Phalanx-Imawano

I think I recently accidentally damaged my motherboard (ASUS P4P800-X) while installing a new Fan/Heatsink (Global WIN CAK4-88T, which proved to be a better and quieter cooler than the previously installed Thermlatake Volcano 7+, but tricky to install - the screwdriver I used slipped at one point and stuck part of the motherboard in the process). While my PC boots up okay, the built-in SATA ports don't work anymore (in fact in the Windows Device Manager, only 1 set of the Primary/Secondary IDE channels are present; there used to be two of each, one set for ATA-100 and the other for SATA; at the moment my SATA drives are connected to my Promise SATAII150+ PCI controller card). So I'm planning on replacing the board in case there's more damage than what is currently visible. What's a good replacement board? I'm contemplating on either the ASUS P4P800E Deluxe (i865 chipset w/ SATA RAID) or the more expensive ASUS P4C800E Deluxe (i875 chipset also with SATA RAID) which might just be out of my budget at the moment until payday comes. Either case it's gonna have to be something that can handle my Pentium4 3.0E Prescott and a pair of 512MB DDR-400 DIMMs (Dual Channel mode). One website claimed a mobo with the i875 chipset is better due to its alleged improved power rating over the i865 chipset (true or false?).

Well I decided to go ahead and get the P4P800E Deluxe. I'm very pleased so far - I guess thanks to the fact that it has the same chipset as my old board, there was no need to go through the cumbersome Windows XP Repair-Install (although WPA decided my copy of WinXP needed reactivation so I have 3 days to do so). After playing around, I learned that both the ICH5 and Promise SATA ports can function either in RAID or non-RAID modes depending on the BIOS settings (though in Windows, the Promise controller needs a different driver depending on the mode). Even better - I used to have problems with my Seagate 120GB SATA drive when it was connected to an onboard SATA port on my old P4P800-X - any write operation would either put it in PIO mode or send WinXP into BOSD (an interim solution was a separate Promise PCI SATA controller card). None of that happening with this new board - even with the ICH5R ports (i.e. this board has no issues with SATA drives having NCQ capability, so I was able to get rid of the Promise PCI SATA card, plus there's the onboard Promise controller anyway if I'm gonna add more devices). Other bonuses I got to like are the 1394 ports and the fact that the AGP slot is given some breathing space away from the PCI slots (there's a gap between the AGP slot and the first PCI slot where another PCI slot would have been - something unique to this board and its brother the P4P800-SE) so that any Vidcard with a big bad heatsink/fan (like my old Inno3D GeForce FX5600 VIVO which has an almost 1" thick heatsink) won't crowd my PCI cards.

Question about that P4C800 - is that the one with RAID support (ICH5R or Promise controller?)? If yes, can those RAID ports (ATA-100 and SATA) be used for regular hard disk setups and not as RAID?

Anybody know a way to extract or monitor S.M.A.R.T. information from any device connected to a PCI IDE controller like the Promise SATA150 TX2+? (information such as a device's temperature) Right now I have Speedfan which can get such information, but only from devices connected to the motherboard's controller ports, not those on the Promise controller card. I sure would like to monitor the Seagate 120GB SATA drive I have which is connected to the aformentioned Promise controller in my system. After installing Speedfan I found out one of my Hard Disks (Seagate 160GB ATA-100, connected to one of the onboard IDE ports) was running really hot (56 degrees Celsius), so I had a Hard Disk cooler fan assembly installed for it (so now it runs at a cooler 42C). Now I'm kinda worried about the 120GB SATA drive.

Yeah, unfortunately the Aero-4 (nor its equivalents) was not available, only the lite version could be found here (the one I mentioned that was like the Aero-4 actually had a mixed Copper-Aluminum heatsink, and actually performed worse than the Aero-4 lite). One of the nasty quirks about living here in the Philippines - not everything you want is available (it was hard enough looking for a good NVIDIA card - they're so rare here nowadays). I was lucky the Volcano 7+ itself was available here at all. Would you believe when I went to one store and asked a clerk for a good heatsink/fan for the P4 3.0GHz he tried to sell me the STOCK P4 FAN/HEATSINK!?

Well, my mobo doesn't have that (P4P800-X). Anyway on a whim I changed my CPU fan to the highly revered Thermaltake Volcano 7+ after noticing some programs (notably Half-Life2) behave strangely when my 3.0GHz Pentium4 gets hot (the Aero-4 lite apparently can't handle it). Noisy, but gets the job done (HL2 doesn't have errors anymore so far), guess I'll have to live with that whining noise if I want my PC to work fine in this local tropical weather.

This is really buggin me. Half-Life 2 has become practically unplayable for me in the recent days. While playing, one of these two things happens, especially when the game tries to load the next map: 1. This error message appears, then the game exits to Windows. Any idea what that means? 2. The game goes back to the main menu, but when I choose an option other than Quit, the dialog box where the options normally appear now looks like this (example below is when I select New Game): In a nutshell, all dialog boxes don't work, other than the control box that lets you either move or close it, and the "x" close button. Now this is really puzzling. Any help here? So far only Half-Life 2 is having these problems, while just about all my other games (including Doom3) are problem-free thus far. Current specs: Pentium4 3.0GHz Prescott w/ Cool Master Aero-4 Lite fan/heatsink ASUS P4P800-X Motherboard (using onboard sound) 1GB PC3200 SDRAM (AM1 512MB DDR-400 x 2) ASUS N6600 / GeForce 6600 video card w/ 128MB RAM Promise SATA150-II IDE/SATA Controller 4 Seagate 7200RPM Hard Disks (1 120GB ATA-100, 1 120GB SATA, 1 160GB ATA-100, 1 200GB SATA) Sony DRU-710 DVD Burner

Already tried that. The problem persists. Anyway I went to the bottom of things and checked Steam's website. Well based on this thread: Memory location cannot be read issue it's a major problem of HL2 that seems to have started with the November'04 Steam Update. Anyway I've experienced that error message only on one other instance - trying to run a certain very old pinball game (Slam Tilt Pinball), on several PC's (ranging from Pentium3 to Pentium4) other than a certain Compaq Deskpro. So I seriously doubt it's a RAM problem. If indeed my RAM is bad, shouldn't lots of other apps have problems? There was one instance where I did end up installing a bad DIMM, and the result - Windows got corrupted and I had to reinstall.

I wonder if anybody noticed this, but it seems NVIDIA's display drivers starting 7x.xx have lost something really important to gamers - the Override Refresh Rate section. Especially frustrating for me - I have this LCD Monitor that for some reason causes the Display Properties to hide any setting above 60Hz if the "Hide Modes that this monitor cannot display" checkbox is ticked, even though the monitor supports refresh rates up to 75Hz are supported all the way to its maximum native resolution (1280x1024) if I force it. I found that out a few weeks ago after up[censored] the drivers of my recently bought ASUS V9570 TD GeForce FX5700 vidcard, and at first hoped those drivers back then were the only ones to lose that valuable setting. Unfortunately the next release, which just came out yesterday, also came without the Override Refresh Rate component. Hence for now I'm sticking with the 66.93 drivers, which still has them. I hope someone comes out with a hack or fix that brings those settings out again for the new drivers.

Originally posted by dosfreak: Quote: uhhhh, your comparing an ancient SB Live! to a fairly recent integrated sound chip? Now let's not get into how crappy Creative's drivers are or how they haven't produced anything really noteworthy for the past 4 years but really....you can't do a fair comparison on ancient hardware to new hardware. It's just not done. It's likely they you were using ancient drivers, default latency values, and or a sound card that was going bad. I guess we'll never know. Not at all. Historically, the Soundblaster product line has been one of the best sound hardware solutions I've ever used. I always saw to it that I had the very latest drivers installed for them (always up[censored] them). And in the case of the SBLive5.1, it's overall been one of the best in its class. It just so happened for once my mobo's onboard sound chip outperformed it, and here's a recent discovery: one of my very old games, Drakan: Order of the Flame. I'm not sure why but sometime while I had the SBLive5.1 along with Windows XP Pro (can't remember exactly when), the BGM for that game wasn't playing at all, but switching to the onboard sound hardware brought it back.

Found that cooler/heatsink that looks like the Aero-4, except that it's a fixed-speed fan (runs constantly at 3200RPM regardless of temperature) and Cu-Al heatsink (like the Aero-4 Lite). While it still doesn't keep the CPU as cool as the stock Intel Fan/Heatsink, at least it does a better job than the one from pccooler - idle temp averages 46C-49C, while high load temp is 60C - and it's certainly quiet as a mouse (not to mention it's much easier to install/remove, and it looks really sleek ). [Edited by Phalanx-Imawano on 2005-04-12 19:07:06]

Hmm, that Aero 4 looks more promising. The same store I bought the CUAL heat sink also has that one (but I'll check if it's the one for Socket-478)

Um, there is no "inline speed control module" or at least anything between the fan and the power connector (so I plugged the fan directly).

Hmm, how do you make the fan always run at full speed? The manual said something about a speed control knob, but I couldn't find any. Also, the BIOS section on power control for my motherboard (ASUS P4P800-X) as well as a utility (ASUS Probe) both told me the fan was only running at 2800RPM and not at 3500 which was the fan's full speed in the manual.

Tried one of those, actually this one (the site claims it can cool a 3+GHz Pentium4: http://www.pccooler.com.cn/english/cpzx.htm It was certainly quiet, but my Pentium4 3GHz Prescott CPU was running hotter (up to 65C even when idle and even with the room airconditioner running) than with the stock heat sink (max 55C at heavy load). How's everyone else with similar looking heat sinks?

After someone hinted to me that my GeForce FX5600 VIVO card w/ 256MB of Video RAM can be a source of trouble, I began observing its temperature using a nifty monitoring package which uses probes that you stick on to whatever you want to monitor its temp. In my case, the gadget has 3 probes, one for the CPU, one for any hard disk (I chose the boot disk since it would be the most critical out of the 4 I have in my system), and one for the video card. The device itself mounts on one of the 5.25" drive bays and has a digital display with selector (so you can choose what to monitor), which most of the time is set to monitor the CPU (which in my system is a Pentium4 3.0GHz Prescott, and during normal operation averages betwen 47C and 52C; the Hard Disk stays around 43C). After noticing some problems with Half-Life 2, one time I set the device to monitor the video card's temperature, then played one game of HL2. After about 5 minutes, I noticed the temperature reading go up from 47C (normal/idle temperature when I'm not gaming), to around 53C, and around that time, HL2 may do one of these (but it doesn't happen every time): 1. Garbage appears on the screen, but gameplay is still normal 2. Some of the graphics disappear and HL2 slows down to a real crawl (though this gets fixed if I switch to the Windows Deskop and back to HL2 using the Start Menu shortcut key) 3. Stop Error/BOSD, with the NVIDIA display driver (nv4_disp.dll) being blamed by Windows as the culprit. Keep in mind that nothing is overclocked in my system. What is the real fault here? Is the GeForceFX 5600 faulty, or is it HL2? (HL2 is the only game that experiences this problem or at least makes the Video card's GPU get that hot - I only have one other 3d game that's as graphics intensive, Doom3, which doesn't experience this problem) I happen to have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed. My system specs: Pentium4 3.0 GHz Prescott ASUS P4P800-X Mobo w/ Intel 865PE chipset and 2 SATA ports 1GB DDR400 RAM (512MB DIMM x 2) Inno3D GeForce FX5600 VIVO w/ 256MB Video RAM Seagate 30GB 5400RPM ATA-100 Hard Disk (boot disk/primary master) Seagate Barracuda 120GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (primary slave) Seagate Barracuda 160GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (secondary master) Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA Hard Disk (connected to SATA port #1) Sony DRU-710A DVD Burner (secondary slave) Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card CNet 220c LAN Card Creative Labs Modem Blaster PCI Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 note: case has 3 fans to help with the cooling

Well, my drivers are the 66.93 WHCL versions. Also, Doom3 doesn't seem to heat up my vidcard like Half-Life 2 does, nor does it crash or have any occurrances of graphics glitches. Interestingly, I replicated scenario 2 in HL2 (some objects vanish while the game itself bogs down to hellishly slow framerates, until I switch to the Windows Desktop and back to HL2 again) when my vidcard was still at 45C. I'm really beginning to suspect HL2 is the culprit.

Originally posted by Alec§taar: Quote: Then, it may be some "kink" in HL2... have you gone to their support site (especially w/ this stopcode & MAYBE a dump file to send them), or their forums? (It's now beginning to sound more like a HL2 problem really... does it only happen in SOME levels? The reason I ask this is, I customize the HECK out of an OpenGL port of Doom for DOS called JDoom (part of the DoomsDay Engine by Jaakko Keranen) & have had to write him a few times... most of the time? The errors were fixed by removal of customized files (3rd party, won't mention the name because those guys worked hard too to make their product that is 99.999% solid anyhow), because it was only breaking on the last level of Doom I called "DIS". I pulled the 3rd party stuff on the advice of Mr. Keranen the game's designer & poof/voila: Problem gone!)) Do you customize OR tweak the game in ANY way? Does this happen @ ALL resolutions, and with AntiAliasing/AntiIsotropic off/middle/full on settings?? (Especially the latter: It may be SOME image in the game rendering or setting you use that is NOT meshing there... sounds nutty? It may be a problem in that alone.) QUESTION - Can you get this game to crash in a SPECIFIC map/level in a certain area? That is how I got my gaming problem solved... then wrote the developer about it & he hit it RIGHT on the head on how to fix it! (He may have even wrote the guys on the 3rd party pack I mention above about it to help them, I don't know... maybe I should instead of he! ) * Anyhow... try that experiment on resolutions switches, diff. AntiAliasing &/or AntiIsotropics settings & see if it helps! APK P.S.=> The reason I mention that, is because of what I saw in a game & what caused it... that info. helped the coder of it to help ME zero-in on the offending problem! apk Well, I can't seem to note any pattern of what level it would crash. As for settings, I don't use any advanced tweaks (Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing are disabled for instance), and I use relatively low detail settings and run at 800x600x32bit for good framerate (it seems my rig is still not powerful enough to run HL2 at high detail settings; in fact before I upgraded to a Pentium4 3GHz from a P4 2GHz, the game was almost unplayable even at the lowest settings and resolution).

Originally posted by Alec§taar: Quote: Stop Error/BOSD Can you give us the SPECIFIC ERROR MESSAGE? * It might just help... to me? It's your driver... believe-it-or-not! I'll note it next time it happens. Quote: QUESTION - Are you overclocking your vidcard via the old "Coolbits" registry tweak? How about your RAM &/or CPU?? (Could I be wrong? Maybe... but, if you are convinced it's heat, there ARE "exotic" cooling systems for video cards, or you can make your own!) Like I said nothing is overclocked. I don't even use Coolbits anymore now that the refresh rate can be set without them. Quote: Another possible? I see all those 5 HDD DiskDrives you run + a DvD-Burner there... that's ALOT of power-consumption. Is your PowerSupply up to that?? APK I have a 400W Power Supply, though a local technician claimed 335W is enough for 6 drives. Quote: P.S.=> I put a copper CPU heatsink onto a GeForce 4 Ti4600 unit w/ a pretty good fan (2300rpm iirc) & THAT kept it VERY cool... & I have seen folks @ spots where folks go WAY off the deep end modding systems that had hydro-cooling on their vidcards & CPUs that were not only great cooler, but very quiet as well... maybe it's something you want to look into! apk If I could find such cooling devices and they're easy to implement I'd get them. Like I also said, it only happens with Half-Life 2, and no other game.

Anybody else experience this? I have a Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA Hard Disk where I put all my games in for high performance (since SATA technology promises better performance than ULTRA ATA). Thing is, if heavy disk activity happens (like when I play graphic intensive games like Half-Life 2), it goes to PIO Mode (something Win2k and WinXP will do if supposedly more than 6 CRC errors are detected), and performance degrades drastically (so much for SATA being faster huh?); in fact Half-Life 2 crashes when it happens. At least it goes back to UMDA-5 if I reboot. Still, this is really fishy, because in the same PC I also have a Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA Hard Disk (where I store video files in since they're so huge) that never experiences that problem. My specs by the way: Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz Prescott Inno3D GeForce FX5600 w/ 256MB Video RAM and VIVO ASUS P4P800-X Motherboard (Intel 865PE chipset, has provision for 2 SATA devices) 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM Seagate 30GB 5400RPM Hard Disk (boot disk) Seagate Barracuda 120GB Hard Disk (primary slave) Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA Hard Disk Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA Hard Disk (the one that's going PIO mode) Sony DRU-710 DVD Burner with Dual-Layer writing support Soundblaster Live 5.1 Soundcard Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

Well after explaining my situation to the retailer, I got it exchanged. But since they didn't have a non-NCQ version of the 120GB SATA drive, they gave me a 120GB ATA-100 drive instead, and even threw in a bunch of DVD-RW's (8 discs, from Imation) as an act of good jesture.

Oh that one? That's a conventional Seagate 120GB ATA-100 Hard Drive (not SATA; rather the one that uses the familiar 80-wire ribbon cable).

Originally posted by janfebmar: Quote: never heard about anything like that... blame it on intel i say i always go for AMD, never even heard small romours about such a problem with any SATA disks. heh. how come the totally equal drive (you say you got two seagate barracuda 120 GB S-ATA drives), dont have the same problem? They're not the same drives. One is a 120GB SATA model ST3120827AS with NCQ support, the other is a 200GB SATA model ST320822AS with no NCQ support. Since the 200GB disk doesn't support NCQ, it works fine with my ASUS P4P800-X mobo (whose SATA controller is non-NCQ). The 120GB disk has NCQ, so it squawks like crazy.

I believe I've finally found the real problem: http://www.techsupportforum.com/computer/topic/25430-1.html It seems that there's an issue with SATA Hard Disks with NCQ support (Native Command Queuing). NCQ is a feature in some new SATA drives to improve performance. The problem is that some SATA Controllers (like those found on Mobo's with Intel Chipsets like the 865PE) do not support NCQ, and if a NCQ capable drive is connected to that kind of controller, problems can arise. I checked with Seagate's website for my particular hard disk, and sure enough, my 120GB SATA Drive has NCQ support, whereas my 200GB SATA drive doesn't. So when used with my ASUS P4P800-X mobo (which uses the Intel 865PE chipset), the 120GB Drive will go postal and either crash Windows or go PIO mode because of the NCQ issue, while the 200GB Disk has no problems whatsoever. Guess I'll see if I can exchange the 120GB drive with the non-NCQ version. If the retail store won't do that, then a suggestion from that forum above is to buy a Promise SATA controller card, which supports NCQ.

Originally posted by janfebmar: Quote: but didnt you find a workaround already? so why try to fix something thats not broken anymore? heh i know the cables cant be bended with too much, and that was my guess. but if your disk is working properly now, there is no point in trying to fix it, ;P I though it was fixed. I was wrong. It's still acting up.