nVidia and the Asus P5A-B motherboard instability in Win2k
This is a discussion about nVidia and the Asus P5A-B motherboard instability in Win2k in the Windows Hardware category; I just clean installed Windows 2000 on my PC and my Nvidia TNT2 Ultra card is extremely unstable. The official Nvidia Microsoft drivers cause the OS to freeze on startup After about 20-30 minutes of normal OS use such as browsing folders, installing programs or browsing the internet, with the latest Detonator 2 v5.
I just clean installed Windows 2000 on my PC and my Nvidia TNT2 Ultra card is extremely unstable. The official Nvidia Microsoft drivers cause the OS to freeze on startup After about 20-30 minutes of normal OS use such as browsing folders, installing programs or browsing the internet, with the latest Detonator 2 v5.22 drivers or the beta Detonator 2 v5.32 drivers, my computer blue screens everytime saying that there is an error with the "nv4_disp.dll" file. This is the display dll for the Nvidia Detonator 2 v5.X drivers. I ran a few tests and here is what I found:
When I load up the operating system with the latest Nvidia 5.X drivers and leave my computer alone, it will not crash.
When I run Quake 3 in a demo loop for a long time, nothing happens, it runs fine and never crashes. I had it run for about 1 and 1/2 hours.
When I run a Winamp song in a loop it crashes within 20-30 minutes.
After 20-30 minutes of miscellaneous operating system use, it will crash.
I have heard that the P5A has trouble supplying power to the GeForce cards and some people have told me this could be the problem. I have flashed the BIOS on my motherboard from the official 1007 to the beta 1010 version. I have also adjusted the voltage settings on my motherboard to increase power to the AGP card. Both have not worked. I have e-mailed Diamond Multimedia customer support and they advised me to configure BIOS settings. None of these worked. Also, I have downloaded the latest AGP drivers from Acer/ALI's website.
My brother's computer is identical to mine except he has a 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee. When I put the Nvidia TNT2 Ultra in his computer with the latest drivers, it will also behave the same way and crash.
I tested a different Diamond Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra from a friend's PC and it behaved the same way.
I then tested a Creative Labs Annihilator Pro GeForce2 GTS 32mb card and it behaved the same way.
I then tested a 64mb Voodoo 5 and the computer is completely stable! (possibly since it uses it's own power supply and/or different drivers?)
I found that the Detonator 3.78 Drivers work but that they don't support OpenGL or Direct 3D!
I also found that if I use the Detonator 2 5.XX Drivers and keep the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the left (any other notch will make it crash) the computer is stable, but the display of course is very sluggish!
With the Detonator 5.32 Drivers, the computer will also crash DURING THE GAME in the latest Star Trek Voyager Elite Force Demo (Quake III engine)
Here are my complete system specifications:
Asus P5A-B Socket 7 motherboard
Diamond Viper v770 Ultra TNT2 32mb
AMD K6-2 550
128 PC100 SDRAM
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Seagate 8.6gb HD
Creative Labs 48X CD-ROM
Mistumi 4804TE CD-RW
3com Ethernet 3509B ISA card
Realtek Ethernet PCI card
Diamond SupraMAX 56i Modem
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 03 July 2000).]
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 03 July 2000).]
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 09 July 2000).]
When I load up the operating system with the latest Nvidia 5.X drivers and leave my computer alone, it will not crash.
When I run Quake 3 in a demo loop for a long time, nothing happens, it runs fine and never crashes. I had it run for about 1 and 1/2 hours.
When I run a Winamp song in a loop it crashes within 20-30 minutes.
After 20-30 minutes of miscellaneous operating system use, it will crash.
I have heard that the P5A has trouble supplying power to the GeForce cards and some people have told me this could be the problem. I have flashed the BIOS on my motherboard from the official 1007 to the beta 1010 version. I have also adjusted the voltage settings on my motherboard to increase power to the AGP card. Both have not worked. I have e-mailed Diamond Multimedia customer support and they advised me to configure BIOS settings. None of these worked. Also, I have downloaded the latest AGP drivers from Acer/ALI's website.
My brother's computer is identical to mine except he has a 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee. When I put the Nvidia TNT2 Ultra in his computer with the latest drivers, it will also behave the same way and crash.
I tested a different Diamond Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra from a friend's PC and it behaved the same way.
I then tested a Creative Labs Annihilator Pro GeForce2 GTS 32mb card and it behaved the same way.
I then tested a 64mb Voodoo 5 and the computer is completely stable! (possibly since it uses it's own power supply and/or different drivers?)
I found that the Detonator 3.78 Drivers work but that they don't support OpenGL or Direct 3D!
I also found that if I use the Detonator 2 5.XX Drivers and keep the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the left (any other notch will make it crash) the computer is stable, but the display of course is very sluggish!
With the Detonator 5.32 Drivers, the computer will also crash DURING THE GAME in the latest Star Trek Voyager Elite Force Demo (Quake III engine)
Here are my complete system specifications:
Asus P5A-B Socket 7 motherboard
Diamond Viper v770 Ultra TNT2 32mb
AMD K6-2 550
128 PC100 SDRAM
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Seagate 8.6gb HD
Creative Labs 48X CD-ROM
Mistumi 4804TE CD-RW
3com Ethernet 3509B ISA card
Realtek Ethernet PCI card
Diamond SupraMAX 56i Modem
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 03 July 2000).]
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 03 July 2000).]
[This message has been edited by DOScrash (edited 09 July 2000).]
Participate in our website and join the conversation
This subject has been archived. New comments and votes cannot be submitted.
Jul 3
Sep 7
0
16 minutes
Responses to this topic
well, depends on the way you take it. i think that when buying NVIDIA based card, you`re trading off top performance for stability a little bit. these cards are superb, if they ran, and there is actually very few systems that run them really crispy with no flaws. there are huge threads about they incompatibility with K7 as well. and not to leave intel alone, abit BE-II 6 has been known for some probs too. the resume is this: if you want you system for gaming, buy NVIDIA card and you have to understand that with the state of drivers now, you will have to reboot from time to time. (those reported cases of crash every 20-30 minutes are extreme and probably are caused by either defective hardware or some settings mistake - my RIVA TNT/ASUS P5A goes BSOD one time per day in average- if the comp is under normal load the whole day). and if you want stable system, running all the time, with no crash, as a server or whatever, it`s stupid to stuff in TNT or GeForce, go for decent 16 MB ATI, and you are more than fine.
At the end of the day all the cards that use the nvidia drivers seem to be suseptable to this, i have three systems at home, only one has an nvidia card, its the only one that crashes ni w2k, with nv4disp.dll, however upgrading to lw3 for w2k has reduced that error to a point that it no longer matters to me. Three friends of mine have nvidia cards, and two of those get that very same error.. seems pretty common to me.
REAL GOOD NEWS FOR ASUS P5A BASED MOTHERBOARDS:
Riva tnt cards DO WORK under windows 2000. The only thing you have to do is :
1-disable k6 write allocate and EXTERNAL CACHE in your BIOS.
2-Add these ali agp registry keys posted before.
Beleive me, I used to have BSOD every 30 minutes, and now I can leave windows 2000 for hours without a single crash!
Riva tnt cards DO WORK under windows 2000. The only thing you have to do is :
1-disable k6 write allocate and EXTERNAL CACHE in your BIOS.
2-Add these ali agp registry keys posted before.
Beleive me, I used to have BSOD every 30 minutes, and now I can leave windows 2000 for hours without a single crash!
yes, i modified the registry keys and it seems to be fine. well, i have not test the system by letting in run for more than one day, but i will do that during this weekend.
and also: i did not disable the cache, i did not want to get rid of that while it is there. so it seems it might work without it, maybe it depends, so the best way is to try it for the very one system. and as far as the K6-2 write, this is one of the settings modified by registry entry and i think they switch it ON, and thats great because it is really noticeable, when you turn it off.
and also: i did not disable the cache, i did not want to get rid of that while it is there. so it seems it might work without it, maybe it depends, so the best way is to try it for the very one system. and as far as the K6-2 write, this is one of the settings modified by registry entry and i think they switch it ON, and thats great because it is really noticeable, when you turn it off.
Thanks for all your posts! I've had this problem with a creative tnt w/w2k SP1 for weeks. I had to save every 5 minutes because I didn't know when it would BSOD next. I made the bios changes and registry additions and now it's been up for 4 days!
Has anyone tried this w/o disabling the external cache? I've disabled mine and would like it back.
Thanks again,
Joe
Has anyone tried this w/o disabling the external cache? I've disabled mine and would like it back.
Thanks again,
Joe
Again as I have posted on a few other topics here, I had a VIA Chipset that was riddled with tons of issues with gaming and Win2k. My solution was to put in an 815E chipset from Intel with the same hardware. (I had Asus motherboards and Abit motherboards for my VIA Chipsets).
All my problems completely went away once I made this switch. Games that were crashing at rock solid now upon hours of play (Deus Ex is a great example. It would last maybe 1-2 mins on the VIA Chipset). I'm using the latest Det 3 drivers with the SB Live Platinum and have yet to get a single blue screen or crash. I hate to say, but conform and go for Intel if you want a rock solid system.
All my problems completely went away once I made this switch. Games that were crashing at rock solid now upon hours of play (Deus Ex is a great example. It would last maybe 1-2 mins on the VIA Chipset). I'm using the latest Det 3 drivers with the SB Live Platinum and have yet to get a single blue screen or crash. I hate to say, but conform and go for Intel if you want a rock solid system.
