For no other reason besides boredom I decided to start a thread about my experiences with my gaming pc, which may also be referred to as “one giant pain my ass for 4+ god damn months”.

Athlon 64 3400+
Abit AV8 Motherboard
Radeon 9800 Pro 128
80GB HD (Another 160GB waiting to be installed)
1GB DDR400 PC3200 (Another 1GB waiting to be installed)
(Antec case, DVD, CD, 420 watt PS, blah blah blah)

I’ll spare you all the details of the past 4 months. In short, frequent lockups with a number of different error messages. Countless hours have been spent troubleshooting and testing things out to see if the problems are fixed.

4 days ago I had the genius idea (lol) to update my bios….which was the only thing I had not updated. I went 4 days without a lockup. I would leave games running on the pc overnight just to test it. Pretty damn nice to have no problems after having day after day of lockups mid game during Counter Strike Source, Brothers in Arms, SimCity 4 & Civilization III.

So this morning (day 5) I pop in the CD for Brothers in Arms. This weird black box appears by the mouse – which will now only move horizontally. WTF is that I’m thinking. So I shut the giant pain in my god damn ass down and restart it. The boot process begins…Windows XP screen…then shit just goes black. Instead of prompting me for my password the monitor just goes into hibernation mode and that’s that. I restart the thing 2 or 3 more times with the same result. I try safe mode, it boots. Ok, so I then do a “normal” restart through Windows and get the same monitor shut down bullshit I got before. I try that boot option, “last known good configuration” or whatever the hell it is. The thing boots, but when it gets into windows it locks up right away and the display is all tweaked.

I pop open the case and sure as shit the video card fan has stopped spinning and the damn thing is sot hot it burns my fingers when I touch it. It’s toast. I filled out the online RMA form at ATI and am waiting for someone to answer the ticket. In the meantime I’ll be taking a trip to Best Buy today to pick up a new video card (probably the same one, Radeon 9800 Pro 128) so I can actually play a game or two sometime in the next week. It’s Saturday, so I don’t expect to hear anything on the RMA until Monday at the earliest…then I’ll still have to ship it to them and all that fun stuff.

Thread will be updated as the saga continues. If I end up tossing the whole PC out the window I’ll make sure to post a picture.

ATI is SHIT get NVIDIA.

As I mentioned I was going to Best Buy. Every time I go there I’m reminded of why I hate going there. First, they have a pathetic selection of video cards. All really cheap shit or “very expensive I’ll wait till’ they get cheaper” cards. The Radeon 9800 Pro 128 is about $250 on their website, but of course it’s out of stock.


The only middle of the road card they had was the GeForce FX 5700 VE 256meg. It was $175…slightly less than the Radeon card I wanted. I figured what the ****, I’ll give it a shot. My Radeon card will be replaced anyway so I’ll see what this thing can do.

Install was snap. Didn’t bother with the cd I just grabbed the most recent driver from the site. Set everything up, removed all the Radeon drivers & loaded up CS. My overall fps is about 10% lower than it was with the Radeon card using the same settings. Not bad considering the card was $75 cheaper.

Back to Best Buy for a minute – if there is a hell and I go there for me it will be having to try and actually buy something at best Buy for all eternity. There will be thousands of blue shirts standing around picking their asses while only one of them is actually checking people out at the register….and it will be her first day. All the while members of the geek squad will be asking me again and again if they can install the card for me. All the while the blue shirts will be asking if they can help with anything even though they know that regardless of what I need they won’t actually be able to offer any help what-so-ever.

Geek Squad is full of shit, do they really know computers or pretend to do... ****ing bestbus suck with everything, thats why I try to not shop there unless i really have to. Im glad that ur back on track and have CS runing.

wow man! I just woke up! I see you have been busy this morning. My pc has been going through the same issues. I thought I had it fixed 2 days ago when I loaded a beta bios for my ASUS A8V deluxe MOBO. Well, last night it locked up again! I am so sick of this crap!

ASUS a8v deluxe (nic and sound built in)
ATI 9800 256
1GB Corsair RAM
AMD 64 3500

I am so sick of this crap! Is this a chipset issue? Settings fo the processor or memory in the bios? There has to be a lot of people having the same issues. I have tried every thing. All of the drivers on the planet that will work for my hardware has been tried. Eye and I have different componetns having common issues. ABIT-ASUS

If some one can give me a solution to this problem, I will pay you.

Hmm you guys both use AMD, I have INTEL sitting on ASUS motherboard, and have never had any problems. Do you guys have overclocked cpus or not?

no over clocking.

I have no problems with my AMD system. Eye I had the same problem with my vid card too once, luckly I just had shit in the heatsink and fan, so I could clean it out before the fan stopped.

My fan was spotless. I've only the computer about 5 months and have cleaned it twice - once about a week ago. The fan was working when I cleaned it and for at least at least two days after. I had the side of the case off and had checked it a few times.

I haven't done any over clocking either. All stock.

Are you guys using two different types of RAM Memory? Different sizes? How about what RAM slots are your sticks in?

I have Kingston & think retard has Corsair. I've tried all combinations with memory and they didn't fix my problem. It *looks* like updating my bios was the ticket for me. The video card overheat was a side issue.

When you are done with that Best Buy vid card - I will buy it from you. I can use it to make a 3rd gaming pc.

Minor update...

After the installation of the new video card on Saturday my PC ran perfect for the rest of the weekend. I'm satisfied that the update to my bios fixed the lock up issues...finally.

This week I'll be adding another GB or memory & upgrading my power supply from the 420 watt to the 520 watt I bought last week.

Im glad that it worked out for you...

I think the verdict is still out on that. If I go a week lock up free I'll consider it "fixed".

Well, I updated memory last night and gamed for an hour or two...still no freezes:D

I may tackle the power supply tonight.

Im runung 2GB of Geil Ram at the moment and I have to say that in games I dont see much difference but whil working in windows, for example on Photoshop I see much more room for my pics and preformance overall in windows have incresed. What ram are you using?

I use Kingston, DDR400 PC3200.

i told ya it was over heating!

i told ya it was over heating!

Ahhh...two different issues here.

All of the lockups I had were a result of an outdated bios. After I updated the bios the lockups stopped.

The next "lockup" I had was on Saturday morning. It was a direct result of the cooling fan on my video card failing.

So yea heat eventually caused a lockup but it was after we talked;)

My gaming pc still continues to lock up in all video games! It hangs with scrambled video and I can still hear the sound in the background and still seem to be able to play the game for 10 seconds then the instant back to restart! F U C K ATI and their crap components! My fan still works and is clean as a whistle. This was my first ATI video card (9800gt 256). I am going back to Nvidea. I bet the thing never locks up again once the new card is nestled in to the agp slot ever so gently.......

I am still lock up free:D

Thats why I use INTEL and NVIDIA to avoid problems like yours.

I have INTEL and ATI and they work just fine, k thx.

Thats why I use INTEL and NVIDIA to avoid problems like yours.


i also use intel and ati and i have no problems so thats not it.

retard....please tell me u properly removed all your previous nVidia drivers before installing the Ati ones. I have nothing but success with Ati cards, maybe you got a RMA card or something. Do what Eye did also, maybe there is a new bios for your motherboard. Good luck.

I almost feel like "I've made it". It's been a couple of lock-up free weeks.

I should get my Radeon 9800 Pro back pretty soon. It will be interesting to see if reintroducing that video card to my computer brings back the problems...

i know shit about computers.. i just call brice.. hes my private personal geeksquad guy

i know shit about computers.. i just call brice.. hes my private personal geeksquad guy

That's scary. Something about the blind leading the blind comes to mind....

Well, perhaps the saga continues. For the first time in weeks my pc locked up in cs with the skipping/looping sound.

grrrrrrr:mad:

I hate computers!!!!!!!!!!!