DescentBB

I just built a new computer for a friend of mine, and I think there may be something wrong with the video card. It is freezing in UT2004 and rebooting in 3dmark03. VPU recover caught it once, but all the other times I've been resorting to the reset switch. Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2500
Asus A7V9X-X
Info-tek Radeon 9600 Pro running Cat 4.6
512MB RAM
Windows XP Home

It gets through CPU/RAM stress tests fine... but nothing video. According to 3dmark, the Video RAM is clocked at 200Mhz (400 effective, same as the core). I thought that the 9600 Pro was supposed to have 350(700)mhz RAM. Help?

Uninstall/reinstall vid card drivers. Try using a previous driver version. Maybe overheating?

Run it caseless for a while, with a small fan pointed in. If that cures the crash, you need to work on your cases ventilation.

Otherwise I'd experiment with every driver you could find.

The case is kinda weird in that it doesn't have a spot to mount a rear fan (or at least one larger than 60mm). Currently I have an 80mm fan in the front blowing in, the CPU fan blowing on the CPU, and the side fan as the exhaust. I'll try running it caseless and try some different drivers.

Ok, ran the thing caseless on the floor under my ceiling fan. It ran UT2004 with some bots with no problems, but still rebooted during 3DMark03. Nothing in there is hot to the touch. The CPU heatsink is warm (idles at about 40C) and the video card is hardly warm at all.

:: comes back to post a bit later ::

OK, I found a problem. I got the retail Athlon 2500+ Barton. But the CPU was running at 1460Mhz instead of 1830. So I went into the BIOS and found the problem. But it still is rebooting during 3Dmark03 (CPU Test 1, to be specific). I'm going to let it sit and run Prime95 for a while and see if has any problems.

[Edit]
Ok, it has been running the Prime95 torture test for the past 2 hours with no problems. I'll try 3Dmark once more after it has run about 6 hours.

Ok, Prime95 gave out after 4 hours with an "Illegal Sumout" error, tried to restart 100 times with the same result.

Try running memtest86 overnight. Be sure to run ALL of the tests instead of the standard ones. Also, what does your event log say error wise?

Event log... of... what?

sounds like bad RAM to me too.

OK, Memtest has run overnight (for 8:15:00) with no errors. That leaves the CPU as being the problem... correct?

After reading through everything you've done / posted, that would be my guess. Try giving it a little more voltage, 0.05 or 0.10v extra. Just enough to see what happens. Also, check the voltage and make sure it isn't already set to some crazy level like 1.75+.

How hot is the CPU heatsink? If it isn't mounted correctly, that could be your problem. The cores on these things have a very small contact patch yes? No Heatspreader. It's therefore pretty crucial to get the thermal goop spread evenly (and thinly!). The heatsink should be HOT. The hotter the better in fact!

Hot heatsink = cool CPU. Cool heatsink = hot CPU.

Like I said earlier, the temps are fine. The CPU heatsink stays warm, and the CPU is idling at a little over 40C. If I remember correctly, the BIOS listed the VCore as 1.62 or 1.63... although it should be 1.65.

Edit:
Ok, I tried running it with the VCore at 1.70V, and it rebooted even earlier into 3Dmark. I think I'll have to RMA the CPU.

Plague wrote:Event log... of... what?

Administrator Tools -> Event Viewer

Do you have any other systems to run that processor in? You try resetting the settings in your BIOS back to detault, and then changing only the necessary settings to get it (re: the CPU) to run at full rated speed?