First post, by dionb
- Rank
- l33t++
Good news: I have several motherboards with onboard Voodoo3-2000 8MB
Bad news: every one of them has stability issues in GLide.
Given that I have the same problems on three boards with three different CPUs, I'm fairly confident it isn't a hardware issue. So I must have messed up in software. I just don't see where...
Hardware of current build:
MSI MS-6168 motherboard (uATX, i440BX, onboard V3-2000 8MB, Creative ES1373 PCI audio)
Original Voodoo HSF replacedby a Zalman ZM-NBF47 passive 'fan sty;e' heatsink with a big quiet 120mm fan blowing down onto it.
Pentium 3 1400S @ 1050MHz (goal is 1400, which runs stable outside of GLide, but to be sure I've clocked down to 100MHz FSB). Have also tested on P3-600E (CuMine) and P3-550 (Katmai)
256MB PC133 Cas 2 SDRAM (6ns), Infineon
Promise SATA300-TX2 PCI SATA controller
Intel X25E 64GB SLC SSD
3Com 10/100 NIC (also have an Intel PRO/1000GT, no difference)
Software:
Win2k, clean install.
AmigaMerlin 2.5 driver
Unreal Tournament 99 GOTY
That's it, no other software installed at present.
The system is rock-solid in desktop, and in software rendering, but crashes randomly in GLide. Temperature does not appear to be an issue, because the crashes can occur soon after a cold boot, but also after ~30 mins of playing just after a reboot after previous crash. Moreover the heatsink heats up (so thermal connection with V3 is good) but is never painful to touch (so <40C).
What I've tried so far:
- stopping any overclocks, and downgrading CPU to supported Katmai: no change.
- software rendering instead of GLide: perfectly stable, can play for hours, even with the Tualatin back up to 1400MHz, FSB at 133MHz and AGP at 88.5MHz (on one board - the other boards can't run at 133MHz or with Tualatin/Coppermine).
- swapping motherboard (and Voodoo): no change, still stable with software rendering and crasheswith GLide.
- setting AGP mode to 1x in driver settings: no change, still crashes.
- various AA and quality mode settings: no difference betweeen "by software", lowest or highest.
Anyone have any suggestion how I could troubleshoot this further?