PC Crashes on 3DMark03. 9800 Radeon Card. 1

[Oolan]

Hi. Having problems with a rebuild PC, and hope some kind soul can help.

Spec first:

AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+
SASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X-E Deluxe
1023MB DDR-SDRAM
Gigabyte RADEON 9800 PRO
Hard Disk : IC35L120AVV207-0 (115.0GB)
Hard Disk : MAXTOR 6L080J4 (74.6GB)
CD-ROM/DVD : TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1202 (CD 32X Rd) (DVD 4X Rd)
CD-ROM/DVD : _NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A (CD 40X Rd, 32X Wr) (DVD 5X Rd, 4X Wr)
PSU: 600W
Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional (Win32 x86/IA32) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 1)

Story:

I have used the Radeon Graphics card in another machine for 2 months and all seemed to be working well except that the onboard fan never started and the heatsink is too hot to touch! Although it crashed once or twice, I created a bit of space in the case and it seemed very stable.

Now, I have rebuilt the new machine, run a SiSoft Sandra burn in test which says that all components are fine.

However, the performance appears to be worse than my old machine (which was an Athlon 1800, and 3D Mark 03 crashes (returning either to the desktop or rebooting the entire PC) when it tries to run the first CPU test (the 6th test, I think).

Far Cry now also looks jerky in the part of the map that I am in, and usually crashes after two or three minutes.

I haven't tried any other games.

Gigabytes advice for the GPU was useless. (RTB if you think it is broken). But I just don't know where the problem lies. Is it the graphics card? Could it be the PSU, or could it even be the CPU?

Should the fan on the Radeon 9800 be on all the time? Is that likely to cause a crash on the CPU test of 3DMark03?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[pmonett]

The R9800 does not have fan throttle technology, so yes, it should always be turning. If it does not turn correctly, you should replace it ASAP, or risk damaging your GPU (although it does have a temperature threshold cutoff).
You seem to have a general heat problem. You need to either include some case fans (intake at the bottom, exhaust at the top), or move the PC to a place where the case gets more air.
Try removing the side panel and see if it works better.

Pascal.

 

[Oolan]

Thanks for the tip Pascal. The GPU is on its way back to DABS.

I'll repost once I have completely sorted the problem with any further information if I learn anything else on the way.

 

[Oolan]

It's me again. With the same problem - slight variations.

Using an old card (NVidia GeForce2 MX/MX400) and switching to 3DMark01... New set of drivers obviously.

I run through a couple of the tests, then it reverts to desktop. Run through again, and this time get a blue screen of death and a full reboot.

BTW, the system temps are low. CPU @ 47 deg. Mobo @ 27 deg. Two low intake fans and two high exhausts...

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[pmonett]

Temps seem fine to me. What is your AGP aperture set to ?
I have found that anything below 128MB is not well taken by 3DMark.

Pascal.

 

[709]

If you check up on this motherboard youll see its very picky with memory especially DDr400 pc3200, i have had the reboot problem with this very board and also on the one i had before it (msi kg7n2-ilsr).

Running memory underclocked sorted it (eg. 333ddr @ 266), until i bought decent/recomended ram.

Might not be the cause of your problem but memory was a big problem for me with that board.

 

[m33sta]

My pc used to crach during 3dmark, it turned out to be 2 memory sticks not being compatible with each other