Sapphire X1950 Pro 512mb AGP Help

[ultralord910]

I bought this card for about 2 months already along with a 500W Antec Basiq power supply. However, in recent weeks I have been experiencing random restarts whenever I start playing games such as test drive unlimited and oblivion. Sometimes I can play for an hour and half before it restarts or sometimes the computer will restart within 5 minutes. My video card temperature hovers around 65-72 degrees or so on load so I don't think it's overheating. I've tested my cpu using prime 95 and my ram using memtest, I did not get any errors so they are not the problem. I've tried to reinstall video card drivers and that doesn't seem to help either. Also, whenever I run video card stability test now, the test freezes within one second or so and the computer soon automatically restarts. Is there any other solution to this problem or is my video card broken so I'll have to RMA it?

Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Rottie]

I am sure they will start asking you about your power supply...What brand name? Maybe the power supply is about to die or not giving enough juice for your videocard.

 

[ultralord910]

My power supply is this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817371004

I also have a E4400 and 2 hard drives.

 

[Paratus]

Use a DMM or mobo software & watch your 12V rail. Compare between idle & load. Ifthere is a large V droop then your PSU is suspect. If not download ATI Tool & check for artifacts.

 

[ultralord910]

Well, my mobo software only monitors the cpu voltage, is there any other software that can monitor the voltage for the whole system?

 

[Paratus]

I'm not sure. I've heard Everest or speed fan might do it. The best way, if you are careful , is to use a digital multimeter on a molex.

FYI I had to RMA my first Diamond Viper X1950PRO 512MB AGP (same as the sapphire) for similar issues.

posted via Palm Life Drive

 

[postmortemIA]

To make it work, you need to pay more for PSU than you pay for that card... that is why I have sold mine.

 

[Serp86]

What video drivers are you using?

The catalyst 7.8 and 7.9 have major stability issues with AGP cards. If you installed a driver package recently, try uninstalling and cleaning up using driver cleaner and then installing catalyst 7.7 or even earlier.

 

[ultralord910]

I'm using 7.7s, mayble I'll try 7.6 since I remember playing oblivion for 3 hours straight when I had that one.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Serp86
The catalyst 7.8 and 7.9 have major stability issues with AGP cards. If you installed a driver package recently, try uninstalling and cleaning up using driver cleaner and then installing catalyst 7.7 or even earlier.

Not to mention performance, my benchmarks increased about 30% when I went from 7.8 back to 7.7 on my x1950 Pro AGP.

 

[ultralord910]

Hmm, switching to catalyst 7.6s doesn't seem to help. I hope it isn't my power supply since I had a pentium D 820 before with the X1950 pro and with the same power supply and I don't think these issues existed. Since I switched to E4400 shouldn't the system use less power, even if I bsel modded it to 2.67 ghz?

 

[Makaveli]

I would install Ati Tray tools and force the fan speed to 100%. by default the fan stay at like 40% all the way to 70c which is crazy!

 

[lavaheadache]

I don't understand why you think the video card is the culprit of the restarts if it isn't showing any signs of dying. to me it sounds as though you have a flaky power supply. i've had cheapie power supplies die like that causing random reboots.. It could also be a bad windows update....