rec.autos.simulators

by **Mar** » Sat, 27 Apr 2002 17:37:35

I need some suggestions here.

My own PC is a PIII450/V3/256Mb/SBLive. No problems other than it's S
L O W.

My (recently replaced) work supplied PC was Compaq PIII500/TNT2 32Mb
PCI/128Mb/on-board sound. No problems, but S L O W.

My new work supplied PC is another Compaq deskpro, 866/TNT2 out of the
above/512Mb/on-board sound.

All above running Win98SE

This latest PC makes N2K2 playable BUT I get random Blue Screen of
Death crashes at seemingly random times in N2K2 - pre and post patch.
Appears so far not to have problems running work apps (MS Stuff, SAP).
I thought it was maybe heat related but I'm not so sure now. I
yanked out the 2x128 DIMMs leaving a single 256 in there then ran the
game. Crashed very soon after entering a driving lesson. Swapped the
memory out and thought I'd cracked it as it went for almost 2 full
driving lessons before cacking out. I'm using the driving lessons as
I can kick N2K2 off working at something while I do something else -
it does also crash out whilst playing.

The fact that I booted up the PC from cold having made the first
memory mod and the game crashed quickly, but went on for longer the
second time makes me think it's maybe not heat related.

I'm gonna try a different PCI slot for the TNT2, then I'm gonna try my
SBLive in there. But after that I'm out of ideas.

Are there any diagnostic apps I could use out there? Any taxing 3D
demos that I could kick off and leave running to stretch the TNT2?

I can't afford a new PC for a good few months yet, but this 866 would
really help tide me over.

PLEASE HELP!

Cheers,

Mark
Reading, UK

by **Jone Tytlandsvi** » Sat, 27 Apr 2002 17:49:27

If you want to find out if it's hardware related or not, take a look at
tufftest
http://www.tufftest.com/
It costs $9,95 but it has saved me a lot of time. It boots from a floppy and
tests your CPU, Memory, HD's and so on, regardless if you have a working OS
or not. You should test your PC constantly over many days, before you
conclude that everything is OK. A single test will not always show any
faults, even if you have a bad memory chip.
It will not test your graphics very extensively. You could always run 3Dmark
from Madonion for that, but it will probably just crash, and you would have
no idea why.

Jone.

by **Andre Warrin** » Sat, 27 Apr 2002 18:03:22

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002 10:49:27 +0200, "Jone Tytlandsvik"

>> Are there any diagnostic apps I could use out there? Any taxing 3D
>> demos that I could kick off and leave running to stretch the TNT2?

>If you want to find out if it's hardware related or not, take a look at
>tufftest
>http://www.tufftest.com/
>It costs $9,95 but it has saved me a lot of time. It boots from a floppy and

Or try Sandra, great diag utility, with a free trial period.
Get it from www.cnet.com.

Andre

by **Andre Warrin** » Sat, 27 Apr 2002 18:13:24

>Or try Sandra, great diag utility, with a free trial period.
>Get it from www.cnet.com.

>Andre

On the other hand - forget Sandra. The program is great, but I just
read that annoying Spyware is included in the latest version:
http://download.com.com/3302-2086-8606391.html

Andre

by **Rafe McAuliff** » Sun, 28 Apr 2002 00:32:02

Sounds to me like it's the TNT2 causing problems, especially since you
are ONLY having probs in 3d games. And of course the TNT2 is a really
shite video card anyway. See if you can borrow another vid card to
test your system. The 3dmark suggestion is a good one to test
stability, leave it looping for a while (just on the 3d demos) and see
how you go.

More than likely that the TNT2 crashes with the faster CPU because it
is under more load, being used to it's capacity with a faster CPU.

Oh, and your TNT2 does have a fan, right? If not, I have just found
your problem.

Rafe Mc

by **Mark Daviso** » Sun, 28 Apr 2002 20:58:59

Haven't tried any of the suggestions yet - no time so far - but this cheapo
TNT2 only has a heatsink...

Mark
Reading, UK

by **Rafe McAuliff** » Mon, 29 Apr 2002 17:50:05

So what are you waiting for? Just a little 486 fan or similar should
do the trick, just***it into the heatsink fins and you should be
OK.

Rafe Mc

by **Mar** » Tue, 30 Apr 2002 16:23:49

> So what are you waiting for? Just a little 486 fan or similar should
> do the trick, just***it into the heatsink fins and you should be
> OK.

Well, I spent ALL WEEKEND***ing around with this sucker. Friggin
Compaqs. Hate 'em!!

Anyway, turns out it wasn't a heat problem. Want the long story? I'm
too tired... Here's the highlights.

Got the lid off the that desk-space-saving-POS-base-unit, placed a
desktop fan at max power right on top of the sucker. Still crashing
with N2K2. Installed 3DMark and ran through it's tests a few times.
That should -really- stretch the card, right? No crashes. Hmmmm...
The sound with the on-board device in N2K2 was pretty garbled. Let's
run it with sound disabled... NO CRASHES!

Sorted! I'll just bung in the SBLive (which I was gonna do anyway)
and that 4-port USB card and I'm away.

Nope.

Startup, PC hangs. Remove USB card. Still no joy. Go round and
round in circles for two days chasing old drivers that could maybe
cause issues. Same pattern keeps repeating:

PC hangs on startup. Restart, force normal as opposed to safe. Get
640x480 desktop 16 colours, a message about display not being
configured correctly and the display properties box. Change to
1024x768 256 colours (max it will allow) and windows restarts. Now I
get full control (higher res, colour depth etc). I can change these
without needing a restart, I can run business apps and games no probs.
When I reboot, back to square one with a hang on startup...
Search registry for sound and vid stuff that could cause problems, go
down to 256Mb from 512Mb (something on NV's site mentions problems
with this amount of RAM in 98SE systems). Nuttin.

It's gotta be graphics issues, right? I mean, that's what the message
keeps complaining about.

Into the (extremely limited) BIOS. PCI devices. The graphics and
sound are sharing IRQ 5. Hmmmm... There's nothing I can change this
setting to that isn't in conflict with another device.

Remove SBLive, reboot. 98 auto re-installs on board "Soundmax" sound.

Reboot to my heart's content with no hangs.

Into N2K2. What's this? No garbled sound? No crashes? WHAT THE
F*CK!?!?!?

This was last thing last night and I have an enormous headache now.

I would rather use the SBLive as I like 3D audio and I've got my
Creative FPS to utilise, but looks like that's not gonna happen.

Oh well. Tonight I will configure all my game controller gear. I
don't expect things to go smoothly...

Mark
Reading, UK

by **Rafe McAuliff** » Tue, 30 Apr 2002 21:41:52

SNIP

Mark, welcome to the wonderful world of computers! Who are we mere
mortals to try and fathom why these things take the twists that they
do?

Sorry to hear it was such a ***, but alls well that ends well huh?
Good luck with that nice Momo, I'll be picking one up for myself
shortly :)

Rafe Mc

by **Chris H** » Wed, 01 May 2002 00:32:01

Mark, you probably have, but if you haven't, have you tried to disable the onboard sound in the BIOS. You could be getting a conflict there. Or/also, try installing your sound card in a different slot. Sometimes they just plain object to the positioning. Get the latest sound drivers, if you haven't already, from the Creative web site.
--
Chris H.

> > So what are you waiting for? Just a little 486 fan or similar should
> > do the trick, just***it into the heatsink fins and you should be
> > OK.

> Well, I spent ALL WEEKEND***ing around with this sucker. Friggin
> Compaqs. Hate 'em!!

> Anyway, turns out it wasn't a heat problem. Want the long story? I'm
> too tired... Here's the highlights.

> Got the lid off the that desk-space-saving-POS-base-unit, placed a
> desktop fan at max power right on top of the sucker. Still crashing
> with N2K2. Installed 3DMark and ran through it's tests a few times.
> That should -really- stretch the card, right? No crashes. Hmmmm...
> The sound with the on-board device in N2K2 was pretty garbled. Let's
> run it with sound disabled... NO CRASHES!

> Sorted! I'll just bung in the SBLive (which I was gonna do anyway)
> and that 4-port USB card and I'm away.

> Nope.

> Startup, PC hangs. Remove USB card. Still no joy. Go round and
> round in circles for two days chasing old drivers that could maybe
> cause issues. Same pattern keeps repeating:

> PC hangs on startup. Restart, force normal as opposed to safe. Get
> 640x480 desktop 16 colours, a message about display not being
> configured correctly and the display properties box. Change to
> 1024x768 256 colours (max it will allow) and windows restarts. Now I
> get full control (higher res, colour depth etc). I can change these
> without needing a restart, I can run business apps and games no probs.
> When I reboot, back to square one with a hang on startup...
> Search registry for sound and vid stuff that could cause problems, go
> down to 256Mb from 512Mb (something on NV's site mentions problems
> with this amount of RAM in 98SE systems). Nuttin.

> It's gotta be graphics issues, right? I mean, that's what the message
> keeps complaining about.

> Into the (extremely limited) BIOS. PCI devices. The graphics and
> sound are sharing IRQ 5. Hmmmm... There's nothing I can change this
> setting to that isn't in conflict with another device.

> Remove SBLive, reboot. 98 auto re-installs on board "Soundmax" sound.

> Reboot to my heart's content with no hangs.

> Into N2K2. What's this? No garbled sound? No crashes? WHAT THE
> F*CK!?!?!?

> This was last thing last night and I have an enormous headache now.

> I would rather use the SBLive as I like 3D audio and I've got my
> Creative FPS to utilise, but looks like that's not gonna happen.

> Oh well. Tonight I will configure all my game controller gear. I
> don't expect things to go smoothly...

> Mark
> Reading, UK

by **Mar** » Wed, 01 May 2002 18:29:42

> Mark, you probably have, but if you haven't, have you tried to disable
> the onboard sound in the BIOS. You could be getting a conflict there.
> Or/also, try installing your sound card in a different slot. Sometimes
> they just plain object to the positioning. Get the latest sound
> drivers, if you haven't already, from the Creative web site.
> --

Thanx for the pointers, guys.

I've now got gfx & SBLive working by manually setting IRQs in BIOS
(nowhere to disable on-board audio that I can find). I've got 5 PCI
devies sharing 3 IRQs, but I've made sure nothing conflicts with gfx.

Man, after being used to a PIII450 / V3, this P866 + TNT2 is sweet as
a nut. Really gets me hankering for the kick ass box that I'll be
inline for in a few months (after garage conversion, etc is
complete...).

I've still got issues to resolve (like not being able to get online
hence delayed Google posts from work, the 2 PC LAN refusing to see
this PC) but movement appears to forward rather than circular...

Next question: Given that I can only go PCI and the 866Mhz processor
speed, will a Creative GeForce 2MX give me a noticable framerate
improvement?

Cheers,

Mark
Reading, UK

Maybe, just maybe, you'll see me on RASCAR soon in the #69 Cadbury's
Caramel
Car. Can I reserve this number?

by **Rafe McAuliff** » Thu, 02 May 2002 22:34:01

Noticeable but not huge. Get yourself a GF2 pro, ultra, or ti, make
sure its a DDR version. That'd be a great match for an 866mhz, pci
wouldn't be a big issue.

The difference is probably an extra 50-80% with the GF2 MX, or around
150 to 300% by going for a DDR GF2.

Rafe Mc

by **Goy Larse** » Thu, 02 May 2002 22:46:22

> >Next question: Given that I can only go PCI and the 866Mhz processor
> >speed, will a Creative GeForce 2MX give me a noticable framerate
> >improvement?

> >Cheers,

> >Mark
> >Reading, UK

> >Maybe, just maybe, you'll see me on RASCAR soon in the #69 Cadbury's
> >Caramel
> >Car. Can I reserve this number?

> Noticeable but not huge. Get yourself a GF2 pro, ultra, or ti, make
> sure its a DDR version. That'd be a great match for an 866mhz, pci
> wouldn't be a big issue.

> The difference is probably an extra 50-80% with the GF2 MX, or around
> 150 to 300% by going for a DDR GF2.

I don't think the Geforce cards come in any higher spec than GF2 MX400
in PCI, or have I missed something ?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com
http://www.teammirage.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

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