Helping out a Friend with a faulty x800XL AGP

[Matrixzer0]

This is what he told me of the problem. If anyone of you can help or state things you feel are the problems please do. Thanks


"Hello, thanks for interest. As in the description, when you enter a 3D app, after a few minutes the screen will go blank and the monitor goes to powersave (no signal out of card). You can still hear sound in games, but cannot get the monitor to display again unless restart pc. I noted it also did this a few times on rivatuner's 3D test app. I bought card as a so called b-grade from Overclockers UK. B grade from OcUK are meant to be fully functional components (normally returned from manufacturer as repaired or returned but found to be functional).

It was initially fine for a month or so when I bought it, then this intermittent problem came up and eventually made it useless (or very frustrating!) for gaming. I have played around with different drivers and did get it working ok for a month or so then it was tried in another pc, same problem, and same problem whne returned to my pc. There is a whole host of settings you can feasibly try and alter, SMARTGART on the cat drivers, AGPx4 in BIOS, disable fast write in BIOS, AGP aperture size in BIOS. I tried a good number of these and never beat it (apart form perhaps a lucky spell with the drivers). My PC has a seasonic 350 w PSU. It should be fine really, though other people will recommend a 400w PSU from a reputable manufacturer. I also have a mobile Athlon (@2.3Ghz), 1 gig of RAM, a couple of hard drives and a CD player in the case. The board is an ABIT NF7-S. There is no visible damage to the card and I always employed static protection when working on pc components. As above theres a bunch of other tests that could be tried, an X800 Pro BIOS flash if a duff pipeline is in there".

[Anth Seebel]

"It should be fine really, though other people will recommend a 400w PSU from a reputable manufacturer."

looks like the problem or card is faulty.

[Takezo]

It could be refreshrate. Don't assume your (in general) card is faulty.

Jumping to conclusions is only what inexperienced users do to fix problems without tring to eliminate other possible causes first. I can tell you majority of errors are either software or user related. It's just that noobs tend to replace parts crossing their fingers it will work properly, that's not troubleshooting to me.

Refreshrate is the monitor refreshrate. Besure that the game playing is set to a resolution and refreshrate it suports. Not all monitors display "Frequency overspec" or somthing like that. Infact my very own monitor will go in to sleepmode when a resolution or refreshrate that is not supported is used.

Other things could be viruses and driver issues. I have come across trojans once in a while just brosing the web. I once got a trojan from a link in a post on this very forum, good thing I had my antivirus program on, and it detected it so I could remove it safely.

Downloading the latest drivers can resolve issues with certain games that have known problems.

It's also gret to look in the manufacturer's website, they may have FAQs that may have clues to hardware and software related problems if it an issue that is experienced by a lot of users.

Overclocking can also cause weird things, so don't do it unless you can deal with it. If you already have, then it's possible that the hardware has been damaged by it.

Only after you tried everything or came a cross a known hardware issue should you RMA.

[Anth Seebel]

Originally Posted by Takezo

It could be refreshrate. Don't assume your (in general) card is faulty.
Jumping to conclusions is only what inexperienced users do to fix problems without tring to eliminate other possible causes first. I can tell you majority of errors are either software or user related. It's just that noobs tend to replace parts crossing their fingers it will work properly, that's not troubleshooting to me.

Refreshrate is the monitor refreshrate. Besure that the game playing is set to a resolution and refreshrate it suports. Not all monitors display "Frequency overspec" or somthing like that. Infact my very own monitor will go in to sleepmode when a resolution or refreshrate that is not supported is used.

Other things could be viruses and driver issues. I have come across trojans once in a while just brosing the web. I once got a trojan from a link in a post on this very forum, good thing I had my antivirus program on, and it detected it so I could remove it safely.

Downloading the latest drivers can resolve issues with certain games that have known problems.

It's also gret to look in the manufacturer's website, they may have FAQs that may have clues to hardware and software related problems if it an issue that is experienced by a lot of users.

Overclocking can also cause weird things, so don't do it unless you can deal with it. If you already have, then it's possible that the hardware has been damaged by it.

Only after you tried everything or came a cross a known hardware issue should you RMA.

I thought he would of been through your tips as they are standard stuff to check, so back off noob

I don't think refresh rate is the problem as he has had it working already and the problem was intermittent . ie.
"It was initially fine for a month or so when I bought it, then this intermittent problem came up and eventually made it useless (or very frustrating!) for gaming. I have played around with different drivers and did get it working ok for a month or so then it was tried in another pc, same problem, and same problem whne returned to my pc."

A bit drastic but a fresh correctly installed OS will reliably eliminate 100% all trojans, viruses, software related problems.