minduzu

First i want to say hello to everybody on this forum and I feel a bit ashamed to come to you with my first post being a request for help.
Anyway, my problem is with my video card.In 2D applications works like a charm , but when it comes to 3D (games and benchmarks ) , it makes my life a constant hell.And so I'll come to you with a chronological record of my problems. First problems after I bought it and installed in my computer were lock-ups during games (NFS Most Wanted ,Rogue trooper, F.E.A.R. , Prince of persia T2T).This lock-ups and freezes often occured after a various period of time , ranging from 5 min up to 2-3 hours.The screen was suddenly freezing in the middle of the game and if I was clicking on my mouse a beep from my motherboard could be heard. On other occasions my screen would turn into a blend of colors, mainly red and yellow , messing up the menus and the texts.Also alot of pixels in a weird pattern where the menus were supposed to be.
At that time there were a series of hot summer days, so I suspected the overheat of my videocard.So I've opened the case, installed a system fan and even used an room ventilating fan.Problems remained the same, my GPU idle was at 49-52 celsius degrees.In games I've found it arround 60 degrees. After a couple of days the weather cooled down so I continued with my tests.I've managed to get the GPU at 45 degrees when idle and in games i think between 48 - 55 degrees .Still no change, games continued to lock up at the loading screens or in the middle, the system needing to be reboot manually. I thought it was a problem of software, so i moved from Win Xp Sp1 to Sp2 with all the updates.No change , worse even I've got locks in running 3dMark2005 which previously worked with no problems .In F.E.A.R. and other games after playing a while or loading a save , artifacts appeared , like pixels, dots, color anomalies in rendering the walls and other objects and a bled of polygons which made the image impossible to understand.Now games would freeze after a sound loop or with the sounds going on while the screen was lock on the loading screen.Doing some research on the internet , I came to the conclusion that it was time to change my PSU , so i replaced my old one of 350W with a new with 500W total output.Same problems .I've used all the latest patches for the games, changed a lot of video drivers, made dozens of fresh windows installs...no change.Lock ups and a lot of polygons.The nvidia 162.18 forceware made alot of problems, so I've turned to older ones like 94.24 (it lets me finish the benchmarks , but still freezes the games ) or 93.71 who lets me play a single game (prince of persia ) with no problems.On the other hand it makes my F.E.A.R. a mess of polygons who appear and dissapear if I have patience or somehow manage to change the room in game.I am at the end of my patience , I've tried everything and still don't know whats the problem.Even gone to the store where I've bought my card, explained them my problems and they gave me a new one straight from the shelves. Same problems , even worse because yesterday I've got 2 blue screens with STOP: 0x0000008E( etc.. ) .
And now these are my system specs as seen with Lavalys EVEREST
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1800 MHz (13.5 x 133) 2200+
Motherboard Name ECS K7VTA3 v5 (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 3 DDR DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8367 Apollo KT333
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
DIMM1: Samsung M3 68L3223DTL-CB0 (pc 2100 at 266Mhz)
DIMM2: 51046632119 (sycron pc 3200 at 400 mhz)
DIMM3: 512 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (sycron pc 3200 at 400 MHZ)
DRAM:FSB Ratio 1:1 (133 Mhz )
BIOS Type Award (12/03/02)
Video Adapter WinFast A7300 GT DDR2 TDH(NVIDIA) (256 MB)
Bus Type AGP 4x @ 4x
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT AGP
Monitor Proview 772 [17" CRT] (FAVJ3B0024473)
Audio Adapter C-Media CMI8738/C3DX Audio Device
Disk Drive ST340014A (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GSA-H22N (DVD+R9:8x, DVD-R9:8x, DVD+RW:18x/8x, DVD-RW:18x/6x, DVD-RAM:12x, DVD-ROM:16x, CD:48x/32x/48x DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM)
PSU A LINE 500W total output max.
I think that's all.Thank you for your time and please help me find a solution.

minduzu

Sorry for the double post, it seems I can't find the edit button :(
Anyway, here are some links with screenshots of the video artifacts

dai

what brand is the psu
try reinstalling the drivers
in the device manager uninstall the card
reboot tapping f8 and choose vga mode
when windows finishes rebooting
disable a/virus
install your drivers
reboot the computer

minduzu

It's called A LINE , an unknown one :( .About those drivers..done that atleast 10 times by now ..safe mode, clear registry , turn off a-virus, etc.I've tested 5 nvidia drivers so far...

dai

i cannot find it listed that's why i asked for the name of it
what are the voltage and amp ratings on the label on the side

minduzu

+5V&+3.3V COMBINED 130W MAX.+5V&+3.3V&+12V COMBINED 480W MAX.TOTAL OUTPUT 500W MAX.
Other specs
+3.3V 22A /+5V 16A/+12V1 15A/+12V2 16A/-12V 0.8A/+5VSB 2.5A

dai

the ram on the card going is the usual cause of artifacts
can you get a friend to try it in their computer to see if it artifacts on theirs
your gpu temps are ok

minduzu

Yup, temps are ok...while i was playing yesterday the temps never jumped over 55 degrees.Problem is I don't have no one in town to test my video card , all my friends are either gone in vacation or moved to work in another cities.

dai

ask your local store to test it

minduzu

I went to a local store with my computer and asked to run a diagnosis.They told me the video card is incompatible with my mobo.Is it possible ? I mean , if it's incompatible why does it makes me problems only in games ? I've also discovered something weird with EVEREST
GPU Clock 401 MHz (original: 400 MHz)
Real Clock 351 MHz (DDR) (original: 350 MHz)
Effective Clock 702 MHz.
How comes ? I've installed another card on my computer ( an ATI 9550 ) and it sees the clock as it is , not adding 1 MHz to it.

dai

it probably runs at the wrong voltage for your m/board
http://www.playtool.com/pages/troubl...ing/intro.html

minduzu

I've found a lot of useful stuff , but still I don't know what's with those values.But I've found that :
VIA KT333 (VT8367) Universal AGP Motherboard (but some implementations are AGP 1.5V Motherboard).
AGP 3.0 Card fits in slot but won't work with Universal AGP Motherboard.
So what i have to know if my video card is agp 3.0.Good .I've installed RivaTuner in hope that i may lower those values in Gpu clock...instead found this
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : VIA KT266/333 series
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 1106 (VIA)
$0400000002 Device ID : 3099$0400000003 AGP bus : revision 2.0
$0400000004 AGP status : enabled
$0400000005 AGP rate : 1x 2x 4x supported, 4x selected
$0400000006 AGP SBA : supported, enabled
$0400000007 AGP FW : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 02e2
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : AGP revision 3.0 (AGP 2.0 mode)
$0000000005 AGP status : enabled
$0000000006 AGP rate : 1x 2x 4x supported, 4x selected
$0000000007 AGP SBA : supported, enabled
$0000000008 AGP FW : supported, disabled
$0000000009 Base address 0 : e8000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : e9000000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV4B/G73 revision B1 (8pp,4vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0393 (ROM strapped to 0393)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 128-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR2 (RAM configuration 02)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 262144KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 401.142MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 401.142MHz
$0100000102 Core clock domain 2 : 401.142MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 351.000MHz (702.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000d Thermal diode inaccuracy : -7.000°C (1000b)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$1100000000 Title : GeForce 7300 GT VGA BIOS
$1100000002 Version : 5.73.22.54.68
$1100000100 BIT version : 1.00
$1100000200 Core clock : 400MHz
$1100000201 Memory clock : 350MHz
$1100010000 Performance level 0 : 400MHz/350MHz/1.10V/100%
$1100020000 VID bitmask : 00000000b
$1100020100 Voltage level 0 : 1.10V, VID 00000000b
$1100030001 Core thermal compensation : 6°C
$1100030002 Core thermal threshold : 125°C/115°C/110°C
$1100030003 Ambient thermal threshold : 120°C/110°C
$1100030004 Thermal diode gain : 0.043°C
$1100030005 Thermal diode offset : -223.160°C
$1100030006 Thermal diode inaccuracy : -7.000°C (1000b)

So that means , in my humble opinion because my mobo has AGP bus : revision 2.0 and v-card Bus type : AGP revision 3.0 (AGP 2.0 mode) , that this 2 are incompatible :( .Am I right ?

minduzu

Me again.I'm not pretty sure that my video card is 100% incompatible .I don't know for sure if it's AGP 3.0 or Universal 1.5V AGP 3.0. It's nowhere to be found under what voltage it works.If it's 0.8V then my problem is solved...I should get rid of it .Anyway, I've found out what it means the beep error code when it hangs out.
1 long, 2 short - Indicates a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information.

dai

see if you can borrow another card to try in it

minduzu

I've used an ATi 9550 and F.E.A.R. seemed to work fine, but I didn't had time to test more.Right now I'm back at my GeForce 4 MMX :( .It runs 3dmark 2001 like a charm .The 7300 always hanged in this test.Don't know what to say more...

dai

looks like the m/b's voltage does'nt support

minduzu

Indeed, that's my conclusion too.Thanks for all your help.I think we can close this thread.