P4C800DX-E gaphics and stability issues...

[Ted]

Okay I'm having trouble tracking this problem down, first, here's my
specs:

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Intel Pentium 3.0Ghz 800
2x512 Corsair PC3500 DDR 400Mhz (from list in the manual)
1 Serial ATA (not Raid) Western Digital Baracuda 36gig 10kRPM
eVGA Geforce 5200 128Mb AGP8x (until I get a faster card)
Sound Blaster Audigy
Latest bios (the ones that came out June 25th, 2003 I believe)
USB mouse

When I play certain games, and I've only tried a couple so far, I
have problems. The worst problems are with Battlefield 1942. When I
walk, look, or drive around, the screen appears to be showing a
delayed reaction, and is stuttery. It has occasionally crashed in
that game too. Other games, have much smoother graphics and play very
well until they inevitably dump me to the desktop as well.

All my bios settings, like overclocking and things, are set to Auto
and defaults, nothing agressive.

After some testing, I think its either bad RAM, a bad motherboard, or
some Bios setting I'm missing, but if someone here can maybe spot
another possible solution, I'd greatly appreciate it...

So here's what I've done to narrow the problem down, all of these
tests did not solve my problem:

1) took out one of the Corsair memory modules to test if its the DDR.

2) replaiced the RAM alltogether with One 128Mb PC2100 module.

3) disabled onboard LAN

4) took out my Audigy

5) switched to an older Geforce 3 graphics card (64Mb 4xAGP)


There are some things in the BIOS which I don't really understand...
could there be some setting that helps ease communication with the AGP
port? I'm thinking my only solution is to send back the motherboard,
any one else having these problems?

 

[BNR]

Try running memtest?

 

[Christian Hans]

Ted [29 Jun 2003]:

Okay I'm having trouble tracking this problem down, first, here's
my specs:

Maybe your PSU is to "small"?

 

[Ted]

Thanks for all the good ideas guys,

BNR, I'm using the latest nvidia drivers, 44.03, Directx 9.0a, and the
S-ATA port 1 (top one,). There's nothing wierd in the device manager.
I'll try changing the timing on them down, but I already tried
completly different memory (1x 128Mb PC2100) and I still had the weird
stuttery issues in Battlefield. I'll also find memtest and run that
for a bit, although I alrady ran the Sandra memory bandwidth test for
about an hour with no problems, but I'm sure that didn't test as well
as memtest. Oh, and yes, I installed the latest bios for the P4C800-e
DX, its the newest, so there's only one bios update out (not beta),
that link is for the bios update of the P4C800 DX. Thanks for all the
help!

Christian Hans & Chris Boynton, yeah, I thought about that. I have a
350w power supply, I'll try unpluging as much as I can like all the
other drives and see what happens. Thanks guys.

 

[Ted]

Well, I ran memtest, and on pass 2, test 5 I got like over 4 million
errors, so I guess its the ram, right? I let it run 14 passes, and
there weren't any errors after the ones on pass 2. So now I've
removed one of the sticks and I'm memtesting the other. I'll let that
go for 12 hours or so, and then I'll switch to the other one and test
that. I'll keep you informed.

Would I get similar results if the motherboard were faulty and the RAM
were okay? I guess what I'm asking is, how do I know this is just the
RAM causing the errors? Thanks.

 

[nick]

Thanks for all the good ideas guys,

BNR, I'm using the latest nvidia drivers, 44.03, Directx 9.0a, and the
S-ATA port 1 (top one,). There's nothing wierd in the device manager.
I'll try changing the timing on them down, but I already tried
completly different memory (1x 128Mb PC2100) and I still had the weird
stuttery issues in Battlefield. I'll also find memtest and run that
for a bit, although I alrady ran the Sandra memory bandwidth test for
about an hour with no problems, but I'm sure that didn't test as well
as memtest. Oh, and yes, I installed the latest bios for the P4C800-e
DX, its the newest, so there's only one bios update out (not beta),
that link is for the bios update of the P4C800 DX. Thanks for all the
help!

Christian Hans & Chris Boynton, yeah, I thought about that. I have a
350w power supply, I'll try unpluging as much as I can like all the
other drives and see what happens. Thanks guys.

Battlefield 1942 sometimes has problems with Audigy cards (producing low fps or
stuttering such as you are describing), you may need to play
around with the settings for hardware acceleration and # of channels in the BF1942 options
menu. Also run dxdiag, look under sound and see if altering the setting
for hardware acceleration improves in game performance.

 

[Ted]

Battlefield 1942 sometimes has problems with Audigy cards

I unpluged my Audigy from the motherboard and ran BF with no sound at
all. Still had the weird jerkiness. Thanks though.

 

[Ted]

Just to keep you all informed. After testing last night, I have
confirmed that one of my memory modules is faulty. I'm sending that
one back for a replacement today. With just the one module in the
computer now, everything is stable with no crashes. I'm still getting
a weird stuttery jerky video in Battlefield 1942, so that's the next
kink to work out. Thanks.

 

[BNR]

Did you get those Corsairs new or used?