This is frustrating....I need your help guys (troubleshooters)

[plucky duck]

Hi, I'm kinda stuck in a situation I'd like resolved asap.

Here's the thing, I have a "customer" who is building a new computer. I have sold him my modded ICS Asus P3V4X mobo and Slot1 P3-650e and an Alpha P3125 HSF.

Here's his setup:
ATX Case w/300Watt PS
Asus P3V4X Mobo
P3-650e w/Alpha P3125
Asus TNT2 32mb AGP
128mb PC133 Generic SDRAM
13.6 WD Caviar UDMA HD
Mx300 sound card
DLink ethernet card
Iomega Zip 100

The thing is he says that his 3dgaming is unstable (even with cpu @ defaullt 650mhz).
Windows is stable, while some games work and some other games crashes.

He also has an open case also, so heat should not be a factor.

The mobo's 4-in-1 driver is updated to the latest also.

The games that run stable are Elite Force, Heroes 3, Q3, and Vampire. Halflife, UT, Wheel of Time dont work.

Is this more of a hardware of software related issue?

Any help is GREATLY APPRECIATED http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Plucky

[Dputiger]

Could be both (bet you love hearing that).

First of all, it sounds like a video card issue. I'd check your IRQ's and make sure the video card has its own IRQ and that it conflicts with nothing else.

Secondly, update all 'dem drivers. Since the system is crashing on a variety of games it could be a common driver call.

You could also try setting your RAM to a less-aggressive timing, if he's running at CAS-2.

That's all I can think of right now--let me know if any of it helps.

[Psycho-holic Slag]

i'd bet a thousand dollars it's that POS VIA chipset.

describe the symptoms a little more though... you say it doesn't run stable. that's pretty f---ing vague. is he getting BSODs? does it lock up? does it crash to the desktop? are there any error messages at all?

i'll tell you my experience.... i had a FIC VA 503+ which had a VIA MVP3 chipset w/a k6-2 400 and a v3 2k. almost all games crashed to the desktop - just disappeared. a couple would lock up though forcing a hard boot. tried everything under the sun to fix it (trust me), and nothing worked. depending on which video driver set i used q2, q3, and unreal ran fine. i swapped the board and chip for an ASUS p5a-b and a k6-3 450 and now everything's cool.

i've heard many other people complain about similar problems, especially on the 3dfx voodoo 3 board which i ended up spending a lot of time on. i really don't know, but i believe it has something to do with a combination of hardware and software.... chipset, video card, video card drivers, and maybe even the processor.

[plucky duck]

Unstable as in crashing back out to Windows.
Ram is set to Cas3.

Did a clean install with only the utmost necessary components and still same thing he says. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif

Plucky

[Psycho-holic Slag]

sounds exactly like the problem i ran in to.

aside from updating any and all drivers available for all hardware components and applying any game patches available, try the following:

(easy) give it a C-A-D and make certain nothing else is running in the background... end task on anything but explorer and systray.
(time consuming) - remove all unnecessary cards and see if the problem still occurs. to be really thorough you would have to remove everything but the video card, REFORMAT, and reproduce the problem - but if you don't want to go through all that remove all the drivers from the device manager instead. that would be a more accurate test

i'm willing to bet after doing both it'll still happen (did for me), but it's a necessary part of the troubleshooting process. also, to be certain that temp is not a problem point a fan at the open case. high temps would cause the problem as well.

i stick with my theory... there's a certain combination of hardware that's causing the problem.

[This message has been edited by Psycho-holic Slag (edited 09-20-2000).]

[Underclocked]

My first suspect beyond the recommended driver updates would be that sound card. I had one and it gave me fits!

[Dputiger]

Could be just me, but I've used five Socket 7 boards with the MVP3 chipset and never had a problem with any of them. If you used this chipset for a long time as well, I don't know that its the problem.

[plucky duck]

Correction, its not the games crashing back out to Windows, its the games freezing up.

Certain games do that while others play fine.

He had removed all but the vc, hd, ram, cpu and mobo, so I don't think the sound card can be the culprit.

He's having the TNT2 replaced by a Geforce2 so we'll see how goes once more.

I'm suspecting the video card since its gaming related, but no so sure myself as I've never encountered such a situation when I had the mobo and cpu.

But then again I never had a TNT2, I once had a Geforce2 in there as well as my current Riva128 and neither game me troubles.

*fingers crossed*

Plucky