7900GS 512MB AGP not booting into XP

[Frechy]

Dear viewers,

this morning i bought an XFX 7900GS 512MB AGP PV-T71K-YDF3 as a final upgrade to my old P4 system. Prior to installing it i booted with my old but trustworthy voltmodded 7600GS into XP and removed drivers. Rebooted and powered down. Installed 7900GS and, wow, i see the windows loading screen appear very slowly, and after a second or 2 the system freezes and i get a checkered like screen showing a part of the windows logo all over my screen.

I swapped cards again and everything works just fine. Thing is i can't game with the 7600GS, i hit it so hard with OCing and Vmodding it can only do 1 or maybe 2 benches and then totally fails, gaming is out of the question, i can play for about 3 minutes before a reboot... :D don't care anyway, it's a gigabyte card, actually want to see it burn :P

Anyway, so my system is not that bad.

Intel P4 3.2GHz Northwood S478
Abit IC7-G Rev 1.2 latest bios.
2x 1 GB OCZ Platinum DDR400 CL2 sticks
2x 74GB raptor raid0
Aerocool Turbine Power 450 Watts

For the sake of trying to get the card running i set CPU, Memory and Motherboard back to stock speeds and normal voltages. All motherboard vmods have been returned to normal values.

I have seen numerous problems with the 7900GS series here and on other forums, but i can't seem to work it out.

Tried installing the card when first deleting the drivers with the 7600GS then powering down and tried to install the card wit the drivers installed with the 7600GS and then just swapping it for the 7900GS. Tried to boot from raid0 setup and tried booting from 1 normal harddisk. Nothing helps.

Please advise, i have made a ticket, but i want it resolved as fast as possible...

[Miker]

This card doesn't like the low FSB northwood CPUs. Even with a 3.4GHz Extreme at 800FSB the card is bottlenecked at the CPU, at 533FSB the card is just to bottlenecked.

[Frechy]

This card doesn't like the low FSB northwood CPUs. Even with a 3.4GHz Extreme at 800FSB the card is bottlenecked at the CPU, at 533FSB the card is just to bottlenecked.

For the record, the northy i have is 800 FSB.

Can anyone confirm the point Miker just made?
Or is this card DOA allready, cannot believe that, but hey, it could be, seen it a lot around here...

[xfxsupport]

If you are getting that checkerboard look only with this card it does sound like it my be faulty. Are you able to test it in another system? If not can you exchange it though your retailer?

[Miker]

O, you have 800FSB, it should be ok then. You have AGP 8x, what is PSU specs?

[Frechy]

If you are getting that checkerboard look only with this card it does sound like it my be faulty. Are you able to test it in another system? If not can you exchange it though your retailer?

I am able to do so tomorrow, will try to get a replacement. Shouldn't be too hard.

O, you have 800FSB, it should be ok then. You have AGP 8x, what is PSU specs?

PSU should be good enough, i thought, but can't find them anymore, that this one had 18~20A on all 12V rails each, got 4 of them. My old PSU always had 2 rails dedicated to my GPU for OC and Vmodding purposes, i could try that with this one. Would void warranty though :(

I'll run down to the store tomorrow and get a new one, if the problem persists, it can hardly be the card. Something else must be bothering me then.

By the way, could a fresh XP install help? My raptor raid0 xp install is only 1 month old, but hey, that could be worth a try...

I'll report back tomorrow with an update :)
Thanks for the fast reply's. Really appreciate this!

[Miker]

You can't over amp a GPU, if you have 40AMP going to it it would be ok.

[Frechy]

You can't over amp a GPU, if you have 40AMP going to it it would be ok.

This pisses me off...

Okay, got a new one today, fan was not working, had to fix that, but hey, it still didn't work! Wow, what a surprise, sme problem again, not being able to get past or even AT the windows loading screen, this can mean two things, that dealer has a really bad batch (which is highly unlikely) or my PSU can't deliver... I am pondering all evening about some idea. Let me explain...

I have the Aerocool PSU, 450W, which doesn't quite deliver the required 20Amps for the card. The card requires a molex connection. The PSU has an unused PCI-Xpress connector which has 3 12V lines.

If i connect the PCI-X connector to the molex 12V connection, would that blow my PSU? I know the PSU has 2 12V rails, but i can't figure out what connections are 12V1 or 12V2...

So connect the 3 12V lines including theyr GND's and add them to the molex connector, this would theoretically give me 18A x2... Right ?

[Frechy]

This pisses me off...

Okay, got a new one today, fan was not working, had to fix that, but hey, it still didn't work! Wow, what a surprise, sme problem again, not being able to get past or even AT the windows loading screen, this can mean two things, that dealer has a really bad batch (which is highly unlikely) or my PSU can't deliver... I am pondering all evening about some idea. Let me explain...

I have the Aerocool PSU, 450W, which doesn't quite deliver the required 20Amps for the card. The card requires a molex connection. The PSU has an unused PCI-Xpress connector which has 3 12V lines.

If i connect the PCI-X connector to the molex 12V connection, would that blow my PSU? I know the PSU has 2 12V rails, but i can't figure out what connections are 12V1 or 12V2...

So connect the 3 12V lines including theyr GND's and add them to the molex connector, this would theoretically give me 18A x2... Right ?

Excuse me for double posting...

Finally figured out my problem. Before the upgrade, i had a day of testing with a non-WHQL driver version 169.38. Apparently, a single file of this beta driver had been left in the NVidia folder, causing pretty much this complete problem. All is solved now and actually running double FPS compared to the 7600GS.

Thank you so much for the quality reply's!