Issues with 7900 GTX power-related? (PCIe power adapter)

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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Wraith
Posts: 139
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2003 1:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Issues with 7900 GTX power-related? (PCIe power adapter)

Post by Wraith » Mon Aug 27, 2007 8:54 am

I bought a used 7900 GTX PCI Express graphics card a couple weeks ago. (Bought through another forum I frequent. Everything looks to be in good condition.) I'm planning on a new system in the near future, but put the card in my current system for now. I have a Seasonic S12-430 PSU and MSI RS480M2-IL (uATX ATI chipset s939) motherboard. The PSU doesn't have a dedicated PCI Express power connector, so I used the adapter that came with the card.

The PSU has two cables with three 4-pin power connectors on each. The PCIe adapter uses two 4-pin connectors.

The first time, I used the following setup:
cable 1: CD-RW, DVD-ROM, PCIe adapter
cable 2: PCIe adapter, 2x 120mm fans, IDE HDD
Later I tried:
cable 1: CD-RW, DVD-ROM, 2x 120mm fans
cable 2: PCIe adapter, PCIe adapter, IDE HDD

I seem to have some graphics instability, under either setup. Civ IV hangs or crashes occasionally. Half-Life 2 won't start at all (Steam hangs an 100% CPU). FFXI crashed a couple times, I think. With my previous card (X800 256, stock overclock) I had games crash occasionally, but not this often.

I've reinstalled the drivers a few times. Using nVidia drivers from May 2007. The card looks seated securely; the clip on the PCIe slot is in place. The PCIe power adapter looks connected securely. I tried switching from my PCI sound card to onboard sound, that didn't make a difference either. GPU fan is working, never seems to ramp up. GPU temps look to be low 60's C in Riva Tuner when playing Civ IV. My CPU is only an A64 Winchester, so I would think there is plenty available power.

Is this a power problem, a driver problem, or a hardware incompatibility problem? Is there anything else I should try?

*Edit* Also, I ran Memtest86 for a few passes with no issues. I ran 3DMark2001, just for the heck of it, also with no issues.

Wraith
Posts: 139
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2003 1:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by Wraith » Thu Sep 06, 2007 7:59 am

I also tried running just on my primary monitor, disconnecting the second LCD, but I still get crashes. Even just watching videos online (YouTube and others) it can crash.

Is the Seasonic S12-430 not enough for this card, even with these relatively low-stress applications? I think I'm just going to have to put my X800 back in and wait until I've got the new build together to use the 7900 GTX.

It certainly should be enough, capacity wise, by the looks of this thread. Which is what I thought.

EsaT
Posts: 473
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 1:53 am
Location: 61.6° N, 29.5° E - Finland

Post by EsaT » Thu Sep 06, 2007 11:05 am

Memtest should be run at least half dozen times for reliable result...

How well did you remove Ati's drivers?
Power related crashing would occur during high load, not all the time so this sounds more like some software problem.

Wraith
Posts: 139
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2003 1:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by Wraith » Thu Sep 06, 2007 11:44 am

EsaT wrote:Memtest should be run at least half dozen times for reliable result...

How well did you remove Ati's drivers?
Power related crashing would occur during high load, not all the time so this sounds more like some software problem.
I will try running MEMTEST again for more passes.

For removing the ATI drivers, I believe I went to Add/Remove Programs and removed anything ATI related (Catalyst control center, Hydravision, etc.). I had both the ATI PCIe card and the ATI onboard graphics. I disabled the onboard graphics from the BIOS - I believe it was before installing the 7900.

The crashes are generally under light or medium graphics load. Certainly when it crashes on YouTube, it's a pretty minimal graphics load. It shouldn't be a power problem, and the card isn't overheating, if rivaTuner is even remotely accurate. I'm not sure what else to try on the software side of things, apart from removing/reinstalling drivers, which I've already done. I should probably run a check on my hard disk too, just to be safe. S.M.A.R.T. info didn't reveal anything unusual.

burebista
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:05 am
Location: Romania

Post by burebista » Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:47 pm

Do you have crashes even when you watch a movie on PC?
And how it's crash? BSOD? Restart? Hang?
Try to remove media preview.
Start->Run-> cmd
Type "regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll" (without quotes)
If you want it back type "regsvr32 shmedia.dll"

Wraith
Posts: 139
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2003 1:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by Wraith » Fri Sep 07, 2007 7:48 am

burebista wrote:Do you have crashes even when you watch a movie on PC?
And how it's crash? BSOD? Restart? Hang?
Try to remove media preview.
Start->Run-> cmd
Type "regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll" (without quotes)
If you want it back type "regsvr32 shmedia.dll"
I haven't tried watching a DVD movie, and haven't really played many videos from video player software (WMP, VLC) lately. I have noticed it occasionally with YouTube and other web-based video players.

Most often it will freeze - the cursor won't budge, can't CTRL+ALT+DEL to get task manager or twice to reboot. Sometimes the audio playing will skip (like a skipping record, repeating a split-second piece of audio). I have to hit the reset or power button to reboot/shutdown. I think once it crashed and triggered a restart automatically, but usually it just freezes. No BSODs.

Trying to start Half-Life 2 is a little different. Steam loads up fine. Try to start HL2, it starts "Loading", but Steam.exe eventually climbs up to 99% CPU and makes the system super-slow to respond, never gets to the game menu. But I can eventually kill Steam.exe from task manager and Windows works fine after that. On closing, it usually returns two error messages - one about not being able to load a particular game resource file (file name varies), and one about unable to read memory location [hex#]. But I assumed these errors were caused by killing the process, and weren't really applicable to the source of the problem.

Sometimes Civ IV will look like the system froze, but then come back to a usable state, at least for a while.

If it is a memory-related issue (I still have to run MEMTEST again)... I'm running 2 sticks of Corsair DDR, I think the specific model is in my sig. They weren't purchased at the same time, so one's slightly older than the other, but they're both the same capacity, speed, model#.

EsaT
Posts: 473
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 1:53 am
Location: 61.6° N, 29.5° E - Finland

Post by EsaT » Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:50 pm

Wraith wrote:I believe I went to Add/Remove Programs and removed anything ATI related
That won't remove really anything, thanks to "public waste dump" structure of Wincrash. (registry + system32 folder)
You should at least clean registry from any old keys (search for catalyst)


Also you could try running Orthos for stressing CPU and motherboard/memory at the same time.

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