Trouble with Gainward GeForceFX 5900

I have a Gainward GeForceFX 5900 Golden Sample 8x/4x AGP card that is
giving me a lot of trouble. As soon as I turn the computer on, I see
4 sets of vertical lines equally spaced across the screen. I see
these vertical lines in the BIOS and in the Linux GRUB boot menu too.
When linux takes over the boot process, the lines go away, but if I
try to start the X server, I get miscellaneous strange behavior such
as a number of small vertical lines following the mouse around and an
inability to close windows. Eventually (in a matter of minutes) the X
server will freeze up and I have to login remotely to shut the machine
down.

This machine was custom built for me by a builder that I've been using
for a couple years (though I've become progressively more and more
dissatisfied with them). This is actually the second Gainward FX5900
card I've tried in this machine - the original card was doing the
exact same thing so I returned it to my builder. Since I'm seeing the
same behavior on this second card, I tried to get them to give me an
entirely different (similarly priced such as an ATI FireGL) card, but
they won't do that. All they'll do is replace this one with another
Gainward FX5900. I'm not confident at all that the third card will be
any better.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Ken

Behavior like that is usually due to excessive heat (unlikely, if it's
happening at boot time) or borked video memory. This is, of course,
assuming the Linux drivers are tight. I have no clue, having only used the
board in WinXP, but have had similar experiences with both ATI & nVidia
boards. I would say exchange it again. And maybe mark the bad board in a
sneaky fashion so you can tell if they're not just giving you the bad one
back again.

I suppose another possibility is the card isn't getting enough power, but
I'm not 100% sure it manifests like that.

~ Rich


"EKK" wrote in message
om...
I have a Gainward GeForceFX 5900 Golden Sample 8x/4x AGP card that is
giving me a lot of trouble. As soon as I turn the computer on, I see
4 sets of vertical lines equally spaced across the screen. I see
these vertical lines in the BIOS and in the Linux GRUB boot menu too.
When linux takes over the boot process, the lines go away, but if I
try to start the X server, I get miscellaneous strange behavior such
as a number of small vertical lines following the mouse around and an
inability to close windows. Eventually (in a matter of minutes) the X
server will freeze up and I have to login remotely to shut the machine
down.

This machine was custom built for me by a builder that I've been using
for a couple years (though I've become progressively more and more
dissatisfied with them). This is actually the second Gainward FX5900
card I've tried in this machine - the original card was doing the
exact same thing so I returned it to my builder. Since I'm seeing the
same behavior on this second card, I tried to get them to give me an
entirely different (similarly priced such as an ATI FireGL) card, but
they won't do that. All they'll do is replace this one with another
Gainward FX5900. I'm not confident at all that the third card will be
any better.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Ken




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(EKK) wrote in message . com...
I have a Gainward GeForceFX 5900 Golden Sample 8x/4x AGP card that is
giving me a lot of trouble. As soon as I turn the computer on, I see
4 sets of vertical lines equally spaced across the screen. I see
these vertical lines in the BIOS and in the Linux GRUB boot menu too.
When linux takes over the boot process, the lines go away, but if I
try to start the X server, I get miscellaneous strange behavior such
as a number of small vertical lines following the mouse around and an
inability to close windows. Eventually (in a matter of minutes) the X
server will freeze up and I have to login remotely to shut the machine
down.

This machine was custom built for me by a builder that I've been using
for a couple years (though I've become progressively more and more
dissatisfied with them). This is actually the second Gainward FX5900
card I've tried in this machine - the original card was doing the
exact same thing so I returned it to my builder. Since I'm seeing the
same behavior on this second card, I tried to get them to give me an
entirely different (similarly priced such as an ATI FireGL) card, but
they won't do that. All they'll do is replace this one with another
Gainward FX5900. I'm not confident at all that the third card will be
any better.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Ken

Maybe, just maybe... the Power Supply Unit is having a hard time. Is
the PSU scaled good with the rest of the system!

After all, the FX5900 takes a slightly bit more power from our system,
it might just be tomuch!

Did you plug in the Molex power cable into the card,it supplies 12 volts to the
card for the extra power it needs.
I have the same card and works perfect. DOUG

On 17 Dec 2003 11:54:30 -0800
(EKK) wrote:

I have a Gainward GeForceFX 5900 Golden Sample 8x/4x AGP card that is
giving me a lot of trouble. As soon as I turn the computer on, I see
4 sets of vertical lines equally spaced across the screen. I see
these vertical lines in the BIOS and in the Linux GRUB boot menu too.
When linux takes over the boot process, the lines go away, but if I
try to start the X server, I get miscellaneous strange behavior such
as a number of small vertical lines following the mouse around and an
inability to close windows. Eventually (in a matter of minutes) the X
server will freeze up and I have to login remotely to shut the machine
down.

This machine was custom built for me by a builder that I've been using
for a couple years (though I've become progressively more and more
dissatisfied with them). This is actually the second Gainward FX5900
card I've tried in this machine - the original card was doing the
exact same thing so I returned it to my builder. Since I'm seeing the
same behavior on this second card, I tried to get them to give me an
entirely different (similarly priced such as an ATI FireGL) card, but
they won't do that. All they'll do is replace this one with another
Gainward FX5900. I'm not confident at all that the third card will be
any better.

Any ideas / suggestions?

The chance of your getting two boards with the same defect in a row is
pretty small. More likely there's something wrong with the motherboard
or power supply.

As a general rule if you replace a busted component
and the new one turns out to be busted in the same manner then the
original component wasn't busted after all and the problem is somewhere
else.

Ken


--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

The chance of your getting two boards with the same defect in a row is
pretty small. More likely there's something wrong with the motherboard
or power supply.

As a general rule if you replace a busted component
and the new one turns out to be busted in the same manner then the
original component wasn't busted after all and the problem is somewhere
else.


I was running a 3 year old P3 system which I built myself which had an ATI
128 Rage Pro with 32MB installed. This was fine until recently when I saw a
GF4 MX440 on sale in my local PC World, I installed it into the system,
installed the drivers and all looked fine, until I tried to run any games.
After a couple of minutes or less the system crashed and the only way out
was to reboot.

I took the card back to PC World and they exchanged it saying I must have
been sold a faulty board, installed the new one and the same happened.

I got a refund and then purchased an ASUS FX5200 and the same happened with
that. I left it for a couple of weeks and then upgraded my system (cpu,
mobo, ram, case etc) and installed the fx5200 into that and it works.

My problem with the original system was that my motherboard had gone faulty.

Napalm

Or you were overclocking the AGP port..

Most older MoBo's do not have PCI/AGP locking..


I wasn't overclocking on this system. If I was I would still have checked
the cards running at normal speeds.

Napalm