Thanks! Tomorrow my husband gets paid, so I'll get online and order from Crucial as soon as I get up manana. Anything else I should do in the meantime? Should I change the detonator drivers to 6.50?
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/12/01 11:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/12/01 11:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
noko
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I have a MX400 and use the 12:20 betas, bottom line is if your present drivers are working fine then you probably don't need to go down. Thes 6 series drivers are not DX8 optimized drivers, the 7 series where but they seemed to be buggy. I would recommend you try the official 12:41 drivers only after you upgrade your memory and making sure it actually did solve your problem. Note: 3.3volts is used both for your video card and memory. I really don't think adding the extra dim caused the Power Supply to be exceeded since the memory dim power requirements are viturally nothing compared to the video card. Let us know how it works out and continue this thread, you are doing remarkably well.
A few things to note. If ordering online, specifying next day will kill all your savings by making the purchase online in the first place. Often the case if only making a small purchase ( such as yours ) you may be very well better served by buying locally. I am not talking about CompUsa or Circuit City but a local hardware shop. Hopefully you have a few decent ones in your area. Online savings can be substantial if purchasing in quantity, ofsetting the shipping cost.
Also bear in mind that while the RAM could be the problem ( or at least one of them ) it might not be the cure all. At least it will not be money wasted as you can surely use it. I would really like to see results of you trying to play your game with differnt Ram configurations ( ie just the 64 stick, then just the two 32's, etc).
While waiting on the Ram lets look at a few other things in the meantime. I see you are having troubles booting to safe mode ( not to be confused with system defaults in bios). It is all in the timing, but try this, immediatly after starting the computer, begin tapping the F8 key repeatably. you should get to a screen with several options, choose "safe mode". From there navigate to device manager and look at diplay adapters amking sure that you only see one. If you have multiples then they need to be deleted.
While were waiting we myu as well get the sound card on its own IRQ as well, in the same manner that you did with the modem. Creative cards always seem to function best on IRQ #5.
Another thing that yo have not responded to is while poking around in your bios is AGP fast writes....make sure this is set to disabled.
For all future testing it would be preferable to leave the side of the case of with perhaps a fan blowing in the vicinity. By doing this we should be able to completely rule out heat as an issue, and if/when we get everything working fine we can remove the fan, put the cover back on and see if the we have a problem again. By sytematically ruleing out each possible problem we can narrow things down considerably.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Also bear in mind that while the RAM could be the problem ( or at least one of them ) it might not be the cure all. At least it will not be money wasted as you can surely use it. I would really like to see results of you trying to play your game with differnt Ram configurations ( ie just the 64 stick, then just the two 32's, etc).
While waiting on the Ram lets look at a few other things in the meantime. I see you are having troubles booting to safe mode ( not to be confused with system defaults in bios). It is all in the timing, but try this, immediatly after starting the computer, begin tapping the F8 key repeatably. you should get to a screen with several options, choose "safe mode". From there navigate to device manager and look at diplay adapters amking sure that you only see one. If you have multiples then they need to be deleted.
While were waiting we myu as well get the sound card on its own IRQ as well, in the same manner that you did with the modem. Creative cards always seem to function best on IRQ #5.
Another thing that yo have not responded to is while poking around in your bios is AGP fast writes....make sure this is set to disabled.
For all future testing it would be preferable to leave the side of the case of with perhaps a fan blowing in the vicinity. By doing this we should be able to completely rule out heat as an issue, and if/when we get everything working fine we can remove the fan, put the cover back on and see if the we have a problem again. By sytematically ruleing out each possible problem we can narrow things down considerably.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
i am not in agreeent with you on the drivers. Personally for this card ( gforce 256 ) I have had much better luck with the det vers 6.50. Optimizations on later revisions were more geared towards the gforce 2 and 3. Version 6.50 is the driver supported by most of the manufactorers for the 256. Furthermore her game titles she plays are not directx 8 optimized. With this another thing comes to mind corrupted direct x directory? There is also a good chance that those 32 megs sticks left over from the bh6 are only pc66.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
noko
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Actually all the ram checked out to be pc100, but if you remember pc100 had some compatibility problems when mismatched against other brands. I don't know about the orginal Geforce but for my MX400 the 1200 series operate the best.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 00:09 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 00:09 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
Yes but the mx is built on the gts chip. I have used your memory test before, but never had any stick of RAM register as pc66 have you? To my knowledge, pc-66 is not even a standard. I admitably have not used the 256 with the 12.41's and the kt133. I have tried them with ( the 12.41's) on a kx133 and found the 6.50's to be far more stable. Perhaps someone else can shed a bit more light on this, someone with the kt133 and gforce 256 combo. An interesting point does come to mind however, Any socket 7 user will tell you of huge losses in performance when using any det vers above 6.27. Case in point is newer is not always necesarily better.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Sorry, was out to dinner with my mom (early burfday present). I'll switch out the RAM and try playing EQ and see what happens, then update this post, same as trying to get to safe mode. Oh yeah, AGP fast writes is disabled. I saw that earlier and forgot to mention it. =)
Update: Ran EQ with 64 meg, ran choppy. VERY choppy, but that was expected. Froze at the end when I camped out of game. I don't know if it was a fluke or not. Ran with the 2 32's and it ran fine, although real choppy. Didn't get to check it on camping out, because it got real laggy and I got disconnected from the game. I have had the case open and then fan blowing on it. A guy in game told me he has the same sound card and vid card as me, and had trouble with it freezing, and he fixed it by using NVIDIA's drivers and not Guillemot's. But...I have the detonator drivers, so that doesn't help me. =( For the life of me, I cannot get into safe mode. I started hitting the f8 key right away like you said. It goes from the page where it shows what BIOS version I have, right to the screen where I hit delete to get into the BIOS manager thing, to the splash screen.
Sound card IRQ: Right now my sound card is on IRQ 10, along with a second PCI IRQ steering holder. I don't know which slot to put it into to get it to IRQ 5. My video card is in the AGP slot, then the next two PCI slots are empty, then is my modem, then sound card, then the 5th PCI slot is empty. The mobo manual doesn't say which slots are for what IRQ's.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 03:17 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
Update: Ran EQ with 64 meg, ran choppy. VERY choppy, but that was expected. Froze at the end when I camped out of game. I don't know if it was a fluke or not. Ran with the 2 32's and it ran fine, although real choppy. Didn't get to check it on camping out, because it got real laggy and I got disconnected from the game. I have had the case open and then fan blowing on it. A guy in game told me he has the same sound card and vid card as me, and had trouble with it freezing, and he fixed it by using NVIDIA's drivers and not Guillemot's. But...I have the detonator drivers, so that doesn't help me. =( For the life of me, I cannot get into safe mode. I started hitting the f8 key right away like you said. It goes from the page where it shows what BIOS version I have, right to the screen where I hit delete to get into the BIOS manager thing, to the splash screen.
Sound card IRQ: Right now my sound card is on IRQ 10, along with a second PCI IRQ steering holder. I don't know which slot to put it into to get it to IRQ 5. My video card is in the AGP slot, then the next two PCI slots are empty, then is my modem, then sound card, then the 5th PCI slot is empty. The mobo manual doesn't say which slots are for what IRQ's.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 03:17 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
noko
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With 64 meg of ram you will use the swap file more (hard drive) which is in a order of 1000 times slower then using ram. Reason is, you are using less ram then before. Really sounds like you 64meg dim is bad. Once you get your system stable then you can start optimizing it such as Fast Writes, better more aggressive memory timeings etc.. IRQ steering sharing with any device is actually normal and not to much you can do about it. I wouldn't worry about getting your sound card on IRQ 5 unless you play old Dos games expecting a sound blaster card. Since Plug and Play hit the scene back with Win95 in late 1995, manual selecting of interrupts has virtually became mute, except some cards still have problmes sharing. In short IRQ5 or IRQ10 for your sound card makes no difference.
noko
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Well buying from Crucial the shipping cost is free for 2nd day delivery plus you don't pay tax unless you live in the same state as Crucial. I know local shops here in Orlando have low grade ram for prices that are just plain outrageous. I believe the only good way to buy ram is on the net unless you have a really good shop nearby. Here is a comparsons of drivers for the DDR256 GeForce from 3.56 version up to the 1200's. Only a few versions show a significant degradation such as the 7:16 version. The fastest driver for Quake 3 on a Pentium 3 1ghz turns out to be the 12:60 drivers at 1024x768x32 by about 5FPS. I disagree that the 600 series where significantly better then the 1200 series. 3dMark2001 has about a 200 point increase going from the 600 to the 1200 series. Which makes sense since the 600 series where not DX8 drivers.
Hopefully the ram was the only problem, I believe she is using a USB keyboard which appears when Win98 is starting it is disabling the bios real mode driver for a Win 98 driver so during the boot up of Win98 she can't choose the startup screen. A newer version of Windows would probably correct this problem as in Win98se.
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html" target="_new">http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html</A>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 06:52 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
Hopefully the ram was the only problem, I believe she is using a USB keyboard which appears when Win98 is starting it is disabling the bios real mode driver for a Win 98 driver so during the boot up of Win98 she can't choose the startup screen. A newer version of Windows would probably correct this problem as in Win98se.
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html" target="_new">http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html</A>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 06:52 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
There should be a setting for usb keyboard support in bios. while IRQ 5 is not real importatant not sharing an irq with usb devices is, isn't that what is happening sound card and usb both on 10?
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
hit f5 to go directly to safe mode. f8 gets you into the safe mode menu.......Holy Maria! nice work guys........record number of posts and a succesful fix. thats what its all about. RAWK ON!!!
ignore everything i say
ignore everything i say
Ok, here's what I've found so far as far as local RAM (this is all for 128 megs, PC133, etc):
$59.99 brand name PMI
$49.00 PNY
$55.00 (local computer shop), forgot to ask the brand name.
The BestBuy guy told me Athlon systems work best with PNY. I dunno if he was pulling a fast one since I'm a female, or because it's true. I did look online and 128 megs of Kingston is only $30. I know, it's cheaper on the internet, but I'm so damned impatient. I want this troublesome computer fixed nooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww. =)
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 02:19 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
$59.99 brand name PMI
$49.00 PNY
$55.00 (local computer shop), forgot to ask the brand name.
The BestBuy guy told me Athlon systems work best with PNY. I dunno if he was pulling a fast one since I'm a female, or because it's true. I did look online and 128 megs of Kingston is only $30. I know, it's cheaper on the internet, but I'm so damned impatient. I want this troublesome computer fixed nooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww. =)
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 02:19 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
noko
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PNY yeach, order Crucial is my recommendation, you will have it in a few days and it will operate at CAS2 vice CAS3 which you will probably get locally. Meaning better performance and reliability in the long run. Plus you will be able to keep some bucks in your purse for something more important. Order now. Watch TV, buy another game, then have alot of fun. Oops, no official windows?? shame on you, you can get WindowSE upgrade for Win98 for $16.95 direct from Microsoft. I just upgraded to WinMe for $49 when it first came out plus I use W2K.
You can get twice amount of ram for a cheaper cost and much higher quality - don't buy locally. Also realize the ram you currently use will be good for key chains or baby crib play toys. Well on second thought skip the baby crib because babies like to eat things.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 04:35 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
You can get twice amount of ram for a cheaper cost and much higher quality - don't buy locally. Also realize the ram you currently use will be good for key chains or baby crib play toys. Well on second thought skip the baby crib because babies like to eat things.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 04:35 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
Nice link, Noko! I like the Geforce256 vs Geforce 3 pictures. First time I've seen images from the 3DMark2001 Game4, EMBM, and Pixel shader tests. Cool!
Haven't looked at all the images but I am having a hard seeing any differences between the Geforce256 and Geforce 3 images. Difference in contrast levels makes it very difficult to compare. One exception are the Giants images. Geforce 3 definitely looks more realistic.
Have you seen any rumors as to when a Geforce 3 MX will be available?
Link repeated below.
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html" target="_new">http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html</A>
Haven't looked at all the images but I am having a hard seeing any differences between the Geforce256 and Geforce 3 images. Difference in contrast levels makes it very difficult to compare. One exception are the Giants images. Geforce 3 definitely looks more realistic.
Have you seen any rumors as to when a Geforce 3 MX will be available?
Link repeated below.
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html" target="_new">http://www.digit-life.com/articles/digest3d0106/itogi-video-gf256ddr.html</A>
Ok, someone mentioned Kingston RAM being good, so here's what I did. I went to Best Buy (I know, don't shoot me), cuz they have Kingston 128 megs for $30. Well, they were out of that, so I got 256megs for $69.99, and it came with a $20 mail in rebate, so it will wind up only costing me $49.99. I was gonna get a power supply, but the highest they had was 300watts, and I wanted to get 350 or 400. So, later on, I'll go out in search of a power supply. The new RAM is in now. I'm gonna go and test out EQ (but even if memory isn't the ultimate problem, I still think it was a good thing I got some), and then I gotta get ready to go out. Got another early birthday dinner tonight. Someone mentioned that after I got new RAM they could help me tweak it. If someone wants to post some (explicit) pointers, I'll get started on that after I get back from dinner. And one last thought. I REALLY appreciate all your help. You guys have made all this stuff seem not as intimidating. Before I felt stupid, now I know that with help, I can figure this stuff out. =)
Update: EQ works great so far!! Yippie Skippy, I'm happy! You guys rule! =D
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 05:48 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
Update: EQ works great so far!! Yippie Skippy, I'm happy! You guys rule! =D
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Fataliya on 07/13/01 05:48 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
noko
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Well I need to know what memory type you got as in PC100 or PC133 (I hope) which would be great. Then if it is cas2 or 3 would also be helpful. Let us know how it works. So please put down all the specs it had on the packaging and also what it says on the dim, usually there is a label on the dim giving its speed etc.. If you don't have that information, install the ram, first dim slot and get rid of all the old ram. Run the memory program and repost, It will tell me everything I need to know to give you good advice on the settings. Enjoy the birthday party.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 06:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 07/13/01 06:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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