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Custom built system
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Posted by: JJ55x
I was kind of worried about the prospect of building a new system... too many issues with processor/boards/power supplies now. I ordered a No-name case with an 830LR board and an athlon XP 1800+ processor. Great. Put my 512megs of SDRAM into it. Put my 40gig hd into it. Fun stuff. Runs great. Old ATI Rage 128 in it for a lil while. Running WinXP of course. Last night I bought a GeForce4 Ti4600. It ran friggin great!!! ...for 10 minutes. Then it froze. Over and over. More and more. I'm having trouble narrowing down the problem... The most recent drivers are on the CD, so theres not much more to do in that respect. I took this out of the FAQ on the CD.
1. Q: “I installed the video card and the system locks up in 2D & 3D applications frequently. What is up? ”
A:” It’s possible that you have a hardware conflict with another device that Windows is not detecting. My card should be on IRQ 11 and should not share with other devices except “IRQ holder for PCI steering” This is a common problem when ACPI is enabled. ACPI loves to assign a lot of devices on IRQ 9 and/or 11, which is very problematic with your configuration. VisionTek recommends a power supply that is 250W minimum (300W preferred). Some older 440LX, 440BX, and super socket 7 motherboards use an older AGP socket which may not be providing enough power to sustain the card in 3D applications.
Right click on “my computer” on desktop and select “properties” Go to device manager and select “settings” Here you can view IRQ resources for all devices.” Contact the manufacturer of your computer/motherboard for help on reassigning IRQ resources if multiple devices are sharing an IRQ with video card
To be honest, I don't know what wattage my power supply is. My board fully supports AGP 2.0 4x blah blah blah. I took a look at my IRQs, and the GeForce4 is alone on IRQ 5. On IRQ 11 (the one Visiontek wants me to use) I have my onbaord LAN, USB, and AGP <=> PCI bridge thing. (btw properties of my geforce4 agp show up as a pci bus card, but i think this is cause fo the SiS AGP Pci Bridge thingy). I do not know if this is the problem, or if it is the case itself. All I have is the processor fan, and the fan on the card itself. I'm assuming this is not enough cooling to keep it stable so it freezes. But I dont know. I'm going to get a 4" system fan to put on the back blowing out tonight, but I doubt it will help the card, which has components on the underside, under where I'm putting the fan. Should I put another 4" fan blowing in from the front? (behind the bezel, under the HDD?
So I guess what I;m saying is, whats my prob here? 
Posted by: Outlaw
 Quote:
Originally posted by JJ55x
To be honest, I don't know what wattage my power supply is.
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Most power supplies have something on them like "ATX <insert wattage here>", you should have at least 300W.
Posted by: tkron
Also make sure you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard. If you motherboard has a Via chip make sure you have installed the latest 4in1 drivers for it
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
With the Geforce 4 being fairly new, you probably just need an updated chipset driver. You have a SiS 735 chipset so download the latest driver from them. You can get it from below.. 1.09 AGP driver.
http://www.sis.com/support/driver/index.htm
Also, the latest BIOS for your PC Chips motherboard may also help out.
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/BIOS.html
If you're still having trouble, post back and tell us what OS you're using.
Posted by: JJ55x
I thought I said Win XP Pro, my bad  I've got a 300W power supply, so I'm okay there. I took away any chance of heat problems with a system fan and a card slot based fan right under the card sucking heat off of it, didn't help. I updated everything except BIOS, pcchips is giving me terrible connectivity atm and I'll have to wait til later tonight on that one. Still freezing tho  This is really starting to piss me off, I mean after tax + warranty, I dropped 450 on a card that puts me in a worse spot then I was before. I have to say its power is amazing tho, flawless framerate at high resolutions in everything. EQ, War3, the works.
Posted by: Delzach
You should have your case fan blowing in not out as the power supply fan is also blowing out. you need to get cool air in to be able to blow it out.
Posted by: JJ55x
Dont know how half assed this sounds, but it seems to me Id just be blowing hot air back into my system doing that. The extra moutning is another place I could put my case fan, but its completely covered on the outside by the bezel on the front of the case, so I can't see it doing my any good in either direction there.
Edit: Dammit. You said power supply fan didn't you? Not case/card fan. ah well, it seems to work out the same anyway, since the card fan (points out only) is under the case fan.
Posted by: Delzach
Nice drawing. Yes the pwer supply fan needs to blow out. You should have two more spots to put a case fan one wher you drawing has it and one in the front.
The point is that if all fans are blowing out you get the dead zone affect. all air stops and heat builds up around your component. you need the air to move to transfer heet and get it out of the case. The spot in front should have holes so it can bring air in from under the case behind the front cover.
Posted by: JJ55x
OK, that makes sense. I suppose my problem is, since I was cutting corners to get a good deal, my case kind of sucks There is a place to put a fan up front "extra mountings" in the pic. Ufnortunately, the plastic cover of the case covers this completely. Would it be worth it, to keep air moving, even if it wasnt sucking in from outside? Or at least sucking less with the plastic in the way  Should I move my case fan from the back where it is shown to the front mounting and have it blow in? Thanks for the help bro
Posted by: Delzach
Getting off the air movement and on to anouther thought did you completly remove the old drivers before you installed the new card? Ati drivers and Nvidia drivers don't mix. You might have to go and remove them if you didn't.
Posted by: JJ55x
I have a SiS 735 graphics chipset thingy on my board, I didn't remove them before I put the geforce in, but being that this is WinXP, the old chipset isnt around anymore in Device Manager. I'm really stumped here, and I know I sound like a novice but I'm not
Posted by: JJ55x
I've been talking a bit with visiontek tech support, they seem useless but I'll post what I've got back and forth from them incase its any help to someone.
"Joshua-
Your Geforce4 Ti 4600 will work best on IRQ 10 or 11 sharing with only PCI Steering. Your right that XP
will not allow you to adjust the IRQs. Does your BIOS have the option?
-Gary Geer
Visiontek Tech Support
-----Original Message-----
From: JJ 55 [mailto:jj55x@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2002 10:42 AM
To: support@visiontek.com
Subject: GeForce4 Ti4600 System Freeze
Last night I purchased a GeForce4 Ti4600, installed on my Windows XP Pro Athlon XP 1800+ system with no problems, and started up fine. Installed the drivers, again without a problem. I was thrilled to enter my favorite (and quite graphc intensive) game and see my FPS rate skyrocket. Unfortunately, the system fully locked up within 3 minutes. I restarted, entered the game again, locked up even faster. I looked through the video card settings and wound up freezing there (windows, 2d mode!) I lock up immediately (well, a few seconds run) upon entering any Direct3D games now. I purchased this card under the assumption that a newer card would both run well and run without problems... I've tried re-assigning IRQs, but XP does not seem to allow me to do this. The video card is IRQ 5 and I have 3 devices (onboard LAN, onboard sound, etc) on IRQ 11 (it worked fine with these 3 being here before, by the way)."
I emailed them back telling them no my BIOS doesnt allow me to do that, etc. I don't have the PCI Steering, rather some wierd SiS PCI to Processor crap that I think makes my G4 show up as PCI Bus when I get it's properties. Ugh I sound like a n00b. Ah well  Here's the pic of my IRQs that I sent back to them. Thanks for all yer help guys.
Edit: I've tried disabling/re-enabling the things on IRQ 5 (besides vid card) and 11 and they move around a bit, audio and lan stayed on 11, i think the USBs are on 7 now.
Posted by: Delzach
The air is split when it comes in and part will go out the power supply and some will go out the card slot. You could try to move it and see if it helps if not I would put in a fan for both spots. If your positive the front is completly blocked could you put in a bigger fan in the back.
Posted by: Delzach
Winows 2K will also put everything on IRQ 11 using virtual IRQ's. You could try uninstaling your card and letting xp reinstall it. It might put it in the right spot for you.
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Check the properties of the AGP card in the device manager in safe mode. You should be able to manually change it that way unless XP is different from previous OS's.
If you suspect heat, try running with the case lid off for a while. I don't think heat is your problem though.
If the IRQ thing doesn't work, the BIOS update might. It's usually necessary to update it when newer technology comes out.
Posted by: JJ55x
I've done everything but the BIOS update, even tested the card in another system, it works fine (although with a P2 266 I got about 5 FPS in 3dMark2k1 ) With XP installed I can't update the BIOS, there is no DOS mode that you can get to, and safe mode doesn't let you touch IRQs or anything either. So I guess I'm gonna go burn some stuff of my hd then format and go to 98 to see if I can update BIOS then mess with IRQs and get this bizitch working. Thanks again guys, I'll let ya know how this works out tomorrow.
Posted by: tkron
Just install the aflash.exe (for Asus boards id you have one) program and Bios patch on a win98 emergency startup disk and run the update from that disk on your XP machine. I did that with my windows ME computer and had no problems.
There is no need to install windows 98 on your computer.
Posted by: Sarc
YES! What tkron said.
There is no reason to format your HD and put Win98 on it.
Even WinXP Pro has a boot disk creater in it.
From Windows Explorer, with your disk in the drive, right click on your floppy drive and select "Format...".
Then just make sure "Create an MS-DOS start-up disk" is checked and poof!, er well hopefully not poof, but a short time later a nice shinny boot disk.
Air flow should come in from the front of the case and go out the back.
Check your "Add/Remove Programs" applet.
If you find any software referring to your old video card remove them.
Then remove your NVidia drivers as well and start all over with the latest drivers.
I have no idea what brand of mobo you have, but it sounds like you have a on-board video chipset. ???
If this is true, I'd make sure it's disabled in the BIOS if possible. I may be way off on this.
Posted by: Sarc
Update:
Just came accross this site and they have these diagrams up. (www.heatsink-guide.com)
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/airflow.gif
Pretty much sums it up.
I'll have to do some more reading of thier site.
Posted by: JJ55x
VisionTek techsupport finally emailed me back. IRQ 5 is (apparantly) just too low for the card to function on. So I disabled all the stuff on 11, then the card (restart), re-enable the old stuff from 11, they take 5, 7, and 11. Re-enable the card, it hits 11. Bling bling, works great. Positive it worked fine on 11, I had never gotten past 5 seconds of 3dMark2k1 before, I stopped it after 5 (quite convincing tests. Restarted, card goes back to 5. Hurrah for ACPI. So, I'm going back to 98. I'll get the card working there, then install XP and be sure not to isntall ACPI, because with just a standard HAL driver and APM XP will let you do whatever the hell you want with IRQs.
Posted by: tkron
I do not have winXP installed on any of my computers here but, try restarting your computer and keep clicking the Delete key to see if that will get you to the BIOS
Many newer motherboards allow you to select an IRQ to be used by a specific PCI slot in your BIOS. My ASUS CUSL2-C board allows me to do that. I did not like my Modem card sharing an IRQ with my network card, nor my sound card sharing an IRQ with my video card. I changed which IRQ the PCI slot that those cards were pluged into used in the BIOS .
Posted by: JJ55x
Well, my BIOS allows me to "Allocate an IRQ to PCI VGA", that has no effect on my AGP G4 though, so I'm still s.o.l.
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Windows XP must do ACPI a bit different. Windows 2000 puts nearly everything on IRQ 11 for me.
http://support.microsoft.com/search...b;en-us;Q307970
Posted by: Sarc
It's probably got something to do with JJ55x's BIOS.
I've got WinXP Pro and my IRQ table looks like this:
IRQ10: RAID Controller.
IRQ11: Ethernet Controller (LAN)
IRQ11: Sound Card (on-board)
IRQ11: Video Card (Geforce 3)
IRQ12: USB Controller (All 3)
For me, this is only slightly different from when I was using Win2K Pro.
I'm letting my BIOS auto-configure everthing.
Posted by: JJ55x
Well here I am back on 98. 98 supports ACPI too, woohoo. In other words, I can't change IRQs here either. This rocks. My BIOS doesn't let me change it, and niether does windows. My BIOS prevents ACPI from managing the vid card, and the great part about that is my BIOS doesn't let ME manage it. Great!
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
In the device manager, check the properties of the PCI Bus icon in the device manager list. I believe there is an option there that forces Windows to use your assigned BIOS values.
You should be able to assign each resource individually from the BIOS from there.
Posted by: JJ55x
Now I just feel like an ass shooting down everyone's ideas. My BIOS doesn't give me any control over IRQs, not that I can see.
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
You might have to change the BIOS setting to "No" for Plug and Play OS to manually assign IRQ's.
Sounds like your board isn't very user friendly though.
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