K8N-E Deluxe Freeze with MPEG2 Encode

[Bryon van Prooyen]

Hi All,

I am having a really hard time fault finding my relatively new Athlon64
setup. Consists of:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Mobo Bios 1.05
Athlon64 2300 (Not overclocked)
1024MB Kingmax DDR-466
Asus 9600XT Video
WD 120GB SATA (Boot)
WD 80GB ATA (Data)
480W Tagan PS (TG480-U01)
Windows XP SP2

I am having constant system freezes (system locks up, no KB or mouse, no
BSOD) when using pretty much any MPEG2 encoding program I have tried
(TmpgEnc, Arcsoft Showbiz, etc). I have been capturing tv from my digital TV
tuner (raw MPEG2 stream) and using the above programs to edit and compress
the video for writing to Video DVD's.

I can get through about 500MB of video, then the system freezes. I did have
an Athlon XP2500+ and A7N8X-E Dlx and this gave me no trouble at all, bought
the new system to speed up the process (oh well...)

Suspected power supply, memory or CPU problems so tested the PS using a
multimeter - tested fine, used Memtest86+ over 12hrs - tested fine, and ran
Prime95 for 12hrs - also fine. CPU temp never goes over 50degC.

I have tried enabling and disabling Cool'n'Quiet - no change. Tried upping
the AGP bus speed to 67MHz to get the AGP lock engaged, did nothing to help.

Anyone got any ideas? I have also rebuilt the OS with no change.

Thanks in advance

Bryon

 

[Arnie Berger]

Hi All,

I am having a really hard time fault finding my relatively new Athlon64
setup. Consists of:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Mobo Bios 1.05
Athlon64 2300 (Not overclocked)
1024MB Kingmax DDR-466
Asus 9600XT Video
WD 120GB SATA (Boot)
WD 80GB ATA (Data)
480W Tagan PS (TG480-U01)
Windows XP SP2

I am having constant system freezes (system locks up, no KB or mouse, no
BSOD) when using pretty much any MPEG2 encoding program I have tried
(TmpgEnc, Arcsoft Showbiz, etc). I have been capturing tv from my digital TV
tuner (raw MPEG2 stream) and using the above programs to edit and compress
the video for writing to Video DVD's.

I can get through about 500MB of video, then the system freezes. I did have
an Athlon XP2500+ and A7N8X-E Dlx and this gave me no trouble at all, bought
the new system to speed up the process (oh well...)

Suspected power supply, memory or CPU problems so tested the PS using a
multimeter - tested fine, used Memtest86+ over 12hrs - tested fine, and ran
Prime95 for 12hrs - also fine. CPU temp never goes over 50degC.

I have tried enabling and disabling Cool'n'Quiet - no change. Tried upping
the AGP bus speed to 67MHz to get the AGP lock engaged, did nothing to help.

Anyone got any ideas? I have also rebuilt the OS with no change.

Thanks in advance

Bryon

I just upgraded to the same MOBO from an A7N8X-DLX like you. I use
Studio 8 to do my capture/encoding and I purposely went to A64 to get
a performance boost when the 64 bit apps and O/S start to appear. I'll
let you know what happens.

ab

 

[Paul]

Hi All,

I am having a really hard time fault finding my relatively new Athlon64
setup. Consists of:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Mobo Bios 1.05
Athlon64 2300 (Not overclocked)
1024MB Kingmax DDR-466
Asus 9600XT Video
WD 120GB SATA (Boot)
WD 80GB ATA (Data)
480W Tagan PS (TG480-U01)
Windows XP SP2

I am having constant system freezes (system locks up, no KB or mouse, no
BSOD) when using pretty much any MPEG2 encoding program I have tried
(TmpgEnc, Arcsoft Showbiz, etc). I have been capturing tv from my digital TV
tuner (raw MPEG2 stream) and using the above programs to edit and compress
the video for writing to Video DVD's.

I can get through about 500MB of video, then the system freezes. I did have
an Athlon XP2500+ and A7N8X-E Dlx and this gave me no trouble at all, bought
the new system to speed up the process (oh well...)

Suspected power supply, memory or CPU problems so tested the PS using a
multimeter - tested fine, used Memtest86+ over 12hrs - tested fine, and ran
Prime95 for 12hrs - also fine. CPU temp never goes over 50degC.

I have tried enabling and disabling Cool'n'Quiet - no change. Tried upping
the AGP bus speed to 67MHz to get the AGP lock engaged, did nothing to help.

Anyone got any ideas? I have also rebuilt the OS with no change.

Thanks in advance

Bryon

Try some other RAM. I used to think all you needed to test RAM was
memtest86, but it looks like Prime95 testing (mersenne.org) is also
of value. I discovered my cheap ram was pattern sensitive, and
the same area of RAM will fail each time, on a Prime run. I use a
Knoppix Linux CD and run multiple copies of Prime95 torture test
from the shell, and my cheap RAM would fail in about 30 minutes.
The replacement RAM I got is fine and passes the test. I limit the
amount of RAM each copy of Prime can use, so if the same area of
RAM fails each time, that is a good indication it is the RAM and
not the processor or motherboard.

The Prime95 test is also handy for vetting overclocks. My Mobile
processor looks stable at 12x200, but doesn't pass the Prime test.
It will pass at 11x200. (More Vcore might fix this, but I'm not
going to cook this thing for nothing. My target when starting the
project was 10x200, so I'm happy with it as is.)

The other area you might look at, is the power supply. I was reading
some postings found with an Altavista search, and they mention that
there are different versions of Tagan supply. I would guess that some
enterprising individual is making Tagan look-alike supplies, using
a crap core and a chassis that looks like a Tagan. I say that, because
reviews of the Tagan gave the impression they tried to build a
quality design, so maybe some Chinese factory is trying to use their
good name, to sell a more commodity design. It is pretty hard to
stop someone from making a lookalike power supply, because all the
components are easy to find, and a Chinese factory can copy any piece
of hardware in about three months if given a chance. This is one
of the reasons Asus uses Attansic ICs on motherboards, as Asus has
an interest in Attansic, and using the ICs will slow down someone
attempting to make cosmetically identical motherboards.

Paul