9700 Pro locking up my system

[NewAtAllThis]

I just built a new P4 2.8GHz 800FSB system with 1GB PC3200 and the ATI 9700 Pro. I use the ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard and am having problems with the 9700 freezing during certain games such as MotoGP2. I built this system to be fast and powerful but this is a real disappointment!

Does anyone know how I go about traeting this!

 

[sbaker899]

What is the OS? If 2K/XP is there anything to be found in the event logs after you reboot? Also are you using the latest drivers for all hardware (i.e. motherboard chipset, video card, etc.)?

I have found overheating to be a cause of this with both my last 2 video cards (Geforce3 Ti200 & a radeon like you have), you could try removing the side of your case to test for this - I ended up getting 2 case fans.

I assume this is happening in more games than just MotoGP2?

 

[Tarwn]

As sbaker has mentioned, the two base reasons behind this are probably drivers and heat.
The stock cooler on an ATI Radeon 9700 pro (I assume made by ATI not 3rd party) is barely adequate to do it's job. It doesn't handle overclocking well and produces a large amount of heat.
The drivers you should look into are the Catalyst 3.5 drivers. They are relatively new, but despite ATI's previous track record with drivers, these actually seem to perform well.

Concerning heat: Removing the side of the case is a good temporary solution. You will need to do something about pushing more air through the case though. If you already have an exhaust fan in the rear and an intake fan in the front, look at adding another fan, getting rounded cables to increase airflow, and either wrapping/taping/zip tying your PSU cords to increase airflow. You can probably pick up a thermal monitor or detector relatively cheap (I think the Nurse thermal detectors are pretty cheap) and attach it next to the GPU core (not on), this will allow you to monitor the temp while your playing to see if it is spiking very high before the inevitable crash.

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[NewAtAllThis]

I do have the latest catalyst 3.5 drivers. My case is a TermalTake Xaser3 with 7 fans. Surely that gets enough air in and out?
If I knew the problem WAS definitely heat, I would get a Zalman heat-pipe or something similar as I have heard that they work well. Any comments?

 

[Grenage]

Do you have any monitoring software that you can use to test the system temperature?

If you take the cover off the case and point a deskfan at the side, does this give you any longer before a crash?

As Tarwn says the 9700 Pro does kick out a lot of heat, I use one myself but have not had any issues yet (In fact it's my most stable system yet and has not crashed since I built it many months ago).

 

[Tarwn]

The zalman heatpipe is a good cooler, but only does better than the stock cooler if you attacha fan or two to it. In passive cooling it runs a few degrees warmer than the stock cooling option.
The case you have should be moving enough air that you would have to be running 4 to 6 ide drives with badly placed ribbon cables before you would have a concern about heat.


I knew I had seen something on this before, I apologize for the outside link, but a guru3d forum member had covered this issue before and wrote up 2 or 3 pages on possible solutions, so rather than paraphrase his work and take credit, here is a link:

http://www.guru3d.com/forum/showthread.php?s=5153823562dcd2f7f01bcb8adde35da2&threadid=39869

and now that he has mentioned those other drivers he has, I think I am going to give them a try and see if I get a performance fallof or not.
-Tarwn

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The never-completed website