeForce? Did you mean 150MHz or something?

Quote:

I've got 2 case fans but they sound like hoovers, and I keep my computer on 24/7 in my bedroom. The HSF cost me £50 alone

At the moment I have one intake fan, PCI slot fan and GlobalWin Copper HSF.

I've even unscrewed the power box and placed it next to my computer as that was pretty warm and quite close to the flow going through the heatsink.

God I think I'm gonna go get my 486 DX4/100.

Hmm. Are you sure the case is getting its air? You don't have things blocking it off at the back/sides/front?

Does the case have room for any more case fans? You could also try a hard drive cooler if you need to, it sits in a drivebay...

Have you tried leaving the case off?

notyoueither · September 5, 2002, 17:30

Sometimes, different BIOS versions will lead to different temperatures (or at least reported temperatures). Sometimes, the newer versions introduce the problem with some boards. I seem to recall the Asus A7A266 having these issues with a couple of revisions of the BIOS.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:32

The problem might just be a chipset issue. I'm not too fond of ALi chipsets.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:35

If the problem still persists with the 40.xx drivers, I'm not too sure if it's the video card overheating. I know when I was overclocking my GF4, with the new 40.xx drivers it'd just "freeze" for about 10-20 seconds to cool off, then resume, with previous versions it'd do a BSOD or a hard reboot. They call it "robust channels", but I don't know how well it works or if it works at all on GF3s.

Az · September 5, 2002, 17:36

how about trying that liquid nitrogen thingee? just a thought.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:40

I always prefered ALi to the VIA.

VIA + Athlon + nVidia = trouble.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:41

I've got a VIA + Athlon + nVidia and it's been relatively trouble free, aside from heat issues. And you've got mysterious BSODing.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
If the problem still persists with the 40.xx drivers, I'm not too sure if it's the video card overheating. I know when I was overclocking my GF4, with the new 40.xx drivers it'd just "freeze" for about 10-20 seconds to cool off, then resume, with previous versions it'd do a BSOD or a hard reboot. They call it "robust channels", but I don't know how well it works or if it works at all on GF3s.

That's a really good feature

I've made sure XP won't do any hard reboots with giving me a shitload of error reports so I can try and figure out the problem myself. Shame that Comp Sci hasn't taught me anything useful yet

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:43

I'm just gonna try the ASUS 14.62 drivers, as they seem to come highly recommended.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 17:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
I've got a VIA + Athlon + nVidia and it's been relatively trouble free, aside from heat issues. And you've got mysterious BSODing.

You must be lucky then. There has been huge problems with the VIA 4 in 1 drivers I think they are. I'm not too familiar with VIA, but I've read a million various posts on problems.

Strange how you never see a lot of problems reported with Intel and ATI combinations.

Giancarlo · September 5, 2002, 17:47

VIA works fine for me....

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:49

Intel puts their chipsets through far, far more rigorous testing than anyone else. They've been "validating" PC1066 RDRAM and DDR333 for months now...

We've generally had less problems with Via than SiS or ALi or even AMD chipsets. They do more testing and have more mature drivers than SiS, ALi, or AMD -- the reason why you probably hear more bad things about Nvidia and Via is because it's far more popular than ALi or even ATI.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 17:56

Some other things you can check:

Download RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/
Check what stepping your GeForce 3 is. When you start up RivaTuner, in the Main tab, right under the display adapter pulldown.
My GeForce 3 says: "128-bit AGP NV20 (A5) with 64MB DDR memory". In this case, A5 is the stepping.
There are two public GeForce 3 steppings, A4 and A5. A4s have some known bugs in them and don't overclock as well as A5s, and maybe this is one of the bugs with an A4.

You should also try enabling ALi compatibility mode. To do this:
Under the Main tab, in the Driver Settings section, click the arrow next to "Customize", and select the first icon which is "Customize system settings".
Click on the Compatibility tab, then at the bottom there's a checkbox that says "Enable motherboard chipset compatibility mode".

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 18:07

I get a 3DMark Score of 5666.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 18:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Some other things you can check:

Download RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/
Check what stepping your GeForce 3 is. When you start up RivaTuner, in the Main tab, right under the display adapter pulldown.
My GeForce 3 says: "128-bit AGP NV20 (A5) with 64MB DDR memory". In this case, A5 is the stepping.
There are two public GeForce 3 steppings, A4 and A5. A4s have some known bugs in them and don't overclock as well as A5s, and maybe this is one of the bugs with an A4.

You should also try enabling ALi compatibility mode. To do this:
Under the Main tab, in the Driver Settings section, click the arrow next to "Customize", and select the first icon which is "Customize system settings".
Click on the Compatibility tab, then at the bottom there's a checkbox that says "Enable motherboard chipset compatibility mode".

Ooh, thanks for that. I'll try that now

Here is a link to my last benchmark
http://service.madonion.com/servlet/...jectId=4400631

I've only got 512mb RAM in at the moment, my brother wanted to 'borrow' a stick

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 18:18

It's A5. I've got it underclocked now at 180MHz , 280MHz RAM. Hopefully this should help a little. I've also installed the latest ALi driver, not updated that for a few months

I'll do another benchmark and see if I can get a good result this time

Asher · September 5, 2002, 18:19

My best 3DMark is just above 11000 with stock speeds. When I benched it, the 3DMark servers were too busy (right after Det 40s released), so I couldn't upload it.

I'll re-run the test so you can compare soon.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 18:36

11,000!!

That is rediculously high!

I spent £290 on this GeForce 3, oh how I hate the fast paced technology market

Giancarlo · September 5, 2002, 18:37

Quote:

Originally posted by MattHiggs
I get a 3DMark Score of 5666.

That is all you get with a Geforce3?

Hmm... with my Geforce2 TI450 I get a score of 5250 or so... and I spent US$70-80 on it.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 18:38

I can't wait to try the AC2 beta with it. The high-definition pack is a 682MB download addition, and the core game itself with the regular graphics is only 615MB big.

The minimum requirements for the high-def AC2 pack is 512MB system RAM and 128MB video card RAM -- damn it'll be sweet.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 19:01

Have you seen the new Halo 2 trailor? That looks sweet. Amazingly high res textures in places, you can tell they made some cutback in the polycount in some scene. But the lighting is some of the best I've seen in any game.

Asher · September 5, 2002, 19:17

Yep, definitely saw it. Thread about it is in the Games forum. Can't wait.

MattHiggs · September 5, 2002, 19:28

Moo 3 is out on 20th Sept - then it's Imperium Galactica and Star Wars Galaxies out in the 29th November. I've been drooling over SWG for nearly a year