Dead NF4 NIC? Also, unstable 7900GTX or not enough power?

[Urok]

First off, I'm rather satisfied with the quality of this board. I've had some problems here and there (Rather annoying ones actually), but I've found a solution to them eventually. It's running rather smoothly now, thanks to Tony's modded April 6th BIOS (Which I read somewhere was optimized for OCZ memory). Now I'm hung up on this problem. I can't recall what exactly I did right before the NIC died. I think I adjusted some memory timings or something to that effect. After that though, the

NIC seemingly just... I don't know. It's as if the connection between the network cable and the NIC itself won't complete even though I didn't touch it between the memory adjustments.

 

Windows complains about a network cable being unplugged. Anyways, I'm using the Marvell LAN now which works fine. The lights light up when a cable is plugged into the NIC corresponding to the Marvell LAN, but the lights won't light up when plugged into the NF4 NIC. Windows detects the NF4 LAN fine, coming up with a MAC address and such, but it simply won't find the connection!

 

I followed the various instructions on this page without success: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16429

 

If anyone can help with this, I'd be grateful.

 

 

 

Also, on an unrelated troubleshooting note...Just recently I was able to ditch the XFX 7800GT to get a BFG 7900GTX. I installed it and it worked rather well initially. Unfortunately, I had the same issues with games freezing for 20-30 seconds then working normally afterwards. I also had a few black screen freezes as well, which, when turning off the automatic reboot on system error, turned out to be an infinite loop inside the nv4_disp device driver. I tried underclocking it as far as 560/650 to no avail. Someone suggested to remove the PCI cards and disabling the onboard sound too. I removed the PCI cards while leaving the sound activated and, amazingly, it worked, though I can't overclock it further than the stock OC without the same problem arising. (PCI cards were a K-WORLD ATSC 110 HDTV capture card, an older Compaq dialup modem, and a single IDE + 2 SATA card. I rarely use any of the cards anyways.)

 

Now, my question... Could it be power supply related? I've got future plans to get a Lian Li full tower case, a PC Power & Cooling 1KW PSU, a PCI-E RAID card with 8 SATA-II ports and up to 8 SATA HDDs at least 250GB each. If it's PSU related, I'll make it my priority to get the PSU first.

[yfital]

well, as for the power issue, i dunno, but for the nic i sadly do...

i had the exact same issue, the nv nic just died, nothing helped, win said its disconnected, sometimes connected, no matter what, there was no data transfer between it and my router, just moved to the marvel as well, the board 2 days after so : heh, i hope yours will live...

btw, try cooling that area a bit, helped me on my old a8n sli pre

[Urok]

Cooling what area? Right now, the CPU fan has a direct vent to the outside air. I don't have any extra fans on hand either (Not any quiet ones anyways. I have a Delta fan that pushes 220CFM of air, so yeah, its loud.)

[yfital]

heh yeah, delta is da bomb : literaly...

on my old mobo, i had a similar problem which happened because of the area of the nic itself getting hot...

didnt have enough air flow to the area...

i would try just for the kicks of it... though if you have a si120 its probably cooled 'nuff...

sry, nothing much more you can do, that input mac add didnt work for me as well...

[Urok]

So...Doesn't anyone have an idea here? I'm open to suggestions...

[jawatrader]

Not sure, but I havent heard anything good about the ultra PSU's. It might not have anything to do with your problem, but I would dump it as fast as I could.

[sailindawg]

get a BFG 7900GTX. I installed it and it worked rather well initially. Unfortunately, I had the same issues with games freezing for 20-30 seconds then working normally afterwards.

 

I had read somewhere's on the 'net that the first batch of factory overclocked 7900GT/GTX's had an issue where the manufacturers inadvertently set the clocks wrong for the vertice shaders and the pixel shaders. From what I recall of the article, the 7900 series gpu's have a portion of the gpu dedicated to only vertice shader calculations and only pixel shader calculations. The clock cycles between the pixel and vetice shaders need to be set at a certain rate. If there is too much of a differnce between the pixel and vertice shader clock cycles, the cards lock up, blue screen and stutter. It seems that the manufacturers got a bit ahead of themselves. The fix is for the manufacturer to reflash the vid card BIOS to set the appropriate clocks for the pixel and vertice shader operations. The article said something to the effect that the vid card RAM ran a bit hotter than anticipated. Regarding this matter, I notice that EVGA has the 7900GT CO KO, that has an expanded copper heat sink that covers the RAM modules.

 

I wish that I could find that article again to reference it for you, but I can't remember wherre the heck I read it. I doubt it's your PS. I would call BFG, describe the vid card problem, tell them the date of purchase and see what they say.

[Urok]

Wow, thanks for the helpful information on the BFG issue. yeah it locked up earlier again and I set the clocks to 650/800; Seems to be OK like that. I'll try giving BFG a call right now, unless they are done for the day in which I'll try tomorrow.

 

Still need some help on the dead NIC though.

[sailindawg]

I found the original article that I had read on PC Per regarding the factory overclocked vid cards:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=235

 

Very interesting reading ! Read this, then call BFG.

 

Let us know how you make out.

[Urok]

Interesting bit of reading there. Now I know that I'm not just a minority here and someone can do something about it. I didnt call BFG just yet, I tweaked a memory setting (Increase skew to 255) in hopes to increase stability.

 

EDIT: Laugh. Just after hitting enter, the PC crashes. back to DDR394

 

Another edit: I won't be able to call today. Someone else is waiting for a phone call so eh. Not in a big rush or anythign anyways.

[Urok]

Removed a bunch of stuff in my PC down to basics as epr request to BFG, still got a lockup though. Going to try it in a different PC on monday to see if I can replicate the problem.

 

Still no luck on the dead NF4 NIC

[shmoe010]

my NIC is trash too