Strange system issues

[Kalmah]

I recently upgraded my computer from a pentium d to a 3ghz core 2 duo.

I get alot of graphical glitches in games and random crashes. Entire screen corruption for instance.

gigabyte p31-es3g motherboard
core 2 duo
2 gig gskill ram
geforce 8600gt

I completely wiped the drive and re-intalled xp.
Installed all drivers from motherboard cd. (I have not updated motherboard drivers due to multiple reports of the wrong drivers being listed on the website) I would like to, but don't want to chance it. Alot of reviews on newegg for this motherboard report this issue.

Completely updated all other drivers such as video and sound..

I thought I fixed the problem once I found out that my ram wasn't getting the correct voltage. Was getting 1.8 when was suppose to get 2.1.

The problem occured again after the next reboot while playing company of heroes.

I'm not overclocking. Everything at stock speed. Temperatures are fine.

The only new components are motherboard, ram and processor. I never experienced this problem with old motherboard, ram and processor.

I suppose my next step would be to run memtest. I don't want to do it because it's passed the return date!! I don't want to have faulty memory!!

My gut is telling me that it has to be the ram.

Any thoughts?

 

[Quiksilver]

Update your drivers, simple. Newegg reviews aren't to be taken worth anything more than a grain of salt. if your afraid of Gigabytes site and wrong drivers (which wouldn't be problem anyway; installer would just tell you they're wrong.) go directly to the other sites.

Spec's for your board tell me.
Audio & LAN Driver: Go to Realtek's site.
Video Card: Nvidia
Chipset/Raid Drivers: Intel

To me though this sounds like either bad ram (test with memtest) or a bad video card (something gone wrong during computer transfer.)

 

[EvilBob]

assuming that it's not the ram (which it totally could be - test it, ram is cheap right now ($50 for 2x2gb cas4 1.8V ddr2-800!)

i had random crashes and screen corruption in games until i enabled vdroop correction on my board (a gigabyte ep45-ud3r, "Load Line Calibration" was the setting). if you don't have that option on your board, and you've eliminated ram as a possible problem, you could try nudging up your core volts a tiny bit and see if that helps.

 

[Kalmah]

Thanks for the help guys. I'm still troubleshooting. Takes a long time after making changes then waiting for crash to occure.

I'm going to run memtest tomorrow since I havn't been able to fix the problem any other way yet.

Appreciate it.

 

[AsusGuy]

Is the video card a factory OC part, or did you overclock it? That may cause some issues. Need a bit more info on the mobo as well.

 

[Kalmah]

I finally was able to get an error message.

"The nvblabla display driver stopped functioning properly..."

I currently am using latest official nvidia driver. Should I downgrade to an older driver maybe?
If so, I understand that the driver uninstall doesn't completely remove all aspects of the driver. Any suggested programs to remove it?


Yes, the graphics card is a pre-overclocked card.

 

[EvilBob]

if I read your original post correctly, the video card was not a new part? Just the mobo, memory, and processor?

other than checking the memory with memtest, what about your power supply? is it the old one from your p4d system? an 8600gt should't be hugely demanding, but I'd guess that you'd want at least a 350W p/s in there...

skimming the manual, i can see a few things to check:

Your motherboard has an automatic video card overclocking function - Gigabyte's "Robust Graphics Booster (RGB)" fiddles with bandwidth to the PCI-E bus - settings are Auto, Fast, and Turbo. I assume that you're on 'Auto' - you may want to try 'Fast' to see if it makes a difference. (you can google a few posts about RGB over on the gigabyte support (tweaktown) forums)

check that the PCI Express Frequency is at 100 MHz (Auto setting should be, but you can always manually set this to 100 to be safe; this makes sure that the board is talking to your video card at a safe speed)

you mentioned that you're not overclocking - are you sure that your board isn't? Set the "Performance Enhance" to STANDARD in the BIOS (default is a mild board-set overclock called 'turbo' - I personally prefer to manually overclock, rather than trust board auto settings)

 

[Kalmah]

Good information.

Yeah, the video card is left-over from previous build. It's a little over a year old.
As well as the power supply. I think it was a 430 watt.
Using HVmonitor, I'm not seeing any problems with power.

I did turn the performance feature down to normal instead of turbo, then turned it back to turbo again after I experienced another crash. I didn't notice the pci-e performance option though. I'll have to take a look at that.

I just wiped my video driver and installed an older version. (one that I know for a fact didn't have problems on my previous build). I have yet to test it though. I'm going to see how this turns out then have a look at the BIOS again.

I appreciate it.

 

[Kalmah]

Well folks, it turned out to be the ram. That's what I had figured, but I didn't want that to be the case. From my experience it normally takes several hours for memtest to find an error but it found it within minutes this time. I didn't really want to set and wait hours running memtest so I tried other options first.

Only 1 stick is bad. I just ordered replacements on newegg for $27!! The same memory was well over $100 on best buy's website. hah. I was considering just going and picking some up until I saw that.