I'd start by removing the 9700 cooler and checking the contact of the gpu die. They fitted this stupid shim around the die, which is higher than the core.

You can easily remove the shim with a sharp knife, carefully slid in, along the edges, between it and the die. It'll just "ping" off!

Re-apply thermal paste and re-check.

I've fitted an Arctic Cooler to mine but I've fitted those "Coral" Chinesium vga coolers with good results. Fit ram-sinks too, for good measure.

I'll give that a check! I figuring it's that or maybe even RAM but this board doesn't allow booting off USB that I can see and I don't have a Optical drive in the case so I haven't ran MemTest86 yet. I installed MSI afterburner 1.5 but it doesn't seem to monitor GPU temps. Is there a way to measure GPU temps in XP while running the benchmarks?

No, no monitoring built in, sadly. Your crashing part way through your benchies is a good clue. Hopefully, it won't be cooked.

So far I removed the shim and installed fresh arctic silver 5 paste. I tried booting with just the 1GB and just the 256MB stick of RAM installed and still, when the second test loads up in the 3D Mark 2003 finished loading the entire system shuts down. I have what should be the latest VIA 4in1 drivers installed. I'm thinking that the issues I read about with KM400 chipsets and these cards is what's giving me issues. I get excellent framerates and zero artifacts or anything before the entire system reboots. Intel burn test being ran on the CPU shows no issues with heat. I even tried setting the case fan and CPU cooler to run at MAX speed all the time with no luck.

Just tried a FireGL z1 (9500 basically) and it too crashed with the last drivers released for it in the same place. I still have a Geforce 400MX to test and see if it's an ATI incompatibility or what.

Try some of the older via drivers.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/via-chipset-drivers.html

My PSU specs are 380w total +5v=20a +3.3v=20a +12v1=17a +12v2=17a -12v=0.8a -5v=2.5a. Are these enough for the configuration?

Well, Windows crashes outside of safe mode with the mx400 card installed. Ugh. I know the FireGL card ran fine on another Athlon system I had.

9646gt wrote on 2021-02-09, 07:25:

Just tried a FireGL z1 (9500 basically) and it too crashed with the last drivers released for it in the same place. I still have a Geforce 400MX to test and see if it's an ATI incompatibility or what.

How do the capacitors look on the motherboard and the video cards (bloated, leaking) ?

Maybe try older 4-in1 drivers https://web.archive.org/web/20040806155909/ht … :80/?PageID=403

I just went back and installed the 5.14 VIA drivers since they are one step older. I am also installing the 7.90 ATI drivers now. Capacitors appear fine. If this continues, would I be better off money wise to replace the motherboard with a non OEM board with a NForce chipset or replace the video card with an Nvidia one? Really don't have much left to put in this little guy for now.

That combination of drivers seems to have done the trick! I am not several tests into the benchmark 😀 Can't wait to OC this thing.

I would definitely inspect PSU for bad caps as well just to be on the safe side. https://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32 aswome forum and lots of helpfull info.

9646gt wrote on 2021-02-09, 08:26:

That combination of drivers seems to have done the trick! I am not several tests into the benchmark 😀 Can't wait to OC this thing.

Your results seem in-line with the ones in this thread KT400 & Radeon 9700: No-Go? which I thought I had referenced here, but apparently somehow did not .

Glad it works .

According to the pics I've found online of this board, the Asus A7V8X-LA actually has a P4 PSU connector? That would be nice.
Because 20A on the 5v line for a sA Sempron 3000+ is something that I would personally never want to try out, apart from that PSU potentially having caps issues.