Asus A7V8X + GigaByte Radeon9200 = HELP!

[DJos]

Ladies & Gents,
I have just built myself a new system based on an Asus A7V8X, GigaByte Radeon9200, Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) 512Mb DDR PC2700 etc etc.

My problem is the the GB Radeon9200 causes massive instability, I cant even run a 3d game such as Q3. even photochopping & word processing will cause a crash.

I have re-built XP Pro several times from scratch, I have used all the latest driver's and bioses available and stripped all unnesecary Hardware from my system all to no avail.

when the system crashes about 50% of the time my video will reset to 640x480 & 256Colours, XP wil then tell me the the Radeon9200 driver caused the problem. the other 50% of the time I will get a spontaneous reboot.

several wierd things that I have notised is that xp reports there are 2xradeon 9200's installed when the drivers are loaded and if I put either my old HIS Radeon7500 or even older AsusGF2MX in my system It becomes rock solid and wont crash no matter what I do.

Btw, the A7V8X is a Via KT400 based board with AGP 8X Support, the 9200 is also AGP 8X.

Btw #2, The System is not oc'ed, if i throw in a 4X card I can change the speed in the bios but if i put in the 9200 it locks me into 8x.

[Plough]

If I were you I would sell the Radeon9200
Its one of the better value cards for $50.

I know this will not help.

[DJos]

Originally posted by Plough

I know this will not help.

No not really :cool: Im gonna send it back to EYO if they can duplicate the probs im having. If they'll take it back im gonna buy a Leadtek Geforce FX5600 ViVo !

[Colonel Kurtz]

radeon is teh suck!

Stick with GeForce..it is also more widely supported.

Had nothing but problems with Radeons in the past, and so i refuse to install them in systems anymore

Piss it of, get the leadtek

[Asmodeus]

its not your card, its your board, its mostly garbage.

the A7V8X was known for avery bad implementation of the 8x standard and is an all around bad board. trade it in for the better model, like the a7n8x and such.

pretty much all around, you'r enot going to get much working with it reliable, especially if its a revision 1 board. a bios update might help you, but don't hold your breath.

[DJos]

Originally posted by Colonel Kurtz
radeon is teh suck!

Stick with GeForce..it is also more widely supported.

Had nothing but problems with Radeons in the past, and so i refuse to install them in systems anymore

Piss it of, get the leadtek

My old Radeon7500 rocks, it's now doing duties in my HT PC, it's DVD playback and overall image quality/sharpness is far superiour to any NVidia product I have viewed so far.

Asmodeus: I only just bought it, Arrrgh!

[pliskin]

not sure if this is much help, but what power supply do u have?
i recently purchased a radeon 9700 which sucks quite a bit of power. when i 1st installed the new board, i had major instability, until i got new case with a bigger power supply! i now have a 400 wat psu!

[DJos]

Originally posted by pliskin
not sure if this is much help, but what power supply do u have?
i recently purchased a radeon 9700 which sucks quite a bit of power. when i 1st installed the new board, i had major instability, until i got new case with a bigger power supply! i now have a 400 wat psu!

It's only a 250Watt, Hmm I might grab my 300Watt from my HT PC and do a Swap.

Altho the 9200 can't be that much of a power hog as it doesn't even need an Active cooler.

[pliskin]

i had a 300w power supply, in my pc. now its 400w
have a look at the requirements for the graphics card.
the radeon 9700 also uses power from the agp bus as well as using the same power supply plug ( on card ) as a floppy drive via a plug thru connector. as i said it sucks a fair bit of power.
not sure if its for the cooler, i think it has to do with the actual gpu and the memory on the card

[Asmodeus]

250 watts is quite a bit on teh bad side of skimpy. get one of those newer 400+ power supplies. if you upgrade a lot, get a good name brand one as big as you can get, it'll last you through a number of machines

[rickbitch]

also you might be having the problem where your yum-cha 250w PSU isn't supplying enough voltage on all the rails whilst it is under load. I agree with asmo, spend $100 or so on a decent brand name 400w psu. Enermax are quite good, as are leadman.

[DJos]

Arrrgh! I put my 300Watt PSU into my PC and despite having, on average, 5 more amps per volt rail (on some it was more like 10), the results are the same - I think this mobo and Video Card just hate each other !

[lb_james]

Your system (depending on how many devices USB/ IDE/ etc. you have attached) sounds quite power-hungry. Try a 400w PSU 1st!

[Bifrost]

The biggest problem you have is the fact that you have an AMD motherboard and a Radeon graphics card...

Much the same as the fact that Intel and Microsoft are in bed with their server-type app coding (AMD chips tend to give poorer performance on things like SQL Server), AMD and nVidia are in bed with their 3D graphics coding...

If you buy an AMD motherboard and chip - buy an nVidia graphics card...

A mate of mine (Grizzlee) bought a lower-end Radeon and had no end of trouble on his AMD machine, then ATI admitted that the card was shite (had inherent problems) and provided him with a 9700 free of charge...I don't THINK he has had any problems with the 9700, so it might be a goer, but they are quite expensive...

[DJos]

Originally posted by lb_james
Your system (depending on how many devices USB/ IDE/ etc. you have attached) sounds quite power-hungry. Try a 400w PSU 1st!

I have stuff all in it, CPU/FAN + mobo + 40Gb 7200rpm HD + Sb Live 5.1 + DVD/CD-RW + CD-ROM + 2 Case fans.

I've actually ripped out or disconnected everything non essential even down to the case fans. I've not connected any usb devices either and the results are entirely repeatable.

I really dont wont to shell out another $100 on a PSU only to find out there is a problem between the mobo & Video Card.

I think it is more likely the video Card than PSU for the foillowing reason, when I first bought this gear, the Video card would not give me any video at all. I sent it back to EYO and they said that it worked fine in several systems, I told them to try it in an A7V8X mobo which they did and sure enuf it did the no video thing so they replaced it.

When EYO's tech gets back on monday Im gonna ask him to duplicate my system and see if he gets the same issue. If he does then im gonna get a Leadtek FX5600 for an extra $160.

[DJos]

Well the the saga is finally over - after extensive testing in many machines (P4's & Athlon's) it has been determined that Gigabyte's implementation of the R9200 is flawed. The card is eventually unstable under most conditions on most machines.

Anyways, I have had the card replaced by EYO, (thanks David), with an Asus GF5200 128mb TV Out and it's rock solid under all conditions - the only time I could get it to crash as after oc'n it to unreasonable levels :D

The morale of the stoy is: Dont but the GigaByte Radeon9200

PS. I believe the blame rests soley on Gigabyte, NOT ATI, as I have had several Radeon cards from other makers that have been perfect.

[Asmodeus]

for more performance, mke sure all your mobo stuff is updated, since your mobo has a history of dodgy agp 8x implementations

[DJos]

Originally posted by Asmodeus
for more performance, mke sure all your mobo stuff is updated, since your mobo has a history of dodgy agp 8x implementations

The very first thing I did was update the MB's Bios. Anyways this rig is now humming along nicely. :)

[MisterBishi]

Just in case it happens again under different circumstances, you should know that the spontaneous reboot is an ASR, basically it reboots rather than show a BSOD, so that a server will come up again rather than sitting on the BSOD screen until somebody physically goes over and reboots it.

You can turn it off from Startup and Recovery under the advanced tab of System Properties.