Piece of **** pc 4 sale

jcgross

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Jan 19, 2008
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Used to be a great pc running 2 x1950pros crossfire, installed 3870 x2, all new drivers, new install of xp 64bit, 2 weeks of trouble shooting at MSI, Toms, Sapphore, ATI, freeezes all games, Id like to shhot it with a 12 gauge... here is the turd... thing is driving me to drink!

OS: Win XP Pro SP2 64 Bit
Board: MSI K9A Platinum Crossfire ATI 3200 Chipset Bios version 1.8
RAM: 4GIG Patriot Extreme DDR2 800MHz
CPU: AMD Athlon 6400+ 64x2 3.2 GHz
Hard drives: (2) WD Caviar 250 GB
Graphics cards: (1) 3870 x 2 Sapphire
PSU: Antec TruePower Quattro 850 watt
Burners: (2) Sony/Nec 7170A
Chassis Gigabyte 3D Aurora Tower
Sound Card: Creative labs X-Fi SoundBlaster Xtreme Gamer
Keyboard: Saitek Eclipse
Mouse: Logitek Mx518
SENNHEISER PC161 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Headset

 

betunn

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Nov 18, 2006
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I think he is not looking for help.
Read the title of his post
Are you selling your rig???
If yes, how much?

On the other hand, what games are you playing?
At what resolution?
AA and AF on?
Are you overclocking?
 
You shouldnt be selling things here ;)

Elimination - strip out everything bar the needed stuff - take out all the ram bar 1 stick, the extra sound card, ditch everything! if you have your old video cards install one of them instead, any old psu lying around try it too.
 
You seem to have a lot of "fluff" that could be causing a driver conflict. I'd suggest (as others have said) a clean install with minimum hardware. Then run ram, 3DMark, etc. tests. Issues like these are usually software.
 

albundy2

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ditch the creative card. you seem to be suffering from a driver conflict/software problem. number 1 prob with creative's stuff atm. especially with 64bit os. seriously do you even use eax? it's the only thing those cards offer...
 

jcgross

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Jan 19, 2008
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Guys I am just ranting, and I apologize, The CPU is approx 2/mo old, the o/s was installed the same day, previuos to this 3870x2 card I had (2) Sapphire x1950pros installed running crossfire for about 5 months, then I bought (2) Sapphire 3870 512mb cards, installed them about 3-3 1/2 weeks ago thats when the sh*t hit the fan, the cards would run great alone but crossfire sucked... so I RMA'ed the cards and got this (1) Sapphire 3870x2 card oer the advice of ATI support.
I was still having issues do I re-installed the o/s last night, installed all windows updates, m/b drivers, ati card drivers games and patches... thats it, in the past week and 1/2 I have posted on forums, spoke with ATI, MSI, emailed Sapphire 9since they dont have a phone # (WOW!).
the Bios is the latest ver 1.8 flashed last November. This just makes no freeking sense! I am not a very patient person but I have done my best to learn and fix this garbage.

Honestly Id like to see this thru, HELP!
 

arson94

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Apr 18, 2008
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Just out of curiosity, the 6400+ is a 125w processor. Don't the 125w CPU's eventually start raping boards with anything less than like 6 or 7 phase power, blowing MOSFETS, poppin caps and what-not? I'm not sure what kind of power management that board has though, just a thought. It does sound a little like a possible driver conflict though, but also a little more like overheating if it's only freezing during games... You could try stressing the little hoe with some CPU intensive benchmarking tool and see if you can maker freeze that way too.

Arson94
 

albundy2

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the 780g boards [micro atx] are the only one's so far to exibit this problem.
the board he has was meant as an enthusiast's board, not a budget htpc or office box.
 


Its MSI, expect problems!

AMD didnt design the platform with high power/heat in mind - Intel learnt the hard way with prescott, AMD didnt learn from there competitor - radial cooling to cool the cpu AND regulators, sockets for maximum power throughput - there will be more and more reports on AMD in the future.

I also wouldn't put it past me that that cpu may be a dud, iv seen a few too many dead/faulty AMDs in recent times - a 6000 and a 4400 recently.

I suggest to download and create/burn UBCD4WIN and use it to test your system out.

Also under clock everything...
 

jcgross

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I can run 3dmark w/ no problem, Idid a little bit ago, got 12000 marks just fine, as far as my CPU I havent heard any negative issues wit it.
 

jcgross

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ok, here is what I heard/ was told, the other night while playing COD4, I typed a message and asked if anyone had a 3870x2, two playes responded yes, then I asked If they were experienxing any issues with freezing during gameplay, they both said yes and they also said ATI is hoping to address this issue with the new drivers, Sapphire tech support kind of sucks they dont even have a phone number in the USA, they only respond via email,
in short I have spent a fair ammount of money and time to have a pretty decent pc, actually we all have, and if the above is correct about the drivers these tools at ATI should work these issues out b4 they out 400.00 cards on the market for us to troubleshoot and go thru all this dramma.
tonight I am going to run memtest 86 and see how that pans out... any other tests I can run here?
 

jcgross

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if you are refereing to my pc, it freezes up during gameplay. but everthing else is just fine.
 


download and run ATi Tool and orthos and run both for a couple of hours

also downgrade to XP 32 and try it
 

jcgross

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Jan 19, 2008
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funny! make youe peace w/ god first, plus having a priest nearby would help as well. :lol:
 

jcgross

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Jan 19, 2008
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Guys I ran memtest86 last night, it had positive results, we can rule out my 4 gigs of memory, its all fine, I have decided to reformat xp64 bit/ my h/d today. then as follows...
MSI board drivers
windows updates
LCD 64 bit drivers
ATI card drivers from Aati website
Dirx 9c from Microsoft
soundblaster x-fi/ driver only
? this sound like a plan?
 


gawd dont use MSI's drivers, look for them direct eg Intel chipset drivers from Intels website etc

if you read our posts we advised to REMOVE your creative card too as it can cause all sorts of headaches

windows updates dont effect stability so wouldnt bother for a test run

did you test with ATitool and Orthos for a couple of hours? Memtest is useless 99% of the time when it comes to stability etc - i can overclock memory and have it pass on memtest where as windows will not so much as even boot correctly.
 

patater

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Dec 28, 2007
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dude, i got same mobo...the on board audio is actually compareable to my x-fi xtreme music. no reason to use it anymore. pop that guy out and try again. plus, drivers may not be correct to your os, sure your not doing the 32bit? sure the link isnt messed up and giving you 32bit drivers? i know how msi is, they do suck. good luck bro...hope it works out for ya!
 

jcgross

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real sure I was using xp64 bit drivers from MSI, I will talk w/ MSI today, never use to have this problem, I will take out the xfi card tho, actually after the os in reinstalled I think I will stay away from the pc for a day or 2. I am really getting to the point of beating it with a hammer. this crap never happened when I had the 2 x1950pros running crossfire. :fou: