PC crashing woes...

[Flibster]

Got a PC to sort out here - Every component checks out in another machine which is annoying me.

I suspect there's something with the graphics card going on - It's a Sapphire 4870 512mb bog standard card.

In 3d apps *I'm testing with Fallout 3* after an unpredictable amount of time, sometimes under 5 minutes - sometimes over an hour, screen goes black, sound crashes and loops, and the PC eventually reboots.

In 2d - it's fine.

Power usage is way below what the power supply can provide.
CPU temps are fine...
GPU temps are fine... Set the fan to 100% and the cpu and memory speeds to the 3d settings to prevent the speed bump happening.

Tried Catalysts from 8.6 to 9.5 - same thing happens in all.

Stumped...

Error reports that I have actually got out of the machine points to Ati2mtag.sys - the driver.

Tried the Catalyst AI in on, off and advanced - no difference

Google seems to be no help. Only thing I can think of it's that it's something to do with the machine running XP64...

Any ideas?

[Mark]

The usual - turn off auto reboot on BSOD, look for minidumps. Eliminate as many non-essential components as possible (usually PSU, mobo, CPU, one stick of RAM, one HDD, graphics).

[Flibster]

Doesn't even BSOD
Screen just switches off.

Leaning towards the PSU now.

[Stan_Lite]

I would be inclined to think either dodgy drivers or dodgy PSU or motherboard. If you've tried all the latest Catalyst drivers, I'd be inclined to think it's the PSU, or possibly the motherboard. Does the mobo have another PCI-e slot you can try? Do you have a spare PSU you can try?

[Justsomebloke]

Try different slots for the ram.
Try Omega drivers.
Try a different PSU.

[Flibster]

Seems like it's the PSU and the motherboard.
Now wondering if I should I take the opportunity to upgrade the whole machine as the PSU is in the bowels of the machine *have to remove everything else to get to it*

As it's a very old and battered S939 machine, was thinking about this.

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £93.99
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive - £79.99
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Modular Power Supply - £75.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £66.99 x 2
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail - £62.09
OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 Dual Channel - £38.99 x 2
Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir CPU Cooler - £33.34

£484.65

I know - 8gb ram and 2tb of HDD space, HDD's will be used in another machine and the 500gb's from that machine will be transplanted. RAM is cheap though. :D

Should be able to take that E5200 to 3.5ghz reasonably easily.

[divine]

Seems like it's the PSU and the motherboard.
Now wondering if I should I take the opportunity to upgrade the whole machine as the PSU is in the bowels of the machine *have to remove everything else to get to it*

As it's a very old and battered S939 machine, was thinking about this.

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £93.99
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive - £79.99
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Modular Power Supply - £75.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £66.99 x 2
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail - £62.09
OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 Dual Channel - £38.99 x 2
Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir CPU Cooler - £33.34

£484.65

I know - 8gb ram and 2tb of HDD space, HDD's will be used in another machine and the 500gb's from that machine will be transplanted. RAM is cheap though. :D

Should be able to take that E5200 to 3.5ghz reasonably easily.

I just dropped £550 on
Q9550
Gigabyte UD3L (UD is newer than DS and supposedly clocks better)
650W Corsair PSU
640GB WD Caviar Blue
DVD-RW
4GB RAM
Fenrir
CM-690 case

Point to consider
P45 doesn't always play well with 4 sticks of RAM, often needs northbridge voltage increases

[Mark]

Other points to consider:

The prices don't add up. ;)

Are you going to recycle a case and graphics card?

Some question has been raised about the reliability of Samsung drives recently. Could just be bad luck of course.

You'll need a 64-bit OS for that.

[Jhadur]

You'll need a 64-bit OS for that.

Out of interest, why?

[Flibster]

I just dropped £550 on
Q9550
Gigabyte UD3L (UD is newer than DS and supposedly clocks better)
650W Corsair PSU
640GB WD Caviar Blue
DVD-RW
4GB RAM
Fenrir
CM-690 case

Point to consider
P45 doesn't always play well with 4 sticks of RAM, often needs northbridge voltage increases

Hmm. Didn't know that about the P45. Damn

Other points to consider:

Some question has been raised about the reliability of Samsung drives recently. Could just be bad luck of course.

Are you going to recycle a case and graphics card?

You'll need a 64-bit OS for that.

Running a lot of Samsung 750gb drivers here - hope they don't fail!

Case, Graphics card *the 4870* and a couple of other bits will be recycled. Will probably stick Windows 7 x64 on it along with Vista x64

[Flibster]

Out of interest, why?

32bit OS's will see a maximum of 4gb of memory across the board. Including graphics card memory etc...

64bit will go into the tb's of ram iirc.

[divine]

Out of interest, why?

32 can only address up to 4GB of memory space (and consumer lever OSs don't allow extended mapping)

The net result is with 32 bit OSs you usually only get access to about 3.25-3.75GB of RAM once other things like PCI buses have been taken care of.

@ Mark - there is a CPU, it's under the hard drives ;)

[Mark]

What was that about a CPU? ;)

(Yes, I edited my post, several times).

PS - 32-bit Linux can 'see' the full 4GB. It's only Microsoft that is RAM challenged by graphics card memory. :)

[divine]

You were right about sums though, that lot comes to £557 not £484.

I was wondering how he was managing so much more than what I had :p

[divine]

PS - 32-bit Linux can 'see' the full 4GB. It's only Microsoft that is RAM challenged by graphics card memory. :)

PAE - something Windows only has in server OSs IIRC.

edit - or not, they have it but artificially limit 32bit to 4GB for driver reasons apparantly.

[Flibster]

You were right about sums though, that lot comes to £557 not £484.

I was wondering how he was managing so much more than what I had :p

Ok - I copied the wrong value - thats pre-tax.

Bum.