XFX 780i Issues

[Kelgalis]

* Sorry to post twice, I did not see the XFX support forum.

I purchased an XFX 780i from newegg a little over a week ago now. I got everything setup happy and dandy, until I began having issues. The setup is as follows:

XP Pro SP2
XFX 780i
Intel E8400
2 x XFX 8800GTS 512MB
4 x OCZ Reaper DDR2 800 1GB (2.5GB due to 4GB limitation)
Western Digital Raptor 150GB
Western Digital 500GB SATA
LiteOn SATA disk drive
HP IDE disk drive
Thermaltake Toughpower 850w
Antec 900 Case

As have a lot of people, I got the nvgts.sys BSOD's off the bat once I got the motherboard drivers installed. After doing a little research, that was fixed by uninstalling the SATA drivers. After that, things went pretty smooth, except for a few BSOD's here and there (such as cfds.sys, fltmgr.sys and TDI.sys). These have not been consistent, and have not been much of an issue. I also updated the BIOS to P03.

The main problem as of right now is the disk drive. When I go to install programs that require multiple disks to install, the installer will simply freeze when the second disk is put in or after you hit 'OK'. This has been tried with BF2 and WoW. Also, autorun seems to have issues even after I checked all registry and Windows settings for it. The drive will just sit there and make a 'clicking' noise and not do anything until I go into My Computer and start the disk. Even still, the disk sometimes still will not read. Dead disk drive, right? Wrong. In the system setup I listed two disk drives. I started with the LiteOn, which I replaced today with an HP IDE disk drive. I figured that it might be the disk drive, or it could also be the SATA controller. Threw it in, booted up, and it didn't fix a damn thing. Same EXACT problem, with two different drives, one SATA, one IDE.

Another problem is that every so often when booting, it will come up with a screen saying that Windows needs to check the disk drive for consistency. It'll do it's thing and delete a few things and replace a few things and I'm off. No big deal, but I would rather it not stay.

Also, when running Crysis, it won't even get through the loading screen for the first level, and it will simply error out and I'll send an error report. However, I ran 3DMark06 with great success, achieving 16,303 at 3.5GHz w/ a 9x multiplier. I also ran MemTest for 12 hours straight with 0 errors.

My final problem is that Windows has been somewhat sketchy. Random things will freeze, e.g. changing the quick launch settings and such.

I'm no expert at diagnosing issues such as these, but I think a lot of it points towards the motherboard, especially since it has some known issues. However, I could also see some of this being issues with XP, but like I said, this is not my area of expertise.

- Kyle

[xfxsupport]

Tough to troubleshoot issues like that. Do me a favor and try downclocking the system RAM to 667MHZ and let me know if that helps at all.

[Kelgalis]

Tough to troubleshoot issues like that. Do me a favor and try downclocking the system RAM to 667MHZ and let me know if that helps at all.

I gave it a try and also took the CPU back to stock 3.0GHz, but it was no better. It even BSOD'd when I exited back to Windows. I'm going to try installing XP on the 2nd hard drive, and see if that helps any, maybe XP is somehow messed up on this hard drive.

- Kyle

[Miker]

Did you do a clean install of windows when you made the new rig? You can't reuse a old HD with Windows on it.

Also, a bad OC can hose windows.

[Kelgalis]

Did you do a clean install of windows when you made the new rig? You can't reuse a old HD with Windows on it.

Also, a bad OC can hose windows.

Yes, both hard drives were brand spanking new along with everything else in the computer. All problems were observed before OC, and the OC did not affect the stability.

- Kyle

[Kelgalis]

I installed windows on the second hard drive last night, which fixed some problems. The disk drive worked fine, so I was able to install BF2, but this only caused more problems. Once I installed, I of course needed to patch it and download the add-ons I had previously purchased. When attempting to install the add-ons, the EA install program came up with a 'catastrophic error' on both installers. I just left those be for now. Then, once patched, I tried out the game, which proceeded to BSOD when loading with an rtkHDaud.sys error, the audio driver obviously. I let Prime95 run all night with no issues, so all of the games run like crap if at all, and the stressers and benchmarkers run fine ::-?:

[Kelgalis]

This board is going to be RMA'd tomorow in exchange for the eVGA, unless an XFX tech can fix it.

[Miker]

eVGA and XFX board are the same board, made by the same company, Foxconn. So switching them won't really do much, as XFX has the superior warranty and support.

To me it is really starting to sound like you have a bad Raid/SATA Driver floppy. You did install drivers will F6 during windows install right?

[Kelgalis]

eVGA and XFX board are the same board, made by the same company, Foxconn. So switching them won't really do much, as XFX has the superior warranty and support.

Yes, but it seems like the motherboard has issues anyways and needs to be replaced, and the step-up program is pretty hard to beat. I'd disagree with you on the support issue, but I'm not one for internet bickering.

To me it is really starting to sound like you have a bad Raid/SATA Driver floppy. You did install drivers will F6 during windows install right?

The thing is, I've had some really random BSODS: TDI.sys, cdfs.sys, fltmgr.sys, rtkHDaud.sys. So we've got a networking BSOD, a file manager, and an audio :? What do you mean by:

"You did install drivers will F6 during windows install right?"

As far as the SATA driver being bad, I didn't install the extra program on the driver disk, but I did at first make that mistake and got quite worried. Do you think it could be causing errors in installation and so causing these random BSOD's? Also, one thing to consider is possibly a bad hard drive, because if you look at the reviews on newegg, WD's quality control seems to have seen better days.

- Kyle

[Miker]

I had a bad RAID floppy that messed up a XP install before, and it could be a HDD problem. The more you talk about it the more a HDD problem sounds it the problem. Does the PC work with one drive?

[Kelgalis]

I had a bad RAID floppy that messed up a XP install before, and it could be a HDD problem. The more you talk about it the more a HDD problem sounds it the problem. Does the PC work with one drive?

I did two installs on the Raptor, the first one being screwed up by me not knowing the issues with drivers, the second install has been mostly stable, and benchmarked very well with a 3.5GHz OC (the OC didn't affect stability one bit). But, when I load up real games, Company of Heroes runs like crap, and Crysis errors out. Also, autorun never worked on this install, and I couldn't install multiple disk programs (except for CoH).

So I loaded a 3rd time onto the 500GB and it's stable, and was just fine dealing with P95 for 8 hours. But again, when I go to play games, it BSOD's on the rtkHDaud.sys in the loading screen. This install was fine with multiple disk programs, but something still doesn't seem right.

On a side note, should I have the nVidia Network Connections Manager driver installed? I'm guessing that's a no, and it's fine w/o it.

- Kyle

[Miker]

I did two installs on the Raptor, the first one being screwed up by me not knowing the issues with drivers, the second install has been mostly stable, and benchmarked very well with a 3.5GHz OC (the OC didn't affect stability one bit). But, when I load up real games, Company of Heroes runs like crap, and Crysis errors out. Also, autorun never worked on this install, and I couldn't install multiple disk programs (except for CoH).

So I loaded a 3rd time onto the 500GB and it's stable, and was just fine dealing with P95 for 8 hours. But again, when I go to play games, it BSOD's on the rtkHDaud.sys in the loading screen. This install was fine with multiple disk programs, but something still doesn't seem right.

On a side note, should I have the nVidia Network Connections Manager driver installed? I'm guessing that's a no, and it's fine w/o it.

- Kyle

Disable as many things as you can in BIOS, Network, Sound, Serial, Parallel Ports and see if it changes anything.

I would have to guess bad HDD still, as when you install/load a game it puts the most stress on the HDD. But to have 3 drives mess up is bad.

[Kelgalis]

Disable as many things as you can in BIOS, Network, Sound, Serial, Parallel Ports and see if it changes anything.

I would have to guess bad HDD still, as when you install/load a game it puts the most stress on the HDD. But to have 3 drives mess up is bad.

It's only been two drives, but I installed 2 copies on the Raptor, and 1 on the other.

I gave it a try and disabled the audio, serial ports, and everything I could. BF2 ran like it should, but when I rebooted two more BSOD's got shat out: ntfs.sys :ahhhhh: and splitter.sys. After reboots I was able to get BF2 to run just fine w/ audio. I will do further testing tomorrow, because tonight is already way later than it should be.

[Kelgalis]

When booting up just 5 minutes ago, XP again went into it's 'file corruption' program and ran through it's 3 steps. At this point, I would bet that it's either the hard drives or the SATA controller, because that and because Company of Heroes had an error in installing, as have a couple other programs here and there.

[Kelgalis]

A third hard drive was purchased, but I got the same results. The motherboard is going out on an RMA to newegg tomorrow.

- Kyle

[Miker]

A third hard drive was purchased, but I got the same results. The motherboard is going out on an RMA to newegg tomorrow.

- Kyle

Goodluck.