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Problem with Creative Graphics Card



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 12th 03, 05:32 PM
Martin Hathaway
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Problem with Creative Graphics Card

I recently upgraded from an Asus GeForce2 GTS to a Creative FX 5 5600 Ultra
(128Mb)
When I plugged it in, I started to get some interesting effects

Every so often, the monitor would appear to go into power saving mode.
There seemed to be no way out, other than the restart the system (even the
old 3-finger salute didn;t seem to work)

I ran DXDiag and ran the "Test Direct3D" and "Test DirectDraw".
It was when these tests were run, the card sent the monitor into power
saving mode
Therefore, I suspect, the problem has something to do with whenever the 3D
engine is kicked into life,

Decided to run Final Reality, and came out with a score of around 5.6.
This didn;t cause me too much concern until I compared that with a friend
who is running an 3-4 year old ATI Rage 128 16Mb - he was scoring in the
high 9's.

At this point, I decided to contact Creative to see if they had any
suggestions.
They had several suggestions, but the only thing that seemed to make the
system any more stable was to turn off AGP Fast Writes.
Final Reality scores were still very low, so I plugged the card into my
friends computer - and got simialr scores. 5.7 (ish, can't remember exctly
now - certainly not good scores!)

At this point, I RMA'd the card and got a new one back
Plugged it in all expectedly, hoping to see a drastic improvement - but,
alas, I did not.

At this point, I started to conisder the fact that, perhaps the card wasn;t
the problem.
I did some digging around on some forums and started to find a fairly
generic problem.
It seems that a LOT of people running with VIA chipsets and trying to run at
AGP 4x seemed to be having problems - but no one seems to have a definitive
answer.
I downloaded, as one of the postings suggested WCPUID and discovered that,
when I had AGP Fast Writes disabled (for stability) I was only running at
AGP 2x
If I turn AGP Fast Writes back on, I can get AGP 4x, but the system has a
tendancy to fall over (or, at least, go into this strange power saving
mode).
I did manage to keep the system up long enough in this mode to run FR
again - but the scores still seemed to be around 5.7-5.8

Can anyone advise whether they think it is the card at fault (I find it
difficult to believe I have been sent two cards with exactly the same
problem), or whether FR is not reading properly.
Has anyone got the VIA Apollo 133 Pro chipset and a Creative Card and having
the same problems.
Has anyone got that combination, but doesn;t have the problems - if so, what
did you do?!?!?
Anyone got an ABit m/board and having the same problem with a different card

I have rung Creative again, and the only thing they have suggested is some
configuration with my system (i.e. they don;t think it is the card) and have
suggested upgrading the PSU.
Mine is currently, only 300W - but to test this out, I unplugged everything
I could (leaving only the two HDD and the card) and it didn;t seem to help,
so not convinced by this

Any help greatfully appreciated.

Martin

System Details:
ABit VP6 motherboard
2 x PIII 1GHz CPUs
2 x WD1200JB 120Gb HDDs hanging off the onboard HPT 370 RAID controller
(RAID 1)
1 x IBM 60Gb drive hanging off the other RAID channel
1Gb RAM
Windows XP Pro SP1

Have installed all possible patchs from Via / Creative / Windows.


  #2  
Old December 12th 03, 07:06 PM
John Lewis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:32:31 +0000 (UTC), "Martin Hathaway"
wrote:

I recently upgraded from an Asus GeForce2 GTS to a Creative FX 5 5600 Ultra
(128Mb)
When I plugged it in, I started to get some interesting effects

Every so often, the monitor would appear to go into power saving mode.
There seemed to be no way out, other than the restart the system (even the
old 3-finger salute didn;t seem to work)

I ran DXDiag and ran the "Test Direct3D" and "Test DirectDraw".
It was when these tests were run, the card sent the monitor into power
saving mode
Therefore, I suspect, the problem has something to do with whenever the 3D
engine is kicked into life,

Decided to run Final Reality, and came out with a score of around 5.6.
This didn;t cause me too much concern until I compared that with a friend
who is running an 3-4 year old ATI Rage 128 16Mb - he was scoring in the
high 9's.

At this point, I decided to contact Creative to see if they had any
suggestions.
They had several suggestions, but the only thing that seemed to make the
system any more stable was to turn off AGP Fast Writes.
Final Reality scores were still very low, so I plugged the card into my
friends computer - and got simialr scores. 5.7 (ish, can't remember exctly
now - certainly not good scores!)

At this point, I RMA'd the card and got a new one back
Plugged it in all expectedly, hoping to see a drastic improvement - but,
alas, I did not.

At this point, I started to conisder the fact that, perhaps the card wasn;t
the problem.
I did some digging around on some forums and started to find a fairly
generic problem.
It seems that a LOT of people running with VIA chipsets and trying to run at
AGP 4x seemed to be having problems - but no one seems to have a definitive
answer.
I downloaded, as one of the postings suggested WCPUID and discovered that,
when I had AGP Fast Writes disabled (for stability) I was only running at
AGP 2x
If I turn AGP Fast Writes back on, I can get AGP 4x, but the system has a
tendancy to fall over (or, at least, go into this strange power saving
mode).
I did manage to keep the system up long enough in this mode to run FR
again - but the scores still seemed to be around 5.7-5.8

Can anyone advise whether they think it is the card at fault (I find it
difficult to believe I have been sent two cards with exactly the same
problem), or whether FR is not reading properly.
Has anyone got the VIA Apollo 133 Pro chipset and a Creative Card and having
the same problems.
Has anyone got that combination, but doesn;t have the problems - if so, what
did you do?!?!?
Anyone got an ABit m/board and having the same problem with a different card

I have rung Creative again, and the only thing they have suggested is some
configuration with my system (i.e. they don;t think it is the card) and have
suggested upgrading the PSU.
Mine is currently, only 300W - but to test this out, I unplugged everything
I could (leaving only the two HDD and the card) and it didn;t seem to help,
so not convinced by this

Any help greatfully appreciated.


Find a friend with a decent modern PC and already using a 5600 and
test the card. 99% certain that the card is not at fault.

Junk the system. If you really want dual core function while
still getting all the benefits of a fast single processor at high
speed too, get a P4 3.0 (or 3.2) GHz/800MHz/ I865-chip-set
system. IDE-RAID and SATA-RAID versions are both available.
Not expensive.

BTW, with your ancient system, I doubt if RAID is doing you much
good at all. Those WD1200JB/8Meg are extremely fast on their
own. A case of putting new wine in an old bottle; the system
does no practical justice to those disks. You may still benchmark
disk-access faster, but for real work on real applications, your
CPU(s) will be the perfect bottleneck.

John Lewis





Martin

System Details:
ABit VP6 motherboard
2 x PIII 1GHz CPUs
2 x WD1200JB 120Gb HDDs hanging off the onboard HPT 370 RAID controller
(RAID 1)
1 x IBM 60Gb drive hanging off the other RAID channel
1Gb RAM
Windows XP Pro SP1

Have installed all possible patchs from Via / Creative / Windows.



  #3  
Old December 15th 03, 05:32 AM
Helion
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

"Martin Hathaway" wrote in message
...
I recently upgraded from an Asus GeForce2 GTS to a Creative FX 5 5600

Ultra
(128Mb)
When I plugged it in, I started to get some interesting effects

Every so often, the monitor would appear to go into power saving mode.
There seemed to be no way out, other than the restart the system (even the
old 3-finger salute didn't;t seem to work)

I ran DXDiag and ran the "Test Direct3D" and "Test DirectDraw".
It was when these tests were run, the card sent the monitor into power
saving mode
Therefore, I suspect, the problem has something to do with whenever the 3D
engine is kicked into life,

Decided to run Final Reality, and came out with a score of around 5.6.
This didn;t cause me too much concern until I compared that with a friend
who is running an 3-4 year old ATI Rage 128 16Mb - he was scoring in the
high 9's.

At this point, I decided to contact Creative to see if they had any
suggestions.
They had several suggestions, but the only thing that seemed to make the
system any more stable was to turn off AGP Fast Writes.
Final Reality scores were still very low, so I plugged the card into my
friends computer - and got simialr scores. 5.7 (ish, can't remember exctly
now - certainly not good scores!)

At this point, I RMA'd the card and got a new one back
Plugged it in all expectedly, hoping to see a drastic improvement - but,
alas, I did not.

At this point, I started to conisder the fact that, perhaps the card

wasn;t
the problem.
I did some digging around on some forums and started to find a fairly
generic problem.
It seems that a LOT of people running with VIA chipsets and trying to run

at
AGP 4x seemed to be having problems - but no one seems to have a

definitive
answer.
I downloaded, as one of the postings suggested WCPUID and discovered that,
when I had AGP Fast Writes disabled (for stability) I was only running at
AGP 2x
If I turn AGP Fast Writes back on, I can get AGP 4x, but the system has a
tendancy to fall over (or, at least, go into this strange power saving
mode).
I did manage to keep the system up long enough in this mode to run FR
again - but the scores still seemed to be around 5.7-5.8

Can anyone advise whether they think it is the card at fault (I find it
difficult to believe I have been sent two cards with exactly the same
problem), or whether FR is not reading properly.
Has anyone got the VIA Apollo 133 Pro chipset and a Creative Card and

having
the same problems.
Has anyone got that combination, but doesn;t have the problems - if so,

what
did you do?!?!?
Anyone got an ABit m/board and having the same problem with a different

card

I have rung Creative again, and the only thing they have suggested is some
configuration with my system (i.e. they don;t think it is the card) and

have
suggested upgrading the PSU.
Mine is currently, only 300W - but to test this out, I unplugged

everything
I could (leaving only the two HDD and the card) and it didn;t seem to

help,
so not convinced by this

Any help greatfully appreciated.

Martin

System Details:
ABit VP6 motherboard
2 x PIII 1GHz CPUs
2 x WD1200JB 120Gb HDDs hanging off the onboard HPT 370 RAID

controller
(RAID 1)
1 x IBM 60Gb drive hanging off the other RAID channel
1Gb RAM
Windows XP Pro SP1

Have installed all possible patchs from Via / Creative / Windows.

The Apollo Pro 133 chipset is absolutely horrible. Nvidia purposely
disabled AGP 4X support on this chipset as it did not meet AGP spec.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you have a DX9 card and your testing it with
Final Reality which was a DX5 benchmark? Try testing it with a current
benchmark such as 3DMark2003
http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark03.shtml or Aquamark at
http://www.aquamark3.com/am3-mirrors.htm which are DX9 benchamrks.



 




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