PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-13, 07:41:IIRC NF3 should be issue free. Not necessarily 939 but I know my K8N ran a 9550 with no crashes whatsoever. […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-13, 00:12:Yeah, it is the NF7-S. […]
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PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-13, 00:03:
Yeah, if your test machine is the NF7, you might wanna change it. I found out after being close to going insane that nForce 2 and certain Radeons (I think 9600, X1300/1550/1600/1650) won't play nice unless you use a certain Catalyst version. IIRC 9550 and 9600s will only work with 6.2. No idea which works with X series unfortunately 🙁
Yeah, it is the NF7-S.
Do you know if Nforce 3 Ultra chipsets (S939 with dual core) have any issues like this?
Also, its strange because I used a 9600 Pro in this board as my main PC back in the day and it was rock solid.
IIRC NF3 should be issue free. Not necessarily 939 but I know my K8N ran a 9550 with no crashes whatsoever.
As for a platform that you could run the X1650XT crash-free - 865PE or 865G. Mine ran on a Gigabyte 8IG1000 Pro2 w/ 2.8GHz Prescott HT (MAXIMUM CRISPY) through its life and the last few months it was alive, on an ABIT IS7-E v1.2.
The nF2 crash issue isn't only on the NF7 btw - I had managed to replicate it across 5 different boards - ASUS A7N8X, MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR, Epox 8RDA6 Plus, Gigabyte 7N400-L, Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame". All would crash with a 9550/9600, and maintain stability with a 9700 Pro. For the 9550/9600, Catalyst 6.2 cured the BSOD issues. Again, no idea what Catalyst version would prevent X1650XT from crashing, unfortunately.
Thanks, this is great info and should help quite a bit with testing.
I wasn't ready to accept defeat and decided to do my best to rule out overheating, so I actually disassembled the Sapphire X1650 Pro (sorry, thought it was an XT, it is a Pro), applied new thermal paste, cleaned and oiled the fan... and it still crashes at the same points in benchmarks. I forgot to mention that it also stutters heavily in some benchmarks where it shouldn't. Like 3Dmark2k1SE, Car Chase Low Detail. When the jet starts shooting at the trucks it "hitches" with each shot and the frame rate goes from ~200fps to almost nothing, then returns to normal. Also, Car Chase High is not as fast as it seems like it should be. Definitely something going on there.
Also, while messing with the card there were a couple odd things I ran into (unrelated, but kind of funny):
1. What is with the weird thermal paste they used on these? Not sure if mine had been repasted at some point in the past, but the stuff that was on it was actually still spreadable but had a distinct metal-flake look to it. Like a grease+metal combination that had probably changed and separated over the years. I wasn't too pleased to have to clean all the possibly conductive flakes from the GPU (which has exposed SMD caps all around the die). I have never seen paste like this in my life, but this is the first X series I have dismantled.
2. ATi drivers are kind of... funny. After getting them installed properly, I went to the SMARTGART settings in CCC and figured maybe changing something here could help if it was caused by some AGP weirdness (I had already tried with FastWrites on, and currently had them off in the BIOS). I had never seen some of these particular settings since I only ran an ATi card in my main PC for about one year (bought a 6800GT on release day). I switched off "AGP Write" and "AGP Read", rebooted and was presented with a 16-color desktop, as if I'd gone back to Windows 9x without video drivers. The kicker was that CCC no longer recognized the video card at all and provided no way to undo this setting, so I had to remove\uninstall the broken video devices through device manager. They were some super generic name I'd never seen before (not even a Microsoft Display Adapter)... something like "Video Adapter". After rebooting, everything was back to normal... but, hilariously, the SMARTGART page was now entirely absent from CCC. It's like they said "okay, yeah, that was on us... why would we give users settings that can do nothing but break the drivers? We'll just pretend we never saw that..." 🤣
EDIT: There's definitely something funky going on with ATI cards\drivers and this system. I just threw in the HD3450 AGP I was having issues with the other day and I realize now it has exactly the same problems. Stuttering in very specific places and blue screening suddenly. Too bad... I really really wanted to have 3dmark test results for as many cards as possible on the same PC. At this point I have probably 20+ results saved that are all kind of minor\obscure variants of cards (64bit vs 128bit cards for example). I can probably just use Catalyst 6.2 drivers and at least test the 9000 series on this one. I will try the X and HD series AGP cards on my Nforce 3 Ultra system.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.