Good old fashion crashage

[linusnorton]

hi, this is my computer:

1.2Ghz AMD Athlon (thunderbird)
512 NVRAM
nVidia 32mb GeForce2 MX 200
ECS K7S5A mainboard
WinME
DirectX 8.1
latest drivers from nVIDIA
latest onboard sound and agp drivers from SiS

but for some reason when i play games it feels the need to completely freeze between 10-60min of playing, then i have to restart.

the cpu temp is around 50c, graphics card 54.5c.

i have tryed disabling the sound, installing new drivers, changing graphic win size in bios, and taking all pci cards out - IM ALL OUT OF IDEAS!!!.

ive been told to

change the agp apature size
make the agp bandwidth bigger
disable PCI/AGP multidisply in bios

all of which i could not find out how to do. help me PLEASE im dying here. all help appriciated.

[acid_burn~187]

First off, did you make sure to install your motherboard drivers before ANYTHING ELSE?? This is very important, especially on VIA chipsets. Installing your sound or video drivers before the motherboard drivers will cause instability on most mainboards.

Also go into your bios and load the fail-safe defaults and use only 1 stick of ram (if you have 2 installed). You can also try taking out your any expansion cards other than ur graphics card and reinstall windows. Then add the parts piece by piece to see if any of them will cause problems upon install.

Good luck

~Paul

[bigparsnip]

What sort of cooling do you have in your case, as if the thing is only crashing when you play games (3D by any chance?) it pobably means there is a problem with the graphics card overheating or not being correctley seated in its socket.

[Shent]

Is that CPU temp at idle or when gaming.

[linusnorton]

yeah i install the mainboard drivers first, i was told to do this but why is it so important and does it cause any perminant or other damage, but it does have onboard sound and it installs that using the same program so im not sure which goes first, but i asume they would be cleaver enough to have it the right way round.

ok more info:

cpu ratio is x9: unchangable
core voltage 1.792: ""
cpu freq 133mhz changable
dram freq 133 mhz changable

when i set it back to optimum or fastest settings the cpu freq and the dram freq go down to 100mhz - i dont think that normal, and then when i restart instead of saying 1200mhz it says 900mhz. does that mean its been overclocked??? i couldnt get the fan off the cpu easily (and i didnt want to brake things even more trying) so i couldnt tell if it was overclocked.

my graphics card has just got a heat sink, i goes up a couple degrees c when playing games (from 53 to 54.5ish). the cpu has got a fan running at 4500 rpm.

the cpu temp in bios just after restarting after a crash from gaming is about 50-51c.

note- if im going to format should i install ME or XP?

[bigparsnip]

You might want to try putting a couple of 80mm case fans in to pump cooler air through you case, my temps droper by about 10 degrees celcius for my case temp and CPU temp when I put two fans in a while ago (one blowing in at the front and one out at the rear). So I imagine that it would have similar effects on the graphics card's temp and posiby stop the crashing if it is caused by overheating.

[linusnorton]

thats a good idea but i want to find out if it heat causing it to crash b4 i spend any money - the other thing i might try is under clocking it hopefully thatll cool it down a bit

[Imperion1]

Try playing the same games with the case lid off and a small house fan blowing into the case. Making sure the graphics card is getting air circulated around it. If it doesn't crash and everything runs pretty could, then try getting a small fan to mount onto the graphic card's heat sink.

[linusnorton]

ok i changed the cpu freq and dram freq from 133 mhz to 100mhz which put the processor down to a 900 mhz (does anyone know why???) and it works fine, its not just in games it crashes i was installing win xp and it crashed (with the case off and everything), so i take it this is a problem with the cpu or motherboard can someone help me out or just tell me if im right/wrong

[bigparsnip]

I think "bizzare" may be an appropriate decripton here, I'm stummped from what know. Sorry.

[Nemesis1s]

hmm don't know very much about this topic, but isn't 50 degrees very high??

i got a P III 733 and it only get's 36 degrees
The Geforce 2 MX400 is only at 34 degrees (also only a heatsink)


buy a PCI cooler, and place it directly under you're graphic card..this should keep it cool for sure.

[Rugor]

Just a thought:

But where did you buy your CPU from?

What it sounds like to me is that someone sold you a 900MHz Athlon B (9x100MHz DDR)and told you it was a 1.2GHz Athlon C (9x133MHz DDR). Your BIOS is recognizing it as an Athlon B so I suspect that's what it is.

If it is overclocked there are really only two ways to try to stabilize it: Raise the voltage or improve your cooling. It sounds like your only possibility is to improve your cooling, which will unfortunately require removing the heatsink, and replacing it with a better one and good thermal compound.

The best way to do that is to take the motherboard out of the case and remove and reinstall the heatsink there. And if you do do that be very sure to see what the CPU actually says.

[linusnorton]

i was looking at another thread with someone with the same problem as me and they said amd's recommended core voltage is 1.75 but mines 1.792 and when i put the frequencys down i would think that lower the voltage. so does any one know if my core voltage is too high

[Nemesis1s]

that 0.04 Volt isn't the problem m8

[linusnorton]

is it legal to sell over clocked good without telling me? are there any ways i can tell if its been over clocked ? btw this is the site i bought it from http://www.addonsonline.com. im going to ring the tomorow after i find out whether its been overclocked and give em some jip. hehe

oh last thing in windows if i run SiSandra it does say its a amd 1156 mhz thunderbird and in bios i just think it says k7. so i dunno ill take the fan off and have a look but i had some trouble with that last time.