Scrambled video on P4 with NVidia

[cooperweb]

Shuttle XPC SB75G3 / Canterbury chipset
Intel P4 3.00
1 gig Corsair HyperX 3200 DDR400 2x512
NVidia PNY GeForce Ti4400 128
Onboard Sound / Lan
Not using the 1 supplied PCI slot.
VGA to 21" NEC 6FGp, DVI to 22" Apple Cinema Display via DViator.

Worked fine for a few months with exception of D3D video:
Tried Radeon 9600 pro 256 but wouldn't run DirectX anything 8 or 9.
Tried NVidia with same problem. Had to load old NVidia driver 45.23 version to get DirectX 9 to work. (D3D)

But now I have new problem.
I upgraded my memory to 1 gig from Corsair 2x256, both HyperX.
That is the latest thing that could be related to this problem.
After a few minutes playing Enemy Territory, or surfing, I get the checkerboard pink and purple garbage that ultimately locks the system.
Tempature is warm but not too hot with possible exception of PWM which I am not sure what that is. But CPU and MoBO are in the low 40's centigrade and PWM gets up there around 53c.
The power in the shuttle is a meek 220w.

Could the new memory be craving too much power? I can't believe Shuttle would not have taken this into consideration. Only periphials connected are 2 SATA 120g drives and a DVD/CDR burner.
Shuttle boasts that it has a 2g limit for memory so 1gig should not be a concearn I would think.

I spanned the boards and see all sorts of suggestions including:
Turn off fastwrite
Dummy down to 2x or 1x AGP
Raise the core, lower the core
Use the latest, beta or Omni(?) drivers for NVidia (tried 'em for Nv and ATI, D3D no like)

I went to fail-safe BIOS defaults and I am not overclocking a thing.

Can anyone confirm RAM may be the power hungry culprit or offer a reasonable solution as this is driving me crazy.

Out of 4 PCs my only stable workhorse is a 400 mgz Win98 Powerspec which has been running fine for 5 years.
Everything else has been WinCompromised.

Thank you in advance for any considerations.
Keith
cooperweb.com

 

[uk10]

Hey there...

i've just got the same problems as u do... i just installed winxp downloaded windows updates... (directx 9) included... and then it happened... wolfET crashed UT runs slow.. and this checkboard crashes...

did u find any answer to this issues?

i think it's directx9... thats the problem..

 

[cassiohui]

i don't think it's the power problem. unless i'm mistaken, shuttle's got the most powerful psu avilable for ssfpc. it should run ok even with a 9700/9800 (see reviews from tomshardware/xbitlabs...etc)

but i don't know the solution to your problem, sorrry

Computers are unreliable. Humans are worse.

 

[cooperweb]

Hi all. Thank you for your replies. I have since moved past this problem. I put my PNY GeFore Ti 4400 into another computer and got even worse results.

So I have stacked this PNY POS onto my pile of dead-before-their-time PNY cards and put an ATI Radeon 9600 in this box and it runs great. I put my original Gig of HyperX Corsair back in and all is fine.

The only oddity is that I had to find a driver for my second monitor, a NEC MultiSync 21" CRT. Never had to do that before and even now, the image is fubared until it passes login screens and loads drivers. My mail DVI monitor displays from the very beggining. As this is not a problem, I am all good.

I do not choose sides between ATI and NVidia, but I will say that after reading this all over, that PNY should NOT be in business. Their lifetime warranty covers the lifetime that they offer the cards on the market and as a result, the GeForce 3 is no longer supported but the GeForce 2 still is. Baaad marketing.