DarkMagic
08-28-2004, 12:27 PM
Hi all, love these forums!
I have a slightly older Omega from Hardware Gods. P4 3.0 o/c to 3.9 gig on Abit IS7 MB, 256 FSB. AGP/PCI 66/33 locked. It has worked perfectly for many months now on purely biz projects. Then decided to make it a gaming machine... :mischeif:
Installed 6800 ultra (totally scrubbed out ATI 9700 driver bits, flashed Ultra BIOS too). Ran 3DMark03 Pro. All 3D test are perfect (amazing scores too). BUT, when I run the "CPU Tests" I get a random glitching all around the screen that looks like little slivers of the image are flickering in and out for a frame or two. Sometimes a triangular wedge flickers as well. This happens purely randomly in time and location, and rarely across the whole screen. The image does not bend, distort, or "tear". Just looks to me like the image data from CPU/memory is not synchronized with the AGP card memory.
In Doom 3, the same effect appears. The purely 3D (in card) displays are perfect. But any "overlays" like the PDA display or the opening "Mars" scene with the gray overlayed options glitch the same as described above.
Called Hardware Gods and they sent me through a whole battery of tests including:
Fastwrites on/off
4X vs. 8x
AGP voltage
Video BIOS cacheable
AGP aperture size
NOW, here's the real kicker. I removed the Ultra from the Omega and installed it in my stock block P4 3.0 gig 800 FSB upstairs. (Also scrubbing ATI drivers). And it works perfectly fine... no glitching at all. :irk:
So, I took the ATI 9800 Pro from upstairs and installed it on the Omega... you guessed it, same problems as with the Ultra, same glitching on the "CPU Test" in 3DMark03. :beat:
At this point, I'm just not sure what to try and would love to hear any suggestions or whether anyone else has seen similar problems. Seems pointless to just clock the Omega back down. It has never corrupted any data or hard drives or anything else. Rarely if ever freezes running 24/7.
Additional stuff: I removed my sound card in Omega just in case... no difference. Only PCI card left is a Rocket Raid, which runs my boot drives. PCI/AGP is locked 33/66.
Only possible item I could see in the MB BIOS was that you cannot set "Turbo" mode explicitly to "off" or "normal". The only modes available are "Auto", "Turbo", "Street Racer", and "F1".
I'm sure there's a sync problem here somewhere but I have no clue what to do about it.
Thanks ever so much for any feedback!
Gene
I have a slightly older Omega from Hardware Gods. P4 3.0 o/c to 3.9 gig on Abit IS7 MB, 256 FSB. AGP/PCI 66/33 locked. It has worked perfectly for many months now on purely biz projects. Then decided to make it a gaming machine... :mischeif:
Installed 6800 ultra (totally scrubbed out ATI 9700 driver bits, flashed Ultra BIOS too). Ran 3DMark03 Pro. All 3D test are perfect (amazing scores too). BUT, when I run the "CPU Tests" I get a random glitching all around the screen that looks like little slivers of the image are flickering in and out for a frame or two. Sometimes a triangular wedge flickers as well. This happens purely randomly in time and location, and rarely across the whole screen. The image does not bend, distort, or "tear". Just looks to me like the image data from CPU/memory is not synchronized with the AGP card memory.
In Doom 3, the same effect appears. The purely 3D (in card) displays are perfect. But any "overlays" like the PDA display or the opening "Mars" scene with the gray overlayed options glitch the same as described above.
Called Hardware Gods and they sent me through a whole battery of tests including:
Fastwrites on/off
4X vs. 8x
AGP voltage
Video BIOS cacheable
AGP aperture size
NOW, here's the real kicker. I removed the Ultra from the Omega and installed it in my stock block P4 3.0 gig 800 FSB upstairs. (Also scrubbing ATI drivers). And it works perfectly fine... no glitching at all. :irk:
So, I took the ATI 9800 Pro from upstairs and installed it on the Omega... you guessed it, same problems as with the Ultra, same glitching on the "CPU Test" in 3DMark03. :beat:
At this point, I'm just not sure what to try and would love to hear any suggestions or whether anyone else has seen similar problems. Seems pointless to just clock the Omega back down. It has never corrupted any data or hard drives or anything else. Rarely if ever freezes running 24/7.
Additional stuff: I removed my sound card in Omega just in case... no difference. Only PCI card left is a Rocket Raid, which runs my boot drives. PCI/AGP is locked 33/66.
Only possible item I could see in the MB BIOS was that you cannot set "Turbo" mode explicitly to "off" or "normal". The only modes available are "Auto", "Turbo", "Street Racer", and "F1".
I'm sure there's a sync problem here somewhere but I have no clue what to do about it.
Thanks ever so much for any feedback!
Gene