Recommended BIOS these days?

[RickyJ]

They weren't stable in Memtest for more than 10 seconds at 2.9V. OCZ's spec is 3.2V for 2-2-2-8.:confused: So they've been running for a year at 3.2V.

 

Just finished 10 hours of Prime95 testing without an issue. When I shut it down and started surfing, the machine froze.:mad:

[RickyJ]

Flashed back to the 9800XT bios last night. Prime95 was just fine overnight for 8 hours, using Hellfire Rev3's at 200x11 and proper voltages. Started working in Word an hour later, and it froze. Running 6.7 Cats now, testing in HL2 got me 20 mins before freezing. Rebooted and tried HL2 again, after 15 mins I was getting the same artifacting as before (bad texturing), and then 5 mins later it froze again.

 

This is starting to drive me nuts. Could a bad video card freeze a system entirely? Memtest and Prime95 keep saying that the rest of the system is fine, so I'm not sure what to do at this point.:confused:

[skinnie]

well check your card's vddq and vref..my card did a lot of bad texturing because of that..and it was strange because I didn't see artifacts..now I have to run 24/7 the vmod on..but the card is fine..the best drivers for 9800pro/xt are the omegas 2.75A..give it a try..but I don't think it is a driver issue

[RickyJ]

Vgpu is at 1.72V, Vmem is at 2.80V, which are good. Those are the only Vmods I've done to the card. I'm running 1.6V in the bios for AGP signal strength.

 

So you're saying that the card might need more voltage for the same speed?

 

I haven't tried any Omegas since getting this card 2.5 years ago, I'll give them a shot again.

[skinnie]

maybe you've only done the vgpu and vmem mod..but there are other two voltages that need adjustment..at least in my card it was the problem of "fcked" textures..it was strange because my card sometimes even @stock gave me this bad textures..but not only a single artifact..now if I turn off the vmods the card gives artifacts even @stock

here u have a complete list of the vmods

 

and go to techpowerup too

[RickyJ]

How long did you actually use the vmods for? In 2.5 years, I've played with them for a total of about an hour for benching. When I was looking into the mods, I didn't see a Vref mod anywhere, and the Vddq mod was known to kill cards, so I didn't do them. I'll try checking them to see where they're at though. Why would I suddenly have to bump voltages after essentially 2.5 years of stock voltage?:confused: Thanks a lot for your help!

[benbaked]

To answer the OPs question, in my testing I got the highest bandwidth benchmarks using the DFI official 6/19 BIOS. The others (Hellfire, Tmod's) gave me slower benchmarks by a very small amount.

 

I found that my RAM (VX 3200 CH5) hit a wall with 3.3vdimm in the low 240s. I was able to push it slightly faster in my nF4, but I removed it as I won't risk damaging my X2 by taking the vdimm any higher. That and the nF4 is finicky with that RAM anyways, the Ultra B has loved the VX since day one.

[RickyJ]

I know that OCZ binned the 3200VX sticks at 240MHz. From the horse's mouth, so to speak.

 

Good call on not leaving it in your NF4 machine. Integrated memory controllers do have a downside. It's a good thing that TCCD is able to get the job done without much voltage.

[RickyJ]

Tried checking my Vref, showed 1.42V (should be 1.45V and it's very very sensitive). I must have slipped slightly with the probe and shorted the Vref check pin to the pad beside it, as the screen went all wonky. Powering down and draining caps didn't help at all. I'm DAMN lucky I had the bios set to boot to PCI graphics first (I usually don't), so I stuck in my backup PCI ATI Rage XL. Flashed the Pro bios, said the ROM was locked but it wrote anyway (or so it said). Tried rebooting on the PCI card, and nothing would show (LCD blinked as if the output was off). Now I'm clearing the mobo bios, and unplugged the 9800Pro from the system (sitting above the slot, tubing won't let it move much). Fingers crossed.:sad:

 

edit: Naturally, I posted from my laptop...

edit2: Crap, clearing mobo bios did nothing, still don't get a display output.

[RickyJ]

Bye bye 9800Pro. Could have spent $220cdn for a 7600GT, but I don't want to put any more money into this poor machine. Instead, I got a deal on an x700pro 256mb (Rialto bridge chip) that I couldn't pass up (given the circumstances).

 

Now the computer won't last 5 minutes before freezing in older games like Morrowind, Far Cry, etc. It freezes when opening videos most of the time. It just freezes while doing anything, but always within the first 5 minutes of running. This happens with the X700pro, and my backup TNT2-M64 agp card. Naturally, it's just fine when not in the Windows environment (3 hours and counting with a dos-based prime stress tester). Last night, it went for several hours in Prime95 before the screen froze (no errors showed on screen).

 

I think all there is left is to check for bad caps (doubt it), and re-install XP. I've tried many different drivers for each card, using Driver Cleaner each time. Maybe a complete fresh start will help.

[RickyJ]

Reformatted my boot partition, reinstalled XP with the newest SATA drivers slipstreamed, and selected the proper ACPI. Swapped out my memory for my TCCD, running 200x11 with 2-2-2-5 @ 2.75V as specified by OCZ. The computer freezes a couple minutes into games, and freezes randomly on the desktop (ie: 2 minutes ago typing the previous version of this post), yet goes for a long time in Prime95 before I shut it down. I'd get random reboots with the x700Pro and an older AGP TNT2 M64. I'd really like to find out why I'm having these problems show up recently.:confused:

[RickyJ]

So apparently it was a BIOS issue of some sort. Decided to hit the switch on my BS for the modded 6/19 (running on BS chip), cleared CMOS for a while and reset my settings, and no more freezing! Might reflash the Hellfire Rev3 onto my original chip to see if it was a slightly bad flash before. Now I can finally game again! :D