Severe video / gaming trouble

[hemi440]

I have an AMD K6-III 500, 128MB RAM, a GeForce2 GTS card and an Aureal Vortex2 sound card. I have the latest drivers for everything installed. I have also recently reformatted and reinstalled my system to remove the clutter and any ghosting problems with old drivers. Despite all of the above my system just will not stop crashing. Most of the time games simply refuse to load and the machine either locks up or resets itself. If I am ever allowed to start a game, it is simply a matter of time before a crash wings its way.

Help! I have tried everything I can think of; which in some cases has been more than the tech helplines have come up with. My system should work blindingly, but there is clearly something deeply wrong.
I must also add that my machine is virus free and I have spent many sleepless nights trying various driver combinations in an attempt to isolate the problem. I maintain my system very well on a regular basis.

Examples: Deus Ex & Vampire worked, only after much struggling. Midtown Madness2 didnt start, neither did Imperium Galactica 2. Both Ground Control & Earth 2150 I can't get anywhere with. (If it will shed any light, when running Earth 2150's setup program, OpenGL testing is fantastic - very high FPS in nearly all resolutions - but the game does not load. When testing the D3D mode, the machine always crashes just after starting the graphical test.)
I beg someone for some help. The only game I haven't had crash on me yet is Arkanoid and I am worried that soon even that will be taken away from me.

Many thanks in advance,

[Prader Willi]

I had a similar problem when I built my Thunerbird system, wiht a Via chipset mobo. The problem in my case was an incompatibiity between my Monstersound MX300 soundcard (based on aureal, vortex 2)and the mobo. If you have a VIA chipset Mobo, a possible conflict between the mobo and your Vortex 2 soundcard would be worth checking out.

[hemi440]

Well, I think you may have hit the nail on the head, as I have an MX300 sound card and a VIA motherboard.

Please tell me there is something I can do about it!

What I will do is remove the soundcard and see if the games run OK. If so, then I think a new soundcard is heading my way. If not, where should I go from there?

PS I am already planning a 1Ghz Athlon system, but I still have this system for a while and I have put a lot of time and effort (plus some cash) into it!

[Fubar512]

Hey, Hemi (440?) Try this site http://www.geforcefaq.com. I was experiencing crashes in lots of games on my Tbird system, then I came across this site, applied some of the suggestions posted there, and solved them all! There's also a known issue involving Geforce 2s and some super seven mobos, due to VIA's AGP bios and their AGP drivers.

Fubar 512

[Prader Willi]

The Diamond site recommended updating the 4 in 1 drivers that go with the Via chipset to the latest version. However, this did not help in my case. I switched to a SB Live soundcard and everything worked fine.

Check out Fubar's link also, there are some known issues with Geforce cards and the Via chipset-- has to do with the AGP speed.

The following is from this website: http://go.to/kt7faq
Hope it helps.

Why does my A3D/Aureal sound card keep crashing my computer under heavy activity?

The following problem was noted for VIA KX133 chipset motherboards before the KT133 chipset was released. The KT7 motherboard uses the VIA KT133 chipset which is very similar to the KX133 chipset. The following comments therefore apply to the KT7 and KT7-RAID motherboards.

For audio cards that use A3D audio chip there appears to be an incompatibility that causes the KX133 system to deadlock when system traffic is heavy. The reason for this is that the A3D chip issues one memory read request cycle to the North Bridge and expects a grant within 4 mico-sec of latency time. If PCI TRDY# is not asserted after 4 mico-sec, the A3D hardware will de-assert the FRAME# and REQ# to terminate the operation. However, the A3D audio software driver cannot acknowledge the termination and continues waiting for hardware response. Hence the system hangs. This issue will only occur during heavy system traffic when the North Bridge cannot grant access to A3D audio chip within the 4 mico-sec latency time. There is no known work-around for this issue, and the principal advice is not to use A3D-based sound cards with KX133 based motherboards. Source: VIA Application note Serial #AN137 Date 07/05/00. This information found at BrokenPixel.

One possible solution may be to reduce the sound quality setting in games to reduce the load on the Northbridge.