Problems with 9800pro and ez65 shuttle

[ChrisHasName]

Hi, sorry if it seems a bit cheeky using my first post for questions. I've been reading this board for a while Just spotted this new forum so i thought i would see if anyone here can help me...

I recently bought an XCcube ez65, after plenty of reading around i found that the system should be able to cope with the following spec:

Radeon 9800 pro
Pentium 4 512k cache 2.8 Ghz
2 x 512Mb of pc3200 corsair value select ram
60 gig HDD
Soundblaster 5.1 soundcard
DVDRW

My problem was that when playing demanding games such as CS Source beta and BF Vietnam, the system would either hang or crash to desktop and bring up the VPU recovery message. I thought this was strange as the card is fine in my tower case. This only happens if i turn the settings up, if i put all the settings down it doesn't have any problems and i get 90 - 120 fps in CS Source.

My first thoughts were that it was overheating, so i bought an evercool fan for the graphics card and i fit 2 80 mm either side of the case. The problem still happened.

I then thought the 220 watt PSU might be struggling despite the fact that i've seen others with more power leeching systems than mine. I then plugged in my 400 watt tower PSU but the problem still happened.

So then i thought it could be the motherboard. I have fit my old Geforce 3 and it does not crash at all no matter how high the settings are. Is it possible that the AGP slot could not be putting enough power though the card?

I also swapped RAM with a friend and this made no differance.

I've also tried various drivers and am considering formatting, despite the fact that this problem seems quite hardware based.

I'm really confused by this problem, if anyone could please suggest anything else to try, or give me an instant solution!? it would be very appreciated. This is driving me nuts.

Sorry for the length of the post. Hopefully someone will read all that

- Chris

 

[f|uke]

Did you uninstall the GeForce drivers?

I would consider reinstalling XP,. if that doesn't do it, then I'd bet its your mobo.

 

[Atari]

Welcome to Halflife2.net

Doesn't sound like a hardware fault, so I suggest...

1. Make sure you have all drivers for your system
2. Uninstall/Reinstall latest graphics card drivers
3. Install latest version of directX 9
4. Make sure the bios settings are right for the hardware (forget about overclocking for now).

If that doesn't work, try the card on another system if possible. Oh, and make sure you have the latest patch for each game.

Good luck

 

[Jimmeh]

I don't suppose you've got a Powercolour 9800 Pro? I've got the same and get the same problems, sometimes often and sometimes not. I've read about there being memory issues with powercolour but meh, this problem is infrequent for me at most. Try reinstalling the drivers like everyone else said, you never know

Oh yeh, and Welcome to the forums!

 

[Atari]

JiMmeh..I have the powercolor 9800Pro on this machine and had endless problems with it when I first got it. I looked up the problem on the net and the main problem with these cards is the crappy fan they decided to put on the board. Not sure if this is related to your problem but you never know.

Won't be buying Powercolor stuff again.

 

[Jimmeh]

Yeh thats for sure - I ain't gonna be buying no Powercolour stuff either. Have you tried extra cooling/fans? Any difference? I also had tonnes of problems, but that turned out to be something in my BIOS was set wrong as I was overclocking. All was well for a few days, then BAM! It would freeze up again and give me the VPU Recovery and restart. I recently bought an ASUS 9800XT 256mb for my other machine and that's been absolutely great hehe .

 

[ChrisHasName]

Thanks a lot for the help, I formatted last night and just played for 40 mins on very high settings. Bad fps but it worked! I really hope it stays this way

I had uninstalled all the drivers, i still dont know what was causing the errors.

I don't have a powercooler, mine was bought OEM so im not really sure to be honest... I've flashed it to an XT now anyways.

 

[Atari]

Glad to hear it. Wondering...How do you flash the 9800pro? Any links etc?

 

[ChrisHasName]

I followed THIS guide.

Be warned, although i had no serious problems flashing it to an XT, when i decided to flash it back to a pro i got some major errors, couldn't see anything. I ended up having to blindly go into windows and copy from my second machine the exact steps on the keyboard... it was very hit and miss.

I used Winflash to flash the bios within windows, as the floppy disk method didnt work for me... use floppys if you can, its more effort, but if things go wrong you're ok.

Everythings working perfectly for me now though hope this helps.