GEForce 8800 Ultra Problems

I have a GEForce 8800 Ultra PCIe card installed under Windows XP on a Dell
Precision 390 workstation with a quad core processor. Whenever I attempt
to use Microsoft Flight Simulator, soon after starting the game I noticed
that tile areas of the ground surface start to blink and appear in reverse
video. This problem worsens, and within minutes the game freezes. It
appears to be some kind of massive video corruption. The computer locks,
and at some point I get a blue screen of death. NVidia driver version
under Windows Device Manager shows as 6.14.12.8558. The only clue on
reboot about the error is a System eventviewer message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000ea
(0x87eb1da0, 0x89362378, 0xb84efcbc, 0x00000001). A ywas saved in:
C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini121512-01.dmp.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this problem? Would it be
bad hardware or just an unstable driver release?

Is there a preferred version of the nVidia driver for this card?

--
W

W wrote:
I have a GEForce 8800 Ultra PCIe card installed under Windows XP on a Dell
Precision 390 workstation with a quad core processor. Whenever I attempt
to use Microsoft Flight Simulator, soon after starting the game I noticed
that tile areas of the ground surface start to blink and appear in reverse
video. This problem worsens, and within minutes the game freezes. It
appears to be some kind of massive video corruption. The computer locks,
and at some point I get a blue screen of death. NVidia driver version
under Windows Device Manager shows as 6.14.12.8558. The only clue on
reboot about the error is a System eventviewer message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000ea
(0x87eb1da0, 0x89362378, 0xb84efcbc, 0x00000001). A ywas saved in:
C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini121512-01.dmp.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this problem? Would it be
bad hardware or just an unstable driver release?

Is there a preferred version of the nVidia driver for this card?


I don't have an answer for you, but I can offer a couple hints.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

"0x100000EA: THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M

0x000000EA: THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER

A device driver problem has caused the system to pause indefinitely
(hang). Typically, this is caused by a display driver waiting for the
video hardware to enter an idle state. This might indicate a hardware
problem with the video adapter, or a faulty video driver.
"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293078

*******

NVidia had an era, where the GPU chips they were selling,
had a thermal coefficient of expansion issue. Now, one solution
for this, is underfill, a curable compound that they place in the
same area as the BGA solder joints, and it has something to do
with taking stress off the whole mess.

Some of the cards fail after a while, because a solder joint cracks.

This led to the "home solution" of baking the card. Whereas in a
lab environment, you'd get a hot air rework station (heats a large
chip from top and bottom, using a custom fitted hood to limit where
the heat goes). Home users just heat the whole damn card. When
cards are double-sided, and have components on both sides, this
can lead to stuff falling off.

Never the less, there are reports out there, that re-baking a card
can correct a connection problem. What I don't know, is how long
such a repair lasts. Whether the repair is permanent or not. I
would expect the same stresses are still present, and the GPU
"moves" with respect to the PCB, attempting to tear the solder
joints again.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/t...idoingitrite-/

There are patent applications on the web, that address the need
to use underfill on BGAs with more than 1000 balls. And a
change from one of those materials, to another, can increase
the number of balls that can safely be used on a hot chip,
to decent level (extending lifetime by many years).

An inevitable question you'd have is "how do I know my card
has this problem, a broken solder joint ?". Well, your symptoms
would likely be worse, and not restricted to a problem showing
up in one game. There'd be problems all over the place. Maybe
a black screen at startup. Perhaps you'd play a Flash video,
and see issues. Or depending on the OS, maybe you'd use
hardware-driven features of Aero, and see anomalies. If only
the single game has issues, then driver or game patch are just
as likely to fix it (no baking required).

For my own purposes, I use 3DMark benchmarks, as a separate
test. You can download some of those, and they'll test
fewer features of DirectX than perhaps a recent game would.
I might use these, to hint at whether I thought it was
driver or hardware. If all of these have artifacts, I'd
be prepping my EasyBake oven :-) Or doing more focused
hardware diagnostics. There are also things like Furmark,
for doing power-limited testing, but the drivers recognize
some of those apps, and prevent them from pounding on
the card to 100% level.

(40MB, pretty old, 3Dmark 2001 SE (Build 330))
http://www.majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html

(178 MB, 3DMark03 3.60 1901)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1712

(209MB, a bit newer, 3DMark05 1.3.0 1901)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4376.html

I don't know what value testing like the following has, but
it's another test case you can run. When apps like this come
out, the driver designers have to respond and add code to prevent
the power used, from exceeding safe levels. I don't know
exactly how they do that. The core power regulator on the
video card, would have overcurrent protection, but the
GPU might be pretty warm before that kicks in.

http://www.geeks3d.com/20100328/gefo...lugs-required/

Paul