ATi drivers, are they really THAT crap??

[RichL]

Forgive me MURCers, for I have sinned...

My dear old father had been pestering me for months to get him a decent PC "Which he could surf the internet and play a few of those car racing games on."
Eventually, despite the foreknowledge that his technical ineptitude for computers knows no bounds (curiously he's fine with everything else), I caved in and built a PC for him.

Spec is :
Duron 950 CPU
Coolermaster heatsink.
ECS K75SA motherboard (SiS chipset)
OEM Ati Radeon 7000ve (Made by Supergrace)
128mb no name 133mhz Simm.
Execlstore (nee Connor) 20gb hdd.
Liteon DVD player.
Cheapo no name mini tower case with 300w PSU
Cheapo Mouse, Keyboard, USB modem, old Gravis joystick.
OS : Windows 2000 pro, SP2 & all current updates, DX8.1
Norton AV 2001.


While this was remarkably cheap to build, I'm starting to wish I'd spent more on a decent video card, and a quieter hard disk

Problems :

3d Mark 2000 crashes at the start of the helicopter test.
Colin McRae rally cant recognise the ATi video card and crash when running in 'no 3d card' mode.
Toca Touring Cars 2000 using direct3d mode crashes randomly during the race or in the setup screens.
PowerDVD4 worked with the ATI reference drivers, worked with the OmegaCorner drivers, then decided to stop working at all one day, all on its own, even after reinstalling PowerDVD, and didnt work again until after I'd rebuilt the PC with the ATI reference drivers.

Rebooting after Toca hung the pc, Windows 2000 decided that the user profile was corrupt. Going to another user it said that profile was corrupt too.
Using the repair function on the Win2000 CD claimed to work okay. Windows crashed after logging in. Rebooted, re-ran the repair, twice for emphasis, and get random crashes in desktop or in a game with reboots or BSOD messages like "Error in ntoskrnl.exe" I gave up and installed 98SE.

Apart from the Windows 2000 faults (which I think was due to Toca being sh*te combined with a duff 32mb simm I'd installed), can I lay the problems with Toca / CMR / 3Dmark crashing at the foot of ATi?
I've tried both the latest reference drivers and the ones from Omega Corner.

Coinicdently, I've installed Windows98SE with the Omega Corner Win9x/ME drivers and it works fine with PowerDVD4 but still crashes on 3dMark, Toca and CMR.

[Technoid]

Have you installed the latest drivers for the SIS AGP?

[The PIT]

Sounds like a crappy motherboard to me. I've got a Radeon 8500 and it works fine. Ati drivers did have a problem on win2k and Norton but the latests ones now work without a prob. Oh sorry forgot about the ATI dvd player thats bollocked but I don't use so I don't really care.

[RichL]

Yep, latest at the time of build (2 weeks ago) was 1.0.9.
Latest SiS sound drivers too.

[GT98]

Hmm sounds alot like the PC I put together for my GF...though I'm running a G400 in it. I'm also going to say its the motherboard or memory. Which Verison of CMR are your running? Is it CMR or CMR2? I've been able to run CMR2 without any problems on my Radeon 8500.

Scott

[Dr Mordrid]

The K7S5A is a pretty darned solid (and fast) mainboard which works great with all the Matrox products I've plugged into it.

This includes everying in the G-series AND the RT-2000, which is a very finicky board when it comes to the platform it's attached to.

I'd be leaning towards a proven and historic problem area: ATI's drivers. But then atain with Norton in the system.....

Dr. Mordrid

[KeiFront]

Check your memory RichL probably thats the culprit.

[Electric Amish]

I put together 1 system using that motherboard and a 1ghz Duron. I tried it in an old Enlight case with an Enlight 235w PS and it wasn't stable at all. So, I got a cheapo case with a 250w PS and the sucker wouldn't even boot. I got a nice Sparkle 300w ps and it runs like a charm now.

Just FWIW...

amish

[RichL]

Thanks Dr. Mordid. I was deeply suspicious of the SiS chipsetted ECS mobo at first but didnt have a lot of choice.
Amish, the PSU does seem to blow some rather warm air after a good few hours running (compared to my 350w Enermax which never seems to get hot even after weeks uptime) but I'm not sure theres enough stuff in the PC to cause me power problems. I've got a spare no-name 300w PSU which I might try.
Memorywise I'm sure the extra 32mb dimm I added was a bad one, but now thats replaced with a proven working 32mb dimm the PC runs okay in everything except applications or games that require 3d graphics.

BTW I havent stuck Norton AV on the Win98Se build yet, and it's CMR 1 not 2. Its too old to know about Direct3d

[GT98]

Rich,

I just reread your posting and I wanted to confirm something...your not running a SDRAM chip with DDR Ram are you? The ECS has both and you can't mix them.

Scott

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup, that would make for trouble alright

Dr. Mordrid

[dZeus]

you might want to switch with DIMMs of a different brand. I've seen a lot of ECS K7S5A boards which were very picky about which brand of DIMM they accepted or not. SDRAM compatibility seems to be even more problematic than DDR compatibility. The board is ok as long as get a brand which works ok on the board (preferrably A-Brand).

[Dr Mordrid]

My K7S5A's work fine with Kingston.

Dr. Mordrid

[Wombat]

I wouldn't rule out the ATI drivers yet. This is a Radeon 7000, and that core has almost no relation to the 7500 or the 8500.

[GT98]

Originally posted by Wombat
I wouldn't rule out the ATI drivers yet. This is a Radeon 7000, and that core has almost no relation to the 7500 or the 8500.

hmm good point...though the 7500 is closer to the 7000 then to the 8500..I know Gurm ran into this...