VPU resets on a 9800 pro

[pnolte]

Help. I thought I would try an ATI card for my computer. I always had nvidia
cards and this is new for me. I have an ASUS mother board with a sis chipset
and a 2.56 p4 and 512 meg of ram. It ran stable with my geforce 4200 ti but
now it keeps crashing. I uninstalled all of the geforce drivers and set the
display to vga. I rebooted and everything was working in vga mode. I
installed the radeon 9800 pro and booted up. It came up fine and I installed
the drivers that came with it. After running for about 5 minutes, I started
to get lock ups. I tried new drivers from the web sight and still no luck. I
set all of the bios settings using ati's recommendations on their web page.
Still no luck.. I have a 400 watt power supply and it seems stable with no
fluctuations showing on the asus probe.

After running for about 5 minutes or less, I get an error that says the VPU
was reset to software mode because the driver could not control the
hardware.. or something like that..

Any ideas what I am doing wrong here.


pnolte

 

[Greg]

You made sure to plug in the power connector to your video card, right? It
sounds like your overheating, check to make sure the cards fan is running.

 

[Sham B]

Hi Greg

When I first installed my 9800 pro, I was finding that it was generating so much heat that it was
crashing the cpu because the inside box temp was going up so much! My solution was to get an Arctic
cooler (vents heat straight out the back of the box) but that would invalidate your warranty on the
card. so you need to be sure of the problem before you start taking remedial action. Suggest
checking your case for proper cooling... does it crash if you take the side off the case for
example?

Also, make sure that the molex you connect to the 9800 is coming straight from the PSU, and doesnt
split off to anything else (that would cause noise on the line and evental crash, which kinda also
sounds like your problem). The mobo voltages wouldnt tell you much btw, because the problem is not
usually drooping voltage levels, but high frequency fluctuations (ie ac noise on the dc levels,
which the probes will not pick up). the issue with PSUs is as much how well it absorbs noise as it
is raw power output, and with NR, its usually a matter of quality of the psu (ie cost/manufacturoer)
as it is wattage.

HTH

S

 

[pnolte]

Hi Greg

When I first installed my 9800 pro, I was finding that it was generating
so much heat that it was crashing the cpu because the inside box temp was
going up so much! My solution was to get an Arctic cooler (vents heat
straight out the back of the box) but that would invalidate your warranty
on the card. so you need to be sure of the problem before you start taking
remedial action. Suggest checking your case for proper cooling... does it
crash if you take the side off the case for example?

Also, make sure that the molex you connect to the 9800 is coming straight
from the PSU, and doesnt split off to anything else (that would cause
noise on the line and evental crash, which kinda also sounds like your
problem). The mobo voltages wouldnt tell you much btw, because the problem
is not usually drooping voltage levels, but high frequency fluctuations
(ie ac noise on the dc levels, which the probes will not pick up). the
issue with PSUs is as much how well it absorbs noise as it is raw power
output, and with NR, its usually a matter of quality of the psu (ie
cost/manufacturoer) as it is wattage.

I tried all of the above suggestions with no luck. The card does not get hot
and the case is staying cool. I htink I am going to take the card back.

pnolte

 

[R. Pause]

Help. I thought I would try an ATI card for my computer. I always had
nvidia cards and this is new for me. I have an ASUS mother board with a
sis chipset and a 2.56 p4 and 512 meg of ram. It ran stable with my
geforce 4200 ti but now it keeps crashing. I uninstalled all of the
geforce drivers and set the display to vga. I rebooted and everything was
working in vga mode. I installed the radeon 9800 pro and booted up. It
came up fine and I installed the drivers that came with it. After running
for about 5 minutes, I started to get lock ups. I tried new drivers from
the web sight and still no luck. I set all of the bios settings using
ati's recommendations on their web page. Still no luck.. I have a 400 watt
power supply and it seems stable with no fluctuations showing on the asus
probe.

Schon mal im Bios "Fast wright" disabled und zudem von auf AGP 8 auf AGP 4
reduziert? Ohne diese Bios-Einstellungen habe ich mit meiner 9800 Pro auch
wenig Freude.

 

[Sham B]

hmmm. if it doesnt get hot, then Im guessing that its bad contact between the heatsink and the GPU,
in which case, yeah, you need to get a new one. A 9800 pro stock heatsink should get very hot to the
touch.

S

 

[pnolte]

Schon mal im Bios "Fast wright" disabled und zudem von auf AGP 8 auf AGP 4
reduziert? Ohne diese Bios-Einstellungen habe ich mit meiner 9800 Pro auch
wenig Freude.

I tried just about every combination of bios setting you can imagine. I
disabled fast writes and tried both agp4 and 8. I think it is time to get a
new card. This was my first ATI card.. and I think my last.

pnolte

 

[johns]

Schon mal im Bios "Fast wright" disabled und zudem von auf AGP 8 auf AGP 4
reduziert? Ohne diese Bios-Einstellungen habe ich mit meiner 9800 Pro auch
wenig Freude.

That's what I said, and the jerk ignored me. I'm only
an experienced tech with a zillion years on the job.

johns

 

[whatever]

It could be your motherboard. At least the problem I had, which was
similar to yours, had to do with the motherboard, which was Gigabyte
with SiS 655 chipset. For a moment I thought I got a bad card, too.
After I changed to Asus with 865PE chipset and it's been stable since.