Author Topic: Geforce 3 Ti 500 lockups in AH and.... (Read 2471 times)

DmdBT · « **Reply #15 on:** November 19, 2001, 05:39:00 PM »

Same here with the drivers that came with the card, still crashes/locks. As for power I have a 400 watt power supply. No overclocking of any components and setup is pretty much stock.
It must be the manufacturer. It was mentioned in another thread that PNY uses inferior memory modules and thats why they can beat the competition's prices by a good $20 to $30. Well, for me, I've already got a return authorization on this card and have ordered a VisionTek Xtasy 6964 GF3 Ti500 card on express delivery. This is not a slam or slight on PNY, just the old saying applies that you get what you pay for.
A big <S> to all that contribute to these threads!

Lonz

38isPorked · « **Reply #16 on:** November 21, 2001, 01:18:00 PM »

Oy lonz.. cancel the visiontek. That brand is NOT good.

Get an Asus. My Asus GForce3 Deluxe runs perfectly, getting 45-50fps on highest res, 32 bit WITH 2X FSAA on. I turn off FSAA 'cause it drops the FR to 35-40 inside smoke (without fsaa fr=40-45 in smoke).

DmdBT · « **Reply #17 on:** November 21, 2001, 05:26:00 PM »

I have the Visiontek card in and have had no problems whatsoever, performance is equal the PNY if not better. No crashes at all with any of my 3d games. What are the problems or issues with this brand of card?
I keep the frame rate on the 45 setting in max res with 32bit color and it stays there through everything.

Lonz

Wardog · « **Reply #18 on:** November 21, 2001, 05:36:00 PM »

One other thing you should try, if you have any other PCI cards like sound, Modem, ect.. remove them and try another slot. Although there may not be an IRQ conflict, i have found on more than 6 occasions that i had Memory Address conflicts.

I build and upgrade systems, and have run into this many times, usually resulting in Video CTDs or lockups.

Dog out......

Raubvogel · « **Reply #19 on:** November 21, 2001, 05:44:00 PM »

Are you guys using VIA based motherboards? I had the same problem and I had to go into BIOS and manually set the AGP driving value. Seemed the card wasn't getting enough power thru the AGP slot. Try setting it from the default to EA or EB. Might work, might not. Eventually I got tired of it and ditched the VIA chipset. Same card works fine in a ALi-based mobo.

And yes, PNY is not known for high quality. I'd recommend an Elsa, Gainward, or Leadtek.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Raubvogel ]

Karnak · « **Reply #20 on:** November 24, 2001, 01:21:00 AM »

My roommate's GeForce3 (not a Ti) loccked up on the high detail Draconic test in 3Dmark2001 as well. It ran on the second attempt when only that test was selected.

He has an Asus GeForce3 64mb card and is running on an Athlon Classic 700, Windows 98SE and a 300 watt power supply.

vatiAH · « **Reply #21 on:** November 24, 2001, 04:49:00 PM »

Time for an update.

I recieved the replacement PNY Geforce 3 TI on wednesday. I installed it that night and low and behold, the same damn problem!! Ok, what are the chances I got two bad ones? Little chance of that right !! Ok, I search the web high and low to try to find the answer to this problem. Some say that the problem lies in the way the KT133A chipset handles AGP power alotment. According to those in the know, the way to fix it is to go into you bios and adjust the AGP DRIVING Value. Ok, I was given plenty of differint values to try, so off I go!!. 3 hours and about 20 reboots later...nothing . It locked up solid everytime in 3d mode. I dug a little deeper into this on Thursday and tried everything that was mentioned here and on everyother BBS or News group on the web!! Still nothing. Ok someone mentioned Power supplie, they said 300 watts was marginal on my system with all the drives and fans. OK, so I try to test that theory. I disconnect the power to both my CD drives, both my System fans, and my Floppy. If it's power problem, surely I have enough Juice to power it up now, right? Didn't fix it

Still locks up. Friday rolls around and the first thing I do is hit the phone to call PNY's tech support. After 8 hours and very numb fingers I'm sorry to say, I don't think PNY really has a TECH support team

I think it's 1 guy and he is overwhelmed because ALL THE DAMN GeFORCE 3 TI's are bad and everyone is trying to get threw to him!! I swear, the Phone was busy all day. I managed to get on the line once and was put on hold for about 10 minutes and then got cut off!. Anyway, The PNY Geforce 3 is now winging back to were I got it for a full refund. I'm looking to get a Leadtek or a Asus next!!

Vati!!

DmdBT · « **Reply #22 on:** November 25, 2001, 07:06:00 AM »

Vati, I'm afraid another card might not help. I switched cards to another manufacturer and am getting the exact same problem with the crashes/dumps. I upgraded my old system with a new motherboard, cpu, RAM, power supply, and video card. 2D games run fine forever, anything 3D runs for a little while then dies. I'm about to send this puppy to the local computer shop for a good going over, hate to spend the extra cash but I need a system that works and I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING WRONG!

Frustrated...

Lonz

mrsid2 · « **Reply #23 on:** November 25, 2001, 07:18:00 AM »

Really weird probs..

It would help us a lot to try to figure out the prob if you would include system information such as cpu, motherboard version, OS, ram, driver versions, dx versions, via servicepack versions etc.

vatiAH · « **Reply #24 on:** November 25, 2001, 08:16:00 AM »

BT,

I can't say for sure since I never got the PNY running right, but the problem seems to be about Power to the AGP Slot. The word on the net is the Via KT133 chipsets handles AGP power badly. I have gotten my hands on a Asus A7M266 motherboard which uses the AMD 761 chips set. I have not had the chance to put this board in due to the lack of DDR memory in my inventory. I'm going to order 2 Geforce 3 cards on monday ( 1 for the shop and one for me) with my DDR memory order. I'm going to experiment with my geforce 3 card in my current system just to see if i can get it to work. LOL Even if it does work, I'm still going to switch out motherboards and give it a whirl on the Asus board. I have noticed that Asus makes mention of a AGP Pro slot while Biostar does not. I'm wondering if this can have something to do with the problem. There has been some talk of Power supplies not being hefty enough, but I have pretty much ruled that out in my case. It's kinda funny but I had a customer bring in a machine he was building ( incomplete) based on a older K6-450 cpu. He had a TNT2 card in the AGP slot which my Tech could not get working correctly. My tech got me involved and after close to 2 hours of fussing with it, we hit the net in search of answers. Only took me about 30 seconds to find out the Motherboards AGP slot did not support TNT2, Geforce , or any of the higherpower cards. No were in the MB's manual was this mentioned at all. !! The place the customer bought the CPU/MB combo from assured him that the TNT2 he owned would work. It took a trip the manufactuers web sight to find the answer in that case.
In this case with the Geforce 3 , I'm expecting that it's a similar thing, but I cannot find any real docmentation to support this. At this point it's more hear say from this BBS and others.

Vati

vatiAH · « **Reply #25 on:** November 25, 2001, 08:29:00 AM »

BT,

You bought the Visontek and still have the same problem? I saw an article on the web somewere that you might have just confirmed for me. The article was talking about Video card manufactuers and the Geforce 3 in particular. IT seems there is really only few manufactures that make them for everyone else. The one thing I do remember was that the PNY and the VisionTek and one other were made by the same manufactuer. I'll have to see if I can find the link to that artical.

Vati

xanax · « **Reply #26 on:** November 26, 2001, 01:15:00 AM »

I've been reading in the Nvidia newsgroup about people having random lockups and such with VIA chipsets+Geforce3 video cards while running 3D apps. It seems VIA has new AGP drivers out as of last Friday that seem to be solving this problem for many people. I should recieve my Leadtek GeForce3 Ti 500 tomorrow so I'll give 'em a go.

For most people, the problems have been the above problem with Windows XP....Have seen a few with Win98 having the same problems.

bloom25 · « **Reply #27 on:** November 26, 2001, 03:28:00 PM »

The KT133 chipset (and kt133a) has no problems providing AGP power, SINCE IT DOESN'T POWER THE AGP SLOT.

The power is provided by voltage regulators. Now signal timing IS determined by the MB chipset, but there are no issues I'm aware of with GF 3 cards and that chipset. What I'd suggest is to see if your motherboard has a jumper for setting the I/O voltage to the ram and other peripherals. Usually this is set to 3.3V, but SOME MB manufacturers do set this to 3.5V by default. When troubleshooting video card lockup issues it wouldn't hurt to set this to 3.3V. (There was some issues with the Abit kt7 and kt7a boards related to this very jumper.)

It's also important to note that the CD-Rom drives, floppy, etc DO NOT affect in ANY WAY the power provided to the MB itself and the AGP slot. On most powersupplies you will see a label indicating power to the 3.3 and 5V lines to the MB. (Usually 150 - 180W) This is the crucial value to look at when selecting a powersupply. By disconecting the floppy, cd drive, etc you did not actually eliminate the powersupply as the root cause of the problem. It still may be, but I would first look and see if there is the voltage jumper on the MB itself I mentioned above. Set this to 3.3V and see if the problems continue. I would also definately recommend updating your VIA agp driver to the newest available. (www.viahardware.com has them available.)

Sorry for the short tone, but I'm pressed for time and can't spend too long typing out replies.

gatt · « **Reply #28 on:** November 27, 2001, 01:27:00 AM »

Sorry to hear that Vati. My system is a P4 (850 chipset) with a Creative Labs GeForce Titanium 500 and all is ok. Some years ago I threw my last VIA chipset MOBO out of the window and since then I always bought BX based MOBO. More bucks but more stability. Just MHO. Good luck!

maik · « **Reply #29 on:** November 27, 2001, 10:30:00 AM »

Had exact the same problem under w2k, no matter what driver version i was using.

Good news reinstalling DirectX did the Job for me.

Bad news as far as I know, there's no seperate version for DirectX available for XP. Haven't done any research on that so far. Maybe somebodyelse can help.