8890 locking/crashing during gaming/intense CPU activity

All,

I just started playing with my new 8890 and have been having some problems, unfortunately. First, I fired up Everquest. The game loads fine and starts up great. Fast as all hell. But after anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes of activity, I get a hard lockup, which requires that I press the power button to reboot. I didn't take EQ crashing as unexpected. The game is seriously flawed in the coding department and always has been.

I figured I should try and see what was happening so I fired up 3DMark03 (bulid 330) and ran the free benchmark suite. I get through the first 4 graphics tests ok and the get an immediate lock or quit to desktop when the CPU tests start. The crashes to desktop will be followed inevitably by Windows STOP error blue screens.

In both of these cases the machine is working really HARD. The fan is really spinning and a ton of hot air is blowing out of the vent on the right side, which I would assume would be normal.

I am really hoping my problems are only with these particular games and that they are not hardware related. The machine has been 100 percent stable while it is on in the normal desktop. It just seems that using the video card causes havoc.

Is anyone else having any probles like these? Could I have a bad Sodimm? Is it a heat related problem? The room I am in is not particularly hot, it is pretty cool in fact.

Anyway, thanks for any help.

Ed

-------------
8890
3.2 HT p4
1 gig ram
60 gig 7200 hd
WinXP Home

Thanks for the quick reply. I am using the drivers that Sager installed, the 7.93 version. I think these are the ones that Adam said to use. I am running a MemTest right now, just to see if it is RAM related. It does look like it could be ATI driver related tho. Can anyone else get all the way through the 3DMark03 test suite?

wessam,

This is interesting. I am in the middle of doing a couple of hour run of MemTest to see what happens. I will post the results of that when I am done.

For laughs, I used PowerStrip to change the AGP settings from 8x to 4x and it actually got through another 3DMark03 test before crapping out again... hmmm...

Well, at least it's under warranty! :-)

Thanks for your input.

Memory is probably bad...

Ok, well more facts. I let MemTest run for over an hour all by it self with nothing else running and BOOM! BSOD city..

Bad SODIMM may be the culprit.

I guess I'll send Adam a note and point him to this thread.

One SODIMM = Goodness

I did what they told wessam to do (I haven't talked to tech support yet, so I hope they don't slap me around too bad ;-) and removed one of the SODIMMs. I left the one on the left in and took the right one out. Voila! 3DMark03 ran to completion with no problems. Oh, BTW score was 2980 - not bad with all gfx props left at default in the ATI panel.

BTW for whoever asked: The ram is Apacer PC3200 CL2.5.

*sigh* oh well. At least I can use this beautiful thing until they figure out the next step.

*WAAAHHH*

Well, it looks like my machine will need to go back to Sager.

I called them today and they called back and asked me an obvious question: Did you try putting the SODIMM you though was bad back in and see if it fails? *DOH* I was hoping to avoid that, but they were right. I did and guess what? It's working perfectly as far as I can tell! Ouch... maybe the actual motherboard has a flaw..

Oh well. Better to find out now instead of later on. I am going to run on the one SODIMM for the rest of the night and they are calling me tomorrow to let me know what's next.

I feel like Ralphie from the Christmas Story after he shot his eye out!!!