PC Discussion Thread - All PC related in here.

[BraTTy 0]

Could be the GPU.

But I would start with more possibly the PSU (power supply)

You saying it worked for 20 minutes then goes out answers my question that are you sure you have both monitors enabled in display properties (if it werent the monitor would still flick on\off at bootup like you say)

I would start by blowing out the video cards heatsink\fan.

Does you video card have 2 power connecters ? I would reseat the connectors if so.

Often helps to actually pull out the video card and reseat that also.

I suspect power supply...how many watts is it? If you have extra items you could disable (extra hdd's,extra dvd\cd drives etc...) Maybe would help. And in the same question did you install new hardware?

[BraTTy 0]

Now it works again but once more i get these strange effects, possibly really the GPU?

Or what else could cause it?

Do you get strange effects with only starting and using one monitor?

[echo1 0]

PSU?

I guess you mean the power unit?

Doubt it as the pc itself seems to start and load windows correctly, problem is just that i cant see it, hehe.

Trying atm to get a friends PC so we can exchange parts and see what it could be.

Very weird problem and hard to find the source it seems.

Yes, sorry, forgive my use of three-letter acronyms PSU problems manifest them in a wide variety of weird and wonderful ways, for example, a user here a few weeks ago had a problem with his DVD drive - it would read CDs fine, but DVDs would cause the computer to crash. If memory serves me correct, the drive was tried in another PC without problems, but most importantly, when the PSU was replaced the problems went away.

That would be a more unusual case of PSu failure, but what youre describing is a very likely a PSU problem, and as I had experience with similar problems with my own PC that were eventually pinned down to the PSU, I would say that its the most likely problem. It isnt a clear cut case of "If the computer turns on, the PSU is fine", as I said earlier, they manifest themselves in the most unusual ways. Furthermore, GPU failures are rather unusual unless youre overclocking or there is something wrong with the fan. What model of PSU do you use? Can you try getting another one to test? At the end of the day, a decent PSU is less than half the price of a card like the 9800GTX or a Radeon 4870, always best to start off with the more obvious solutions and work your way up.

[Mr Sarkey 0]

Don't buy a computer from alienware; they are very overpriced. May i suggest building your own?

A large bit of the price for the Alienware PC's isn't hardware, as you said, it's professionaly built, and has nice cabling/airflow and such.. Yes, it's possible to build a computer, but if you don't know a lot about building computers (If it'd be your first computer, DO NOT start of making a $1600 computer.. I'd stronly suggest starting of with the cheapest parts you can find, use spares etc, and learn from your mistakes), having a well made, nicely setup and tested computer, than will give full support, and repairs (for a year, for free as far as I can tell) might make it seem a bit less overpriced.. Plus, the cases are extremely shiney

Not that I'd use something like Alienware, but then again, I've put together a bunch of computers, and dismantled/reassembled computers a lot..

luemmel : Case, power supply and cooling stuff!

- Ben

Agree ^^. My current desktop was built (by me! about 2 months ago for just £450 british pounds. Which is pretty cheap (including monitor etc). Best not to risk it and a little money can go a long way i think.

[Shadow NX 1]

Well could be the PSU but i have my doubts because the odd thing is that 3d applications seem to run well and without any fuzzy screen.

Used the dxdiag command yesterday and these tests all ran fine and while they ran there wasnt a sign of fuzzy or pixelating screen at all... very weird.

Even ArmA runs and didnt show any things like slow loading textures ( or at least not more than usual ).

Weird thing ( and it may onyl be my imagination ) when after some mins the fuzzy effects start and slowly get stronger ( picture blurs and pixellates strongly ) then it often calmed it down when i opened something, for example a picture and zommed it in and out a little.

Screen even went black but recovered a few times.

And just to clarify, i use on monitor but the gfx card has a second port for another monitor.

Odd thing is the setup is like this since several months.

[BraTTy 0]

Changed video drivers lately?

[Shadow NX 1]

Before it happened it may have been a few weeks since i updated the drivers but with a 7800GTX not too much changed in the new drivers so i didnt update too often.

And currently i cant update for obvious reasons.

Well, a 4870HD is on its way, we shall see if that solves the problem.

And if yes i can maybe finally put details in ArmA to max seetings, hehe.

[Supernova 0]

Gonna pick up 2 4870 X2 as soon as they are in stock and released. They are the wonder card I was talking about.

@Shadow: sounds like a PSU problem as they have been known to cause BSOD etc...

[echo1 0]

Be careful about getting two dual-GPU cards. Practically every dual GPU card seems to have problems with Crossfire/SLI which causes it to barely perform any better than a single card. This is more so than the problems with dual single-GPU setups. At any rate, if the benchmarks are anything to be believed by, one will probably be enough for a long time

[Supernova 0]

I was thinking about that since quad CrossfireX only works on Vista. I believe there was one article on quad crossfireX 4870 x2 but it was vague.

[echo1 0]

I was thinking about that since quad CrossfireX only works on Vista. I believe there was one article on quad crossfireX 4870 x2 but it was vague.

I'd suggest starting off with one and getting a second one if you need it. At any rate, to get the most out of two dual-GPU cards, you would need a 30" monitor... a single 4870 X2 would be more than enough to power even a 22" screen.

[Supernova 0]

Actually I was on to ask for 30" monitors should I go with the Dell model or the Samsung ?

[echo1 0]

Supposedly the Dell 30" monitors are the best. Then again, I own a 20" Samsung which is exceptional, so I dont think you can go wrong either way.

[shinRaiden 0]

The actual LCD inside both could well be made by the same plant, the 24" Dell's I have both have samsung panels, so it's just a matter of best purchase deal for you.

[Murtok 0]

Moved from stand-alone thread:

I am looking to improve ArmA's performance as well as prepare for ArmA2. I've searched the interbutts for days, seeking the most cost effective way to improve. Alas, I am growing numb to the many different opinions on performance gain. This is the part where I need someone to just outright tell me what to do and tip the scale a bit.

So far, my upgrade possibilities have come down to (only one choice will apply):

A). Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 [New Egg - $180USD]

B). EVGA 640-P2-N829-AR GeForce 8800GTS SSC 640MB [New Egg - $180USD]

C). Fill in the _.

To aid you in your decision making, here are specs for my current setup:

Mobo: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

CPU: Intel C2D E6300 @ 3.0Ghz

Mem: Corsair Dominator DDR2 800 [5-4-4-9 T1 @ 1066 MHz]

VC: EVGA 8800 GTS 640Mb

HD: 2x WestDig Raptor [RAID 0]

I'm holding off on OC'ing the 8800 in case I wind up with another one sitting in PCI-E bus 2. I'd like to OC 'em both at the same time and after I can come up with a third-party cooling solution.

Any advice or suggestion is welcome.

In before AMD, ATI or higher overclocks!

[Shadow NX 1]

A little update on my problem:

Received the HD4870 yesterday and installed the bulky thing.

After start the old prob showed again.

Then i also replaced the lil adapter that makes the monitor cable compatible to modern gfx card plugs and damn it worked.

Need to check this again later today but it seems this damn little thing caused all the trouble.

ArmA runs great now however i still have texture loading and slight stutter but i guess that also has to do with my now over 3 years old cpu ( Athlon64 dual core ).

At least i could raise most settings to high now.

However this was solved just to make another problem pop up:

After things worked again i started windows and it keept asking me for driver to a PCI Bridge device and a SM Bus Controler.

Judging by some goiogelin im not alone with this, saddly i didnt find much solutions, can only try to re-install the board drivers at home it seems.

Since these devices are missing i also cant connect to my router anymore, so no net at home to quickly load fresh drivers.

Maybe related:

When i installed the HD4870 i noticed that the my Audigy soundcard was very close to the gfx card now and blocked the fan a little.

So i too it out and installed it in the slot next to it to have a bit space between them.

Also i managed to start up windows for a few minutes when i still had the black screen prob and de-installed all Nvidia drivers i had on the system before so it was clean when i installed the AMD card.

Could one of these have caused it?

Or are both related?

Oh and btw, knows anyone what the difference between a K8N Neo4 and a K8N Neo4 Platinum Motherboard is, i have the first one and can only find chipset drivers for the Platinums.

[VictorTroska 0]

Afaik, K8N Neo4 has nForce4 Ultra chipset, so go to Nvidia drivers page and download nForce4/500 series drivers (Version: 6.86).

Quote[/b] ]de-installed all Nvidia drivers i had on the system before so it was clean when i installed the AMD card

Did you accidentally deleted Nvidia chipset drivers along with vga ones?

[echo1 0]

Moved from stand-alone thread:

I am looking to improve ArmA's performance as well as prepare for ArmA2. I've searched the interbutts for days, seeking the most cost effective way to improve. Alas, I am growing numb to the many different opinions on performance gain. This is the part where I need someone to just outright tell me what to do and tip the scale a bit.

So far, my upgrade possibilities have come down to (only one choice will apply):

A). Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 [New Egg - $180USD]

B). EVGA 640-P2-N829-AR GeForce 8800GTS SSC 640MB [New Egg - $180USD]

C). Fill in the _.

To aid you in your decision making, here are specs for my current setup:

Mobo: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

CPU: Intel C2D E6300 @ 3.0Ghz

Mem: Corsair Dominator DDR2 800 [5-4-4-9 T1 @ 1066 MHz]

VC: EVGA 8800 GTS 640Mb

HD: 2x WestDig Raptor [RAID 0]

I'm holding off on OC'ing the 8800 in case I wind up with another one sitting in PCI-E bus 2. I'd like to OC 'em both at the same time and after I can come up with a third-party cooling solution.

Any advice or suggestion is welcome.

In before AMD, ATI or higher overclocks!

Do you mean to say that you want to get another 8800GTS 640MB for SLI? I wouldnt bother, the money you spend on an SLI setup would be much better spent on a faster single card like a Radeon 4870 (which I would say is your best choice for an upgrade). CPU-wise, going from an overclocked dual core to an overclock single core will have very no effect on ArmA, as ArmA doesnt properly use mutli-core CPUs. Supposedly ArmA2 will, but to what extent remains to be seen. How much RAM have you got?

[Shadow NX 1]

Afaik, K8N Neo4 has nForce4 Ultra chipset, so go to Nvidia drivers page and download nForce4/500 series drivers (Version: 6.86).

Quote[/b] ]de-installed all Nvidia drivers i had on the system before so it was clean when i installed the AMD card

Did you accidentally deleted Nvidia chipset drivers along with vga ones?

Didnt think of that, normally i just de-installed the Nvidia driver itself but as i read in some other forums that people had this after de-installing Nvidia drivers aswell it seems connected.

Will try out the drivers, maybe it helps, thanks.

---EDIT---

Stupid question but... i already downloaded the drivers from the MSI page and also the Nforce4 chipset drivers from the Nvidia page.

-nforce_winxp32_15.17_international

SHould be the correct one for my Board i guess.

Should i install both or does the Nvidia driver have everything already?

[VictorTroska 0]

I would go with this drivers: Link

There was some serious problems with nforce_winxp32_15.17 (like GPU Artifacts)

Pack contains:

* Audio Driver (v4.65) "WHQL"

* Audio Utility (v4.51)

* Ethernet Driver (v50.25) "WHQL"

* Network Management Tools (v50.19)

* SMBus Driver (v4.57) "WHQL"

* Installer (v4.89)

* WinXP IDE SataRAID Driver (v6.66) "WHQL"

* WinXP IDE SataIDE Driver (v6.66) "WHQL"

* WinXP RAIDTOOL Application (v6.63)

[Shadow NX 1]

Ok 6.86 it shall be then, thanks a lot mate.

So i install board drivers from MSI and then the Nforce ones.

And btw, nice smilie, i feel slightly insulted, hehe

[VictorTroska 0]

Ok 6.86 it shall be then, thanks a lot mate.

So i install board drivers from MSI and then the Nforce ones.

And btw, nice smilie, i feel slightly insulted, hehe

Oh,

just to get things clear, you have:

K8N Neo4

ATI HD4870

Right?

If so,

1. uninstall all Nvidia drivers (display and chipset)

2. with DriverSweeper remove leftovers from your system

Link

3. install chipset drivers (nForce4 6.86)

4. install latest ATI drivers 8.7

[Shadow NX 1]

Ok thanks a lot mate, very nice of you.

Cant wait to come home and try this out, hopefully i finally am able to use my DSL line again because at home with no net... that just doesnt feel right, hehe

[VictorTroska 0]

You probably deleted your ethernet drivers, should be fine once you reinstall nforce4 pack.

[Shadow NX 1]

The Nforce drivers fixed the problem, thanks a lot mate.