GTX460 graphics

x2 said:
Are you able to check temps on the card and your system in general? Your case is awfully small and I am not sure how much airflow you're getting in there?
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I was monitoring temperature using MSI Afterburner. The GTX 460 idles around 35* C and has not gotten above 46* when I've checked after loading a game. I don't know the temps at the time of the crashes, but they've been well below 50*C every time I have checked.

CreepinDeth said:
It's possible you might be suffering from those power issues I mentioned earlier. It's one of the reasons I stayed away, even though it's a bit rare.
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It shouldn't be a power issue. I have a Rosewill 630 watt PSU with a PCIe 6 pin and a PCIe 6+2 pin connector.

I think that for now I am giving up on the GTX 460, giving in to tossing my crappy spare copy of Vista 32 bit on the computer and seeing if I can even get the comp running.
 
I know your PSU is fine, it's the card that has problem handling the power. I can't seem to find your card on Newegg anymore, but I did a quick search and nearly every variation of the GTX 460 has problems with crashing and whatnot. I know that I read about the power issues on Newegg. But it seems that the GTX 460 is either going to work for you or not.

Here is the 1 star reviews for the Gigabyte version - GTX 460 issues
 
Ouch, those reviews are definitely not a good thing, especially those mentioning BSODs and memory dumps. I'm surprised I'm having problems so early on if it is the same batch of problems.

Here's my specific card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130563
 
If using the card with a reformat of Windows Vista has any problems, I'm going to assume it is a bad card.

Gee, I'm glad I got my old 8800GT on ebay used and it lasted as long as it has. At least buying used, items are usually cheaper and have lasted past the burn-in period... note to self for future graphics card purchases... :\
 
I think this is an unfortunate incident concerning the 460. I haven't heard many problems regarding the others and ATI is pretty good stability wise as well. But at least with used you know it works for the most part.
 
Yup, I'm getting physical memory errors on my Vista hard drive and on my XP hard drive. It's definitely the EVGA graphics card. That is getting an RMA this week.

After a blue screen last night while updating Vista, Windows Memory Diagnostic found physical memory errors. It did not specify between system and graphics memory, but, considering that the errors started right after installing the new graphics card...

Fail on EVGA :\
 
Okay, with the GTX 460 removed, I am no longer getting blue screen crashes.

Vista, however, constantly wants to update, which is somewhat to be expected. But, it tries to update so many files that it fails on half of the updates. With each fail, I have to disable the updater, restart with the updater disabled, clear my temporary files, enable the updater, then restart the computer. That is A LOT of hassle for each of the now dozens of failed updates.

Vista looks visually pretty nice, but with the amount of program crashes and update failures (again, not blue screen or physical memory crashes caused by the bad graphics card), it feels like a half finished operating system.


Oh, and Internet Explorer 9 pretty much sucks. It closes due to errors often and has trouble loading basic parts of facebook that run fine in XP and IE8.

By the way, this is all on a freshly formatted Hitachi 250 GB Desk Star drive with a freshly installed copy of Windows Vista Home Basic.

It's sad when a GTX 460 with Windows Vista (or both separately) don't perform half as well as my old GeForce 8800GT and XP Pro OS.
 
But Windows 7 is awesome. Hopefully Spartan can get that copy for you. Not trying to steer you away from Nvidia or anything, but I've had nothing but great experiences with ATI and Win7.
 
I haven't heard anything from Spartan.

Windows Vista is completely unusable. This is the third time I have installed it and went back to XP within a week. I'd rather use a friggin' Mac than Vista, and I loathe Apple products.

I was installing a handful of Steam games (Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Plants vs. Zombies, Portal, and Unreal Tournament III) from a Steam backup file to the Vista installation. Of course, Vista had an error and the computer locked up.

I have now removed the 250 GB drive with Vista, removed the EVGA GTX 460, and even removed any/all Creative X-fi sound cards from my system.

My current setup is simply the Foxconn G33 motherboard with Realtek audio, Intel Core 2 Duo e7200, Zalman 8700NT cooler, 4x 1 GB sticks of PNY XLR8 DDR2 800 RAM, 16x DVD+/-RW drive, 300GB Velociraptor HDD, Geforce 8800GT, and good ol' Windows XP Professional.

Screw it. I'm going back to basics and sticking with the rig that worked for me in the past.
 
I started to suspect my 300 GB Velociraptor HDD, since that was plugged into the mobo to transfer files when the 250 GB was being used as a boot/Vista drive. WD Lifeguard tools found no bad sectors during the quick or extended tests though.

I think tomorrow I'm going to run memtest and make sure that all my system memory is still good.

Something is definitely wonky.
 
I carefully checked the motherboard and saw no bad capacitors. I finally got vista updated with exception of two updates that keep failing.

I ran disk check again on the vista drive (the one that was just reformatted before the install) and the disk check found some orphaned files that it fixed?

Running L4D2 (with MSI Afterburner increasing the fan speed) I was able to play L4D2 without a blue screen. The game did crash out though. So, I tried reinstalling the GTX 460. I can run L4D2 without crashes. I did have some low framerate bumps, but that could be due to the map; Left 4 Dead 2 Cold Stream is still a beta map, I think.

So, is it possible that the Velociraptor with XP is crashing due to a registry error, and that the Vista drive (since I had transferred files from one drive to the other) picked up the same orphaned files that were causing the blue screen crashes?
 
It's possible. Did you do an update when you first installed Vista? Or did you do a clean install?

Because if you simply just transferred regular files over, I don't think that would be the case.
 
Finally found the problem with my computer...

Dell Diagnostic tools found an error in memory checking during the stress test.

The PNY DDR2 800 memory, is NOT bad though. After swapping out mem sticks, it turns out that my DELL/FOXCONN MOTHERBOARD has a loose connection on one of the four RAM slots!

I am now running my system with 2 GB DDR2 800 memory in dual channel. So far I haven't had a problem running it this way. But, I think that it's time to start looking at new motherboards...
 
CreepinDeth said:
I think it's time for a core i7 rig.
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Unless I find a VERY good job when I move later this year, I don't know that I can afford a Core i7 rig.

Realistically, I'll probably rebuild a budget gaming box using some parts I already have:

Rosewill 630 watt PSU (top mount ATX)
Zalman 8700NT CPU cooler
WD Velociraptor 300 hard disc drive (OS, programs, games)
Hitachi Desk Star hard disc drive (music, storage)
Optiarc 16x DVD RW optical drive
EVGA GeForce 460 graphics card
Creative Soundblaster X-fi sound card

I definitely would like to get at least a mid tower case; the microATX mini tower case is rather crowded with the second hard drive.

Upgrading to an i series processor would be pretty likely as well.
 
Have the prices of the last gen iSeries processor gone down? I haven't checked. I should look into that. I need a secondary PC. Actually, I know Polygon is selling a Core i rig. Maybe check to see what his prices are?
 
Buying or building an entire rig is out of my budget right now...

I just had my car's A/C repaired and just got one of my guitars back from having work done on it. Along with general bills and the possibility of moving, buying a whole new computer is not gonna happen.

Besides, I still don't have a Playstation 3. :P
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Part of what makes PCs useful is that parts are interchangable anyhow.
 
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