x600xt - A8N-SLI Deluxe problem with 3d games

Hi,

I've upgraded my computer system a couple of months ago with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor, the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mainboard, 1GB of RAM and for graphics card the Sapphire ATI x600xt card.

I have this rahter annoying problem when I play 3d games such as far cry, doom 3 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.
It goes like this: When I'm playing these games after about 5 minutes my screen goes completely black. The LED on my monitor goes orange as if it gets no input. The only way to bring it back up is to restart the computer. The funny thing is that for a while I was able to play Rollercoaster Tycoon without crashes.

I must say that I recently upgraded my bios with the Asus utility, and I've installed the latest ATI Catalyst version. I've been searching the web for ages trying to find the cause of this problem.

Anyway, I will attach what dxdiag spawned about my system, hope you guys have some advice for me.

thanks in advance.

Dxdiag in attachment

 

OK first question is have you the latest drivers for your video card? Would recommend the ones directly from the ATI website.
Also noticed that you have loads of partitions on there, do you need them all? And another thing that stood out here was that they were formatted with the FAT32 system, an old and outdated way to format. If you can, reformat these with the NTFS and try the drivers from the manufacturer's website. Then give the games a run.
Failing this, your psu could be the trouble.

 

I agree psu,did you upgrade it when you bought your new parts or has it been in there for donkeys years,could you post the name and model.

 

I have the latest drivers from the ATI website, before installing those, I completely removed the old ones (with drivercleaner). If you think the formatting of the partitions can be the problem, I'll convert them to NTFS, but I must that it has been like that since I bought my hard drives. In my previous configuration this has never been a problem. Fact is when I first installed WinXP, I only formatted the system partitions in NTFS file system. I'll format my drives using the tools from the Seagate website.

As a reply to Rikky: Yes I bought a new PSU whit my new parts. It is a Zalman ZM400B-APS. The guys at the store assured me that this would do the trick. I must say that the main power connector is a 20 pins connector, while the slot on my mainboard takes 24 pins. But I have put a convertor piece in between, and I also have connected an extra 4 pin connector on my mainboard as stated in the manual.

Hope you guys have enough info.
thanks

 

Yeh I'm thinking 400W might just not be enough.

Also, can you try your video card out on a friend's pc or something and give the games a go?

 

Check this thread out,I dont wanna type it again.LOL

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=63086

 

Thanks for your help so far,

Unfortunately I don't know anybody who has a PCI-Express mainboard, so trying my card with a friend isn't really an option.
What I am going to do however is make sure I can get my hands on another PSU. I'm gonna ask at the store if they have one they use for testing and see if can borrow it to test it in my system, since I don't want to spend over a hundred euros to find out my problem isn't solved, besides the PSU I have now is also new.

When I get the new PSU I'll keep you guys updated.

thanks again.

 

....Did the "guy" that assured you make sure to sell you an actual ATX 2.0 PSU?

 

Do you have the power connector going direct from the power supply to the video card? I've seen problems like that where a hard drive was drawing power and it was leaving the video card with a little less than it wanted. Overheating can also cause that sort of problem, so check the airflow around the video card, make sure the fan on the video card is running, etc....It may also be an overheat issue with the chipset or another component, IRQs being shared, etc...

These are just some ideas...

 

@Lanfear: It's ATX 2.03

@Targon: I don't think the graphics card has slot for a power connector. I will check on that this weekend, I'll also make sure to run the games with an open case.

Some more news: I was able to run the 3dmark03 test without crashing. So now I'm even more puzzled. The test is supposed to really stress your 3d card right? So I would have expected to crash while doing the test, but it completed.

thanks.