BFG 6600GT OC Lockups - a cautionary tale

Well, I had to give up on my BFG 6600GT OC. It's gone back to the shop and
I've got my money back.
To recap, I have

Medion Titanium 8000
2.6g P4
512mb Ram
MSI 6191 motherboard (badged as Medion)
SIS 648/963 Chipset
Phoenix BIOS (Medion restricted access version)
AGP 8x slot
Latest BIOS
Latest SIS drivers
Windows XP

I bought a new 350watt Q-Tec power supply ready for the 6600GT. (And yes the
dongle was plugged in)

Fitted 6600GT and loaded drivers (66.93)
Lockups whenever I tried to do anything remotely 3D.
Wouldn't run any of the games I run happily on my Ti4200.
Wouldn't run any of the Nvidia demos.

Contacted BFGTech.
Followed all their instructions and suggestions, problem continued.
Tried all drivers including the latest Betas.
Set the latency settings as per various suggestions.

Using values suggested by BFG (top ends of each value) I recalculated my
maximum possible power consumption and arrived at 340 watts.
Maybe my $36 350watt P/S wasn't continually rated at that value, so .....
Bought a $100 400watt FSP400-60BNP (Fortron) power supply - not a scrap of
difference.
(So much for the power supply elitists who ridiculed the Q-Tech)

Perhaps it's my motherboard and SIS chipset that's at fault.
Ok tried it in another system i.e.
2.0g AMD Athlone
512mb Ram
MSI Motherboard
VIA chipset
VIA BIOS
AGP 8x slot
WIndows 98
- As windows loaded - blue screen of death.
Conclusion - could be a faulty board.
After seeing on this newsgroup and other forums how unhappy 6600GT AGP users
(across all brands) outnumber happy ones by about 10 to 1 I decided that now
probably wasn't the right time to upgrade.
Maybe later.
Gone back to my Ti4200...

Oh, and I've now got a couple of spare power supplies that I don't need and
can't get my money back on. ($136 worth)

--
Regards
Spencer

Happy people don't post. That kind of puts the 10 to 1 ratio in doubt.

DaveL


"Spencer" wrote in message
...
Well, I had to give up on my BFG 6600GT OC. It's gone back to the shop and
I've got my money back.
To recap, I have

Medion Titanium 8000
2.6g P4
512mb Ram
MSI 6191 motherboard (badged as Medion)
SIS 648/963 Chipset
Phoenix BIOS (Medion restricted access version)
AGP 8x slot
Latest BIOS
Latest SIS drivers
Windows XP

I bought a new 350watt Q-Tec power supply ready for the 6600GT. (And yes
the
dongle was plugged in)

Fitted 6600GT and loaded drivers (66.93)
Lockups whenever I tried to do anything remotely 3D.
Wouldn't run any of the games I run happily on my Ti4200.
Wouldn't run any of the Nvidia demos.

Contacted BFGTech.
Followed all their instructions and suggestions, problem continued.
Tried all drivers including the latest Betas.
Set the latency settings as per various suggestions.

Using values suggested by BFG (top ends of each value) I recalculated my
maximum possible power consumption and arrived at 340 watts.
Maybe my $36 350watt P/S wasn't continually rated at that value, so .....
Bought a $100 400watt FSP400-60BNP (Fortron) power supply - not a scrap of
difference.
(So much for the power supply elitists who ridiculed the Q-Tech)

Perhaps it's my motherboard and SIS chipset that's at fault.
Ok tried it in another system i.e.
2.0g AMD Athlone
512mb Ram
MSI Motherboard
VIA chipset
VIA BIOS
AGP 8x slot
WIndows 98
- As windows loaded - blue screen of death.
Conclusion - could be a faulty board.
After seeing on this newsgroup and other forums how unhappy 6600GT AGP
users
(across all brands) outnumber happy ones by about 10 to 1 I decided that
now
probably wasn't the right time to upgrade.
Maybe later.
Gone back to my Ti4200...

Oh, and I've now got a couple of spare power supplies that I don't need
and
can't get my money back on. ($136 worth)

--
Regards
Spencer

- As windows loaded - blue screen of death.
Conclusion - could be a faulty board.

After trying it in 2 machines, ya think?

After seeing on this newsgroup and other forums how unhappy 6600GT AGP
users
(across all brands) outnumber happy ones by about 10 to 1 I decided that
now
probably wasn't the right time to upgrade.

More likely, people who are happy don't post here as much. People come here
looking for answers, not to gloat about how awesome their system is.