G400 Max & K7 650 w/ FIC SD-11 Problems

[Giz]

I'm having some issues as well with my setup:

Athlon 650
128 Kingston PC100 RAM
FIC SD-11 (with all bios s/w updates)
Quantum KA 18.2GB ATA66 HD
Pioneer 10xDVD/40x CDRom
Diamond MX-300
Matrox G400 Max 32MB DH (PD 5.30)
300 Watt Power Supply

Everything runs great in 2D. I can run benchmarks for hours without any problems. No random lockups or reboots. But whenever I run any 3D apps, it will lock up after a while. Unreal Tournament will randomly lockup after 3 - 30 minutes. Halflife seems to lock up during the rail car intro sequence when you start a new game.

I have tried quite a few things found on this board (ie, 1xAGP, AGP apeture size, reinstalling drivers and Direct X7). The odd thing is that Direct X7 seems to work better than OpenGL.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[SteveC]

First thing that enters my mind is Heat - check that the fan is spinning, plus the ambient temp of your PC is not too high. If not, check you haven't got any background programs running.

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Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

[Giz]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't believe its a heat issue. I just checked the fan and its spinning. The inside of the case seems to be cool enough, its barely warm. Any other ideas?

[jhalcrow]

I have a similar setup:

Athlon 600
fic sd-11
300W power supply
g400 max
128mb sdram
ibm deskstar 18gb ata/66

I also had those same problems. I found that even with the cover off it would still crash unless I had a fan blowing directly onto my g400 max. So, you may want to invest in more fans or try to modify your current config. ALso, make sure none of your cables are obstructing your airflow

--Jonathan

[Ghydda]

I have had no probs at all from day 1 with my Athlon rig. No tweaks anywhere where nessesary (spelling?) to get it working flawlessly. And this using Winblows 98 danish version.

The only thing AFAIK which is nessesary, is to install the VGART driver included with the SD11 board.

Ghydda

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A slowly desintegrating nobody running an Athlon 500MHz+Alpha P125 on a FIC SD11 with 256MB CAS2 Memorycard, Adaptec 2940UW, Adaptec 2904CD, 3 SCSI HD, JVC 2x toaster, Plextor 40Max, Pioneer DVD-U03S, SBlive Value with homemade S/P-DIF I/O-card and last but not least - Matrox Marvel G200 AGP 8+8MB SD with PowerStrip@110/147MHz

Only thing missing: Matrox RT2K

[Giz]

Jonathan,

I'm not sure how you can get a fan blowing directly on top of your G400 Max? Is this some PCI slot based fan that you're talking about?

I haven't upgraded the bios (if there is one) on the G400, its the standard bios that came with card. Do you think this would help at all?

-- Glen

[Greebe]

Attn!!! The FIC SD-11 currently has a problem in the BIOS that will cause this problem when running at 650 and higher! FIC is aware of this and is addressing this issue... a new BIOS will be forthcoming.

[Giz]

I thought the problem with the FIC SD-11 was with random reboots. My system is solid as a rock in 2D. It's only in 3D that I have any problems. Am I mistaken?

[Giz]

I've taken my system back to the people that put it together to have a look at. If they can't figure it out I'll post my IRQs here. Thanks.

[Giz]

The company that built my system now have the Asus K7M motherboard in. Do you think it would be worthwhile having them replace my SD-11 with the K7M? Do you think that that might solve my lockup problems in 3D games?

[The PIT]

Okay what are your Irqs etc

[Giz]

An update to my situation. The problem is defintely heat related. After getting my system back from the company that built it, the problem still existed. They updated all of the drivers and it seemed to help, but after running any 3D apps for a while the lock ups would return.

This past weekend I removed my case and left the window in my office open and that fixed everything. I left an Unreal Tournament bot match running for hours with no problems. As soon as I closed my window the system locked up in about 2 hours. I touched the back of my G400 Max card and it was very hot.

Does anyone else have similar heat related issues and if so how do you keep your G400 Max cool?

[Ghydda]

Glad to hear you found the prob. To solve the heat situation on the G400, mount the fan from a regular CPU cooler directly on the heat sink on the G400. This will however render PCI slot 1 useless, but since Matrox GX00 series of cards seem to dislike IRQ sharing (the AGP and 1st PCI slot often share the same IRQ), it is often not a problem.

Sorry, didn't notice the small print (MAX-version), you allready got a fan on your G400 cooler.

Well, how's the case temp during normal purpulsion? Are you able to vent the case better?

Ghydda

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A slowly desintegrating nobody running an Athlon 500MHz+Alpha P125 on a FIC SD11 with 256MB CAS2 Memorycard, Adaptec 2940UW, Adaptec 2904CD, 3 SCSI HD, JVC 2x toaster, Plextor 40Max, Pioneer DVD-U03S, SBlive Value with homemade S/P-DIF I/O-card and last but not least - Matrox Marvel G200 AGP 8+8MB SD with PowerStrip@110/147MHz

Only thing missing: Matrox RT2K

[This message has been edited by Ghydda (edited 01 November 1999).]