ASUS V9980 teething problems - crashes and non detection

[Arakel]

Hi all.

First, let me give my system specs:

AMD Athlon 2800XP
MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR MOBO
1024mb Corsair TwinX PC2700 RAM
Soundblaster Audigy Platinum
Seagate 5500rpm 30 gig HD
Win XP Home (SP1).

Up until my new shining ASUS V9980 arrived yesterday, I was using the Nforce2 onboard graphics - the system was stable and worked well (if a bit slow graphically at times... )

I popped the V9980 in yesterday, and changed nothing else.

When I booted into Windows, I tried installing the ASUS drivers. I was told that no ASUS card could be detected.

However, Windows COULD detect the card, and I installed the Nvidia 5950 drivers without problem. THe card was now detected.

Rebooting, Windows told me the GFX card wasn't getting enough power, and as a result performance had been reduced to safe levels. I noticed my processor fan was operating at a slower speed at this point, and I hadn't adjusted it.

THinking the Nvidia drivers might not be working right with the card, I used the Add HArdware wizard to manuall select the correct ASUS driver from the CD. This seemed to work fine. I rebooted, to no error message.

When I started HALO, my system rebooted immediately.

I tried reinstalling the Nvidia drivers, to no avail. The ASUS driver install program still can't detect the card.

My fan is incapable on running properly with the ASUS card plugged in. In fact, I have now removed the V9980 because the fan could no longer keep the processor cool enough to stop my comp from autoshutdown (temp sensor).

The only thing I can think is that my PSU isn't putting out enough juice. I've purchased an Antec Truepower 550W PSU which should arrive tomorrow. I'm hoping this will solve the issues. To my mind, the reduced speed of the fan HAS to be due to power issues - my best guess is the ASUS can't run properly as it isn't getting sufficient power, and the fan can't run properly as it isn't either.

Does anybody else have any suggestions?

Much obliged for any help.

 

[SavageMonkey]

Because the shutdown is coming very randomly, I would like to believe this is a PSU problem....

About the fans: There should be a fan on your V9980 card, one on the CPU, and a case fan (maybe two :S). Any extra can't hurt, but not totally essential.

So long as your exhaust fan is blowing enough air, then I would say your set up is good enough. Lots of exhausts fans tend to get clogged up with dust, I've had a few experiences myself with them.

Check your BIOS to see what temperature the CPU idles at, and the ambient temperature. I think you should only worry if the CPU idles at 65 degrees (c) or above. Do you know how hot the CPU is getting?

 

[SavageMonkey]

Okay, I just tried running America's Army for the first time in ages, and I heard it shut down my hard drives, and everything just f*cked up completely from there. I am very angry now, and do not know what is going on with this.....

Maybe the new PSU only helped reduced the occurance of a fundamental problem with the V9980, or at least a batch of them that are faulty (which us three seem to have)?

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[ClydeCoast]

Hello all

My System
AMD Athlon XP3000+
Abit NF7-s MOBO
2X256 PC3200 RAM (Unbranded)
SAMSUNG 40 GIG HD
Win XP Home (SP1)
Q-TEC 550W POWER SUPPLY

Just for info. May help someone.

Replaced my NVIDIA GeForce FX5600 with ASUS V9980 on Saturday 19/06/2004. Booted up without any problem. Installed the ASUS driver version V52.16
from the cd supplied and ran 3DMark03. Scored 5000+. As my old card only managed 1700 on a good day I was a happy chappie.
3DMark03 site suggest an NVIDIA driver for their test so I downloaded that and installed it and repeated the test and the results were about the same. Also ran Farcry game with no problems.
On Sunday I visited the ASUS site and found an updated driver. Downloaded the latest driver for the card, version 56.72 and ran 3DMark03 again. Mid-way through the test and without any warning the system died. No blue screen or anything just as if all power had been switched off. System would not reboot untill I removed the power cord for a minute.
After reboot I tried test again and this time I got the blue screen and system shutdown. On reboot Xp prompted to send report to Microsoft and the log file contained the following
EventType: 0xEA - Thread Stuck in Device Driver

//
// The driver for the display device got stuck in an infinite loop. This
// usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device
// driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your
// display device vendor for any driver updates

I rolled back the driver to the previous version and still got the same problem. Spent hours uninstalling and reinstalling all versions of the driver but without any success. The system either shutdown without warning or gave the blue screen and shut down.
Monday I contacted the supplier and got an RMA number and returned the card. Their engineers report says the card crashed windows on their system before he could run the first 3DMark03 test on it. I am now awaiting a replacement card.
I don't know if the drivers damaged the card if thats possible or if it was a concidence that the card developed a fault that would have happened anyway whether I had installed the drivers or not.
Hope this may be of intrest to someone but if I have put this in the wrong place or if inappropiate to your thread, feelfree to remove it.
Cheers.

 

[ziad87]

I bought this card becuase its ASUS and becuase they are known and experienced. Anyways, I contacted the Middle East manager about the problem a month ago and since then he has never replied. Nvidia does not deal with customer support. And the Asus customer support site is messed up and un-organized and i found nothing about our problem. Is there anyone else who can help us? Maybe this problem is overheating issues, since for me whenever there is a lot of on-screen action in games, i start hearing the "sounds".

 

[SavageMonkey]

Arrgh, thanks ClydeCoast for the info, this card is nothing but problems.

I had recently installed another SATA HDD, and after trying games I got my problem again (hard drives turning on and off [windows also informed me of the SATA being disconnected, because of the power fail]). I choose to remove one of my DVD drives and use the legacy power cable from that for the SATA HDD, and things "appear" to be working again (but now I'm without that DVD drive). I was previously using a SATA power cable for the HDD. Even with an expensive new PSU, I still think the issue is power. However, I think there is a fault in the V9980 that saps all the power from the system momentarily when it changes fan speed, so it's not the fault of the PSU. This could only be in a few of the cards released, as Asus wouldn't allow this to happen on such a large scale.

Like you, ziad87, I do not know how to contact Asus properly... I sent an email to them ages ago, and never got a reply - bloody great. If anyone has any phone numbers for UK Asus technical support, could you please reply here? I'd be very, very greatful!

Thanks!

 

[ziad87]

I searched on google and found this guy who had the same problem i emailed him and this is what he said:

"It turned out my problem was the power supply. The
first time, with the random restarts and the harddrive
is that the 3.3v is not sufficent and spikes too much
- which causes a protection fault in Windows (hence
the restart, which XP does automatically. You can
disable it if you want - go to System Properties >
Advanced > Error reporting).

I replaced the supply with a more powerful one, a
500watt, but then the computer continued to lockup and
crash - still the supply was insufficent, so I paid
$100 for an Antec True Blue 480watt and everything was
fine (before the 500, I had an Antec 350).

In the meantime, you can use driver version 53.55
which should make your system stable, but it will
report insufficent power and reduce your clock
frequency to 250mhz (use RivaTuner to re-clock
automatically). Also the older drives don't take
advantage of the cards' abilities and so performance
will suffer until you can replace the power supply.

If your problem is the same as mine, I recommend you
get an Antec power supply that is designed to prevent
power spikes and to control voltages. Use a monitoring
program, such as HMonitor or Asus Probe to make sure
everything is okay. Voltages should be an almost
straight line (when I was using the 500, they would
look like heartbeats!)

Hope this helps."

Well seeing you have the antec 480 this won't help you. How about the power supplies alienware use, the Turbo Cool 510 Deluxe, its pretty expensive and supports multiple SATA connections, Alienware use it for the Nvidia 6800 which demands more power than the v9980. The turbo cool reaches to a peak power of 650 watts.