Having faith in Nvidia, I went ahead and bought an MSI Nforce 420 pro MBO.
The system runs a duron 1200, and two sticks of 128 Mb DDR 2.5 cas memory
(supposedly brand name).
I set the system to tun at 100/200/66 - SAFE settings in bios. We installed
both WinME and WinXP, and in both operating systems the following happens.
DirectX titles crash sooner or later, and OpenGL titles work flawlesly. I
tried some games that can run both, like Nascar4 and IL-2 Sturmovik, and
again, directx crashes, and opengl WORKS????? In WinXP, when I move the
MediaPlayer window, windows simply RESET into POST!!!!
While you play directx games or run 3dmark 2001, before it crashes, there
are blotches of bad textures, like the screen artifacts, that flash in
various places. When I drag the mediaplayer window, the same video errors
appear not just in it's on window, but all over desktop and than it crashes.
I tried 27.42 drivers, tried the ones that come with the board, tried
installing the NForce unified package from Nvidia, tried official 23.11, all
to no avail. I also tried flashing the MBO to 2.2 and 2.3 bios, with the
same lack of success. The system is empty, it only has a motorola soft modem
in it, so it can't be neater than that, and windows is new. DirectX I tried
8.0a and 8.1. The processor temp is always around 42c/107f.
I tested the underclocked memory with DocMemory, and it shows up all OK???
Can somebody please help, as I really don't feel like ditching this MoBo.
And if I have to, what to buy that will work with games.
Thanks a lot for your timeand help
P.S. the only exception in my testing in MS Flight Sim 2002 Pro, that works
Ok (should be directx title)