Peektar

I am having freezing problems frequently and have been unable to determine why.
Freezing occurs at random intervals (from once a day to 3-5 times an hour, usually the latter) and occurs whether I am using an application or not. It has frozen immediately after Windows started up and I didn't even touch the keyboard or mouse.
Usually the display freezes for about 10-15 seconds, then goes black for a few seconds and either returns to normal or I get a messy screen like this one...
Click here to see image
Occasionally the computer does not recover from freezing and I have to restart.
Motherboard and CPU temperatues are normal. All drivers are up to date.
I am thinking this is maybe a graphics card problem (GeForce 6600GT) but I am not sure.
Does anyone have any idea what this could be?
Any help would be appreciated.

Asus AV8 Deluxe
AMD 3200+
Maxtor Diamond plus 9 SATA drives
GeForce 6600 GT AGP
1024Mb DDR 400 memory
Wireless keyboard and mouse
XP Home edition Japanese version

Triad

Looks like a timing issue between the memory on the Graphics card and the motherboard to me. Definately a faulty card though. Have you tried a different card?

Sarkast

I dont think at this point we can already point at certain components and say for sure they are faulty. Let me ask you a question - what PSU are you running all these parts on ?

Peektar

I have a 400W PSU which according to the video card manual is sufficient.
The motherboard manual says the AGP slot must use a 1.5V card which is what I have, so everything seems to be ok there.
I have changed BIOS settings such as fastwrite (off and on), and various other AGP settings but nothing helps.
Possibly a faulty card but I don't have a spare one to try. It is a brand new card along with all of the other components.
When the freezing occurs not only does the monitor freeze but the HDD seems to as well. If I am playing music it also freezes...makes me wonder if it really is the video card at fault.

UncleMacro

Just looking at your crash image, it's not obvious what went wrong. But that's not necessarily the video board at all. It could be problems with the motherboard, RAM, or CPU. Have you tried to run MemTest86 to exclude your RAM? Have you tried Prime95. If it gets an error then it's not your video board - It's something to do with your CPU, RAM, or motherboard.

Given that everything is new so you don't know what to blame, you might trying going through the various parts of the machine one by one and underclocking them as much as possible. I'm not sure what motherboard you've got. ASUS has an "A8V" but I couldn't find an "AV8". But if it's a full overclocker board (I assume it is, looking at your components), then you should be able to underclock the components one at a time to see if something is weak. I don't know AMD chipsets but I assume you can slow the RAM timing down to underclock it. Then you could slow down the FSB to slow the CPU down. It sounds like you've already tried slowing down the AGP speed. AGP 8X can be pretty flakey but it usually causes crashes and not freezes.

ishmiael

well my friend.. as much as you want to convince yourself its not the VGA... it most likely is. There are a load of problems with the 6600gt's, just read around and you will see. Problems range all over the board but all narrow down to a machine freezing. I myself am a victim of this problem. Ive RMA'd the card and now I think the OEM company has misplaced my card.

The word is that Nvidia sent out a huge batch of cards with bad GPUs.
Try using another friends card... if it works.. then its your card.
deduce the situations, if its not the card then switch out your RAM.. all the way down until you reach the motherboard (no point in switching this out, lol)

thats really one of the best ways.

I really think its your card.

Peektar

Yes, I have been reading around about the 6600GT and have found that many others are having problems with them...I was hoping like heck that mine wasn't bad too, they are not cheap!
I will swap it with another card if I can get one.
I ran Memtest and Prime95 but neither came up with any problems. Sandra does not come up with anything major although it says my IOQD is set too low...what is this?
And my mainboard is an A8V not AV8 as I wrote in my initial posting.
Thanks for your replies.

ishmiael

well if you consider the price of these guys and the power they put out.. then the price seems a little low. I kinda wondered how they managed to put out a product with great stats at such a good price ratio.... Its because they slacked in the "make sure it works" dept.

I would have much rather bought an ATI ( at this moment)

UncleMacro

I wouldn't worry too much about the IOQD. It stands for In Order Queue Depth and Sandra has a habit of complaining about it when it doesn't need to. "Set too low" probably means that it is set to 1. Check this if you're curious. Keep in mind that when that web page suggests using a higher value, it's because they're looking to wring more speed out of the motherboard. The motherboard makers usually set IOQD to the safest value so they can minimize their RMAs. In your case you should just leave it alone until you have wrung out all of your problems.

When you have a new machine which has the flakeys, the first thing you always do is make sure the CPU, RAM, and motherboard are reliable. If they have any kind of problem then you can get reboots, crashes, and hangs. It's not because you are convinced that the motherboard et al. are the problem: it's because you must first eliminate the motherboard as a possibility because it can generate every symptom in the book. All you have to do to rule out a motherboard is run Prime95 and MemTest86 which is a simple, painless procedure. Only after having ruled it out do you move on to the next possibility.

If your friend's card is a 6600GT then that's very good reasoning. If it's anything else then you can end up with a pointless RMA. I've been swapping video boards for a long time (my first PC was a 4.77MHz 8088 IBM PC) and I can't tell you how many times I've seen people get burned by that reasoning. They install a new video board. It doesn't work. Then they install an older video board. It works. They return the new video board. Then it turns out to be something else. Usually, it is the video board. But not always. That's why you ALWAYS check the motherboard first. Then you move onto the video board.


Given that your motherboard can run Prime95 and MemTest86, you've pretty much narrowed it down to either your power supply or the video board. If your 400 watt supply is a decent one then it's probably the video board. Your 6600GT uses way less power in 2D mode than in 3D mode. Since you machine is dying in 2D mode, your power supply would have to be pretty bad to be at fault.

But if returning the board is a pain (when isn't it?) then there's a few more easy things you can try. If you haven't already run your AGP port at lower speeds (4X, 2X, disabled) then give it a try. As I said earlier, that's usually crashes rather than hangs, but it only takes about two minutes to find out. I currently run ATI so I'm not completely sure about your 6600GT but you can usually underclock everything with PowerStrip. The only other thing I can think of trying before returning it is to underclock your GPU and RAM with PowerStrip and see if things get better. If the underclocking works, that's not a good sign for your video board. All in all, it adds up to about 10 minutes worth of testing so you might as well give it a try.

I can't remember the last high-profile video board which came out when that didn't happen. It usually goes something like: "I'm having problems with XXX". Then a whole bunch of other people jump in with the same problem. Then a few other people with the same setup point out that they have no problem. Then the people with the problem start yelling "Bad Batch!". Sometimes it even turns out to be TRUE like with the IBM DeathStars and the leaking electrolytic caps. If a board is popular like the 6600GT, a lot of people have problems. It's kind of hard to tell whether there's more problems with this board than other boards. The people who have problems do most of the posting. Most of the people with no problems don't bother to post. Every video board has an infant mortality rate which is greater than zero. If a new piece of hardware is popular (like the 6600GT), then it's hard to tell if there's really a problem until the manufacturer admits to it (and that happens once in a blue moon).

Peektar

Thank you UncleMacro for the information and advice.
As Memtest and Prime95 could find no problem I downloaded and installed Powerstrip as you suggested.
I don't understand exactly how to underclock the GPU and RAM settings, do you mind running me through this?
Powerstrip seems to be a worthwhile program having, I may consider buying it after the trial ends.
In the last 10 minutes the screen has frozen twice. While looking at the keyboard while typing (2 fingered typist!), I did not notice that it had frozen. I looked up and saw that it had frozen and that the words I typed were not on screen. After it recovered the words were there. Can I take it that the motherboard, memory, and CPU are functioning normally and that the video card is at fault in this case?
If the video card is at fault I think I will switch to Ati...does anyone have any recommendations on an Ati card similar in performance and price to the 6600GT?
Cheers.

elf

The 9800 all-in-wonder link

I had 0 problems with my 6600gt, and I believe that there are usually some extenuating circumstances when they don't work (e.g. operator/installer error)

UncleMacro

Sadly, there aren't any at the moment. A Radeon 9800Pro isn't that much slower but the 6600GT beats it most of the time as shown here. I'm actually pretty happy with my old 9700Pro and don't feel any need to upgrade because it still runs everything pretty well. But the 6600GT is definitely king of the hill at around US$200.

I'm not exactly sure what a computer is doing when it's frozen. But a keyboard can definitely queue up some characters whether the motherboard is polling it or not. It could be that they're just stored in the keyboard for a while. If your motherboard can run Prime95 for a few hours without getting errors then it's very hard to fault your motherboard or CPU.

To underclock your GPU or RAM with PowerStrip:
1) Click the PowerStrip gizmo in your tray.
2) Click "Performance Profiles".
3) Click "Configure".
4) Fiddle with the two vertical slider bars on the left. Don't move them up! That overclocks them and if you go too far you can damage your board. Move them down as far as you can in the green direction. It will show you the new clock rates under "Engine clock" and "Memory clock". It doesn't actually make any changes until you click "OK" or "Apply".
5) If you want to return your clock rates to your default values you click "Performance Default" instead of "Configure" as above.

To underclock your AGP or enable/disable fast writes:
1) Click the Powerstrip gizmo in your tray.
2) Click "Options".
3) Click "Adapter Information".
4) Uncheck the "Read-only" checkbox.
5) Try disabling "Fast write protocol". Also try slowing using a slow AGP "transfer rate" - try 4x or 2x or 1x if they're not grayed out.

As long as you just underclock, you can't cause any damage. But if you accidently overclock, be sure to return it to its normal speed quickly. It pays to be careful when using this kind of program. The only problem I see with PowerStrip on my video board (Radeon 9700 Pro) is that it doesn't allow me to underclock the GPU and RAM very much. I'm not sure how much it will underclock your 6600GT. You really want to take the GPU and RAM as low as you can. Your defaults are 500MHz GPU and 450MHz DDR or 500MHz DDR RAM. You really want to at least cut them in half if not lower. If PowerStrip won't go that low then you can try RivaTuner. Lots of NVIDIA folks use it. It won't work on my machine so I have no experience with it but it may allow you to underclock more than PowerStrip.


In trying to think of other things you can do before returning the board:
1) You've probably already done this when you were getting the latest drivers but did you remember to get the latest Hyperion chipset drivers from VIA? If you didn't then you can get them here by clicking "Windows XP" and then "Chipset or platform driver". Yours are probably okay but you should always do this with a new machine anyway. Sometimes the drivers they give you on the motherboard CD are a bit out of date.
2) The most common cause of freezing is overheating video boards or bogus power supplies. Since it doesn't look like you power supply you might just try opening up your case and rigging a fan to blow air on the video board. Some video boards have been known to arrive with poorly mounted heat sinks. If the "old fan trick" fixes it then you have an overheating problem. But since the fan is cooling everything down, on rare occasions the "fan trick" works because it's cooling a weak northbridge chip or something else. Try to aim it directly at the video board.
3) If you can get you hands on another AGP board then you might as well give it a try. It's 99% percent likely to work and it's not definitive proof that it's the 6600GT which is at fault. But if you want to be thorough you should try it. If you still get freezes with a different video board (which I've seen but is uncommon) then it could still be your motherboard. I wouldn't count on this happening though.

If disabling fast writes or slowing the AGP speed down to 4X fixes it then just leave well enough alone. If underclocking or the fan trick makes it better then I'd return the board. It should be able to run without overheating. If the place you got it from has a good return policy I would personally get a replacement 6600GT. You may not like the sound of that at this point but the 6600GT is the best board out there in your price range. Of course, if you want to play it safe, you may get a better result with ATI. Sometimes boards which can't run at full speed are caused by weak chips but just as often it's mechanical problems with the fan or heat sinks. You may have just gotten a bad one. Considering that your machine is crashing while just running normal 2D Windows programs, it would have to be a very weak board. They usually only get into trouble when you fire up 3D mode and they start sucking up lots of power.

Oh, and I forgot: if you get inside the machine to do the "fan test" you might as well reseat the board and make sure the supplementary power cable is snug. I saw someone on a forum who claimed his problem was a loose supplementary power cable. I don't see how that could happen but it can't hurt to check.

Peektar

I tried underclocking to as low as it would go (engine clock 417 MHz, memory clock 751 MHz), as well as changing AGP to 4X and disabling fastwrite as suggested.
I also updated the VIA chipset driver.
The freezing continues however.
The GPU temp is constantly about 36 degrees, no idea if this is normal or not but it sounds ok to me. I don't have a fan handy so I can't try the cooling thing, however the room temp is pretty low.
Something I should have mentioned earlier is that I have been able to play Half Life 2 without any problem...no crashes, freezing or any major problem whatsoever! Seems a bit strange to me that the video card can handle 3D but not 2D.
I performed another Prime95 test today for 4 hours and passed all of the tests.
Any other ideas before I take the card back?

UncleMacro

If your GPU is really 36 degrees then it's pretty cool. I assume that's when it's idling. You can't always trust the programs which read those temps but that's pretty cool. The temps I've seen people report in other forums are quite a bit higher.

That's definitely backwards. If it was a weak chip or power supply it should run 2D just fine and get into trouble with 3D. And, on top of that, underclocking accomplishes nothing.

The more I hear about your situation the more I worry that it may not be your video board at all. I mean, given that your computer runs the torture tests well, it probably is your video board but it would be some kind of wierd problem rather than the standard weak or overheating chip that most other people run into. If you read the other forums where people have problems with 6600GTs, it's usually the same story: video board runs great in 2D mode and then freezes after a few minutes in 3D mode.

You're pretty much out of options as far as testing goes other than borrowing another AGP board and seeing if you still get freezes. If it were me I would try that since your freezes aren't clearly traceable to the video board.

The only other things I can think of are:
1) Bring up the "Display Properties" dialog box, go to the "Settings" tab and then click "Advanced". Then go to the "Troubleshooting" tab and play with the "Hardware acceleration" slide bar. You can disable hardware acceleration by sliding it to the left.
2) Run the DXDiag program and disable each of the "DirectX Features" and see if it makes a difference. In case you don't know, you do this by clicking "Start", then "Run", then type in dxdiag, then click "ok". Go to the "Display" tab and then try out the "Disable" buttons in the "DirectX Features" part. This probably won't make any difference since your freezes happen in programs which probably aren't using DirectX.
3) Flash every BIOS (video and motherboard) in sight. That's usually a waste of time and if the power goes out at the wrong time - you're screwed.
4) Roll back and try older video drivers which support a 6600GT. It's a new board so the latest drivers should be the best. With older boards, sometimes they run better with older drivers. With a 6600GT, I doubt it would help. If you decide to go ahead and try anyway then be sure to uninstall your current video drivers using the "Add/Remove Programs" before installing another driver. It's always a good idea to uninstall the existing video drivers before installing another video driver. You can get older drivers from NVIDIA's driver archive. Although in your case, they would have to be fairly recent to support the 6600GT.

Sorry, but beyond that, I'm out of ideas.

Peektar

Well the problem is definitely the card!
Tonight I put the 6600GT into a Sony Viao (Pentium 4 1500 MHz, 256 Mb RAM) computer and not long after it froze as it does in my new computer.
I also put the Viao card (V3800M 64Mb) into the Asus and it is running fine.
I will take the 6600GT back tomorrow.
Thank you UncleMacro for all of your help, I learned alot and you introduced me to a few useful programs. I owe you a few beers!
Cheers.

Jason

User said problem was solved. Thread cleaned up fromt he flaming, and thread closed.