GeForce2 Freezing up at 10-15 minutes

I recently replaced my TNT2 32 with an nVidia GeForce2 Mx 400 64 meg that I bought off of ebay. I had bought this so that I could play in the AC2 beta.

My PC started crashing after just 15 minutes, but I at first assumed this was just bugs in the AC2 beta.

However, I then went back to play some of my old games, like Dark Age of Camelot and Diablo II...games that I know worked fine with my old TNT2 32. These ALSO would crash after 10-15 minutes, with the screen turning to snow (snow as in random raster lines with no images).


Did I get a bum card? Can this be fixed with just driver updates?

hello and welcome to sysopt!
:t


first did you uninstall your old drivers before usin the new card?

what version drivers are you using?

try and update your drivers
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp



:t

Thanks for the welcome :)

No, I didn't un-install my old TNT2 drivers; I did use the installation disk that came with the card to install the new GeForce drivers though. I'll go ahead ahead and try unistalling [I]both[I] sets of drivers, then re-installing the GeForce ones.

Thanks for the idea :)

I went to device manage under system in control panel, and found that only drivers for the GeForce2 were listed...apparently the TNT2 drivers had been autimatically taken off by the GeForce installation disk.

I then went a got the latest drivers from nVidia.com.

Neither of these helped; the card still freezes up and goes to raster snow after 10-15 on any game that uses hardware acceleration. Internet browsing, office apps, dev programs or anything else that doesn't require 3d accel works fine.

You didn't post your system specs, but is this an older machine?

Yes its an older motherboard:

PIII 500 mHz.
System memory currently 384 meg PC100.
Win 98.

When I went to check the card physically, I burned myself just touching the edge of the fiberglass board. If the board is that hot, the chip must be much hotter.

I've left the case off and now have a 16" fan blowing directly onto the board. I ran it for about a half hour, with no freeze-up.

I should try to return the card...the person I bought it off of on e-bay accepts returns for defective parts. However, the cost of shipping it back to him will cost almost as much as I paid for the card itself...since I'm getting more hours of work now, I might just live with having the fan blow directly on the card for now, a get a better card a couple months down the line (new mobo first tho!)

if it's a common HEAT issue witch now we can see

then just add a GPU FAN for the video card

and your problems are over :t

cheaper and better than Returning it :D

One more unrelated question, which is about gamma controls, which disappeared when I updated my drivers:

NM....was able adjust gamma controls with RivaTuner (which I saw on a link on this board :)). I shoulda looked around more heh :p

here this should help
new drivers with new control panel 40.x
http://nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_40.41

in the games you can go into the Video Settings area and change it

but with the new drivesr and control panel you can do that before you enter the game

:t

Dispater,

I have the exact same problem with the AC2 beta. After 5 to 15 minutes WinXP bluescreens with a 'infinte loop in video card driver' message. Other games like DAoC, GTA3, Morrowind, etc seem to run fine.

My system:
LeadTek Winfast A250 Ultra TD (GF4 4600)
AMD 1.2 Ghz
Abit KG7
768 megs of Crucial DDR (2100)
Seagate Cheetah X15

I also touched the back of my video card (mine has that huge leadtek heatsink with 2 fans) and it is very hot. Since my video card is brand new I'm not sure if this is out of the ordinary.

I've tried both the 29.42 drivers and 30.38 drivers. I haven't tried the 40.41 drivers yet since they are still listed as beta.

EDIT: Going to try extra cooling.

- phearle

Hi there

Id say that you should check to see the voltage of the agp slot your using. I've read some places that some have different voltage, it shouldn't be so hot even though you're using cooling given my the manufacturer. I've got that card and only the board part under the gpu is really hot but not burning hot. Its most probably the heat in my oppinion that is making your thing freeze up. Just my 2 cents.

Regards
-Nishant

Thanks for the reply.

I did a search on the forums and found a post recommending NVMax. NVMax has a setting that supposedly 'fixes' the BSOD infinite driver loop problem. I ownloaded it and enabled this option.

I've been playing AC2 for a good 30+ minutes since with no lockups. My card is hot under the GPU as well, however I've temporarily set up a room fan to blow air over it.

So far s good.

- phearle