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Crashes -- Is this a G400 problem?
I'm making this post to both the MATROXUSERS group and the AMDZONE group in hopes that someone has an answer.
I have a 700Mhz Athlon overclocked to 1Ghz by SDTom (a reputable overclocker from the AMDZONE group) installed in a K7V motherboard, using a Matrox G400 Max video card. The G400 Max does have a serial number that indicates that it was tested for AGP 4X. To the best of my knowledge, all of the recent drivers, BIOS flashes, etc have been done.
The case is an INWIN case with a 300W power supply. For cooling, the processor has an Alpha heatsink, and the case is open with external fans blowing across the heatsink. The G400 has no additional cooling other than a little bit of circulation from the external fans blowing on the main processor.
The problem is that the system is unstable. By dropping the bus speed of the K7V to 95Mhz, I get a reasonably stable system, only occasionally crashing during game play. At 100 Mhz, the system usually freezes somewhere between the time when the screen first turns light blue, and when windows asks for my password. This freeze is typically just a total halt, but occsaionally, I get "plaid" marks across the screen, indicating a possible video card problem.
Other random bits of information: This problem occurs no matter what the voltage of the processor is set at, all the way up to 2.05V (the max setting for the K7V). I'm not using the dual-head features of the MAX. I've re-greased the Alpha heatsink for the Athlon.
It may be possible that there are problems with both the procesor AND the video card-- I haven't ruled that out yet. In fact, I haven't been able to rule ANYTHING out because I have no idea what methods I can use to determine where the problem lies.
So my although my question is basically "What do I do next?" the important part of the question is: "How do I determine where my failure is?" Any help is appreciated, and I can give any information anyone needs to help solve the problems.
I have a 700Mhz Athlon overclocked to 1Ghz by SDTom (a reputable overclocker from the AMDZONE group) installed in a K7V motherboard, using a Matrox G400 Max video card. The G400 Max does have a serial number that indicates that it was tested for AGP 4X. To the best of my knowledge, all of the recent drivers, BIOS flashes, etc have been done.
The case is an INWIN case with a 300W power supply. For cooling, the processor has an Alpha heatsink, and the case is open with external fans blowing across the heatsink. The G400 has no additional cooling other than a little bit of circulation from the external fans blowing on the main processor.
The problem is that the system is unstable. By dropping the bus speed of the K7V to 95Mhz, I get a reasonably stable system, only occasionally crashing during game play. At 100 Mhz, the system usually freezes somewhere between the time when the screen first turns light blue, and when windows asks for my password. This freeze is typically just a total halt, but occsaionally, I get "plaid" marks across the screen, indicating a possible video card problem.
Other random bits of information: This problem occurs no matter what the voltage of the processor is set at, all the way up to 2.05V (the max setting for the K7V). I'm not using the dual-head features of the MAX. I've re-greased the Alpha heatsink for the Athlon.
It may be possible that there are problems with both the procesor AND the video card-- I haven't ruled that out yet. In fact, I haven't been able to rule ANYTHING out because I have no idea what methods I can use to determine where the problem lies.
So my although my question is basically "What do I do next?" the important part of the question is: "How do I determine where my failure is?" Any help is appreciated, and I can give any information anyone needs to help solve the problems.
I am one extremely happy camper with the KT7.)
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