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View Full Version : Yian's hard days are finally over... I think?


Yian
March 27th, 2003, 11:57 PM
Okay... this is really all about hardware...

Good news, I finally got my 3D prophet 9700 pro working at its full speed!

Bad news.... I almost upgraded everything i got, means I got myself almost a brand new rig! Aside form montiors, hard drives, and floppy drives, I upgraded EVERYTHING...!

Originally I bought my video card, and it was giveing me problems. I can't boot up my machine sometimes... (suspend mode right before login screen... the notorious 4x AGP incompatibility bug of ATI Radeon cards...) then I toned down my card's core speed and memory clock with Radeonator, and the card finally worked...

Then there were corrupted textures everywhere due to a bad power supply, so I got myself a 400w 99% output one (amazing huh?), thus solved the texture problem, but it still refuse to go back to its default core and momery speed... so it was obvious that my BIOS of the mo-bo need to be flashed...

so okay I went to the one and only computer store in Kutztown and let the nice technician to take care of it... the evil mother board screwed up itself (or the technician... we will never know...), anyway the board was fried. He sold me a Gigabyte board with a P4 2.6 on it includes a copper core sink and a big ass fan and all that... with a decent discount, and without charging me the labour. but shit waited for us...

The fried board obviously short-charged the case as well, thus every mo-bo he tested fine became motionless once screwed into my case. He got three dead mo-bos after that and he was really scared of my case. I bought a new case from him and he put the last board into my case and it worked fine. My case took the fall when the mo-bo was fried... the video card was safe, the hard drive was safe, everyone was fine... if the charge went the other way around I wouldm't be typing here... I already got a pistol and shoot my... my toes, yep, my toes, the pinky maybe.

My case was not evil. In fact, it was a hero.

...anyways, theoretically the repair function in Windows XP CD should help me rebuild my system since the CPU and the mo-bo was changerd, but too bad XP didn't do too well. all the shit were corrupted and eventually failed. I formatted my drives right after I found my rescue disk and my CDs for the OS. Then the fucking AGP port won't run at all... tweaked the shit out of the BIOS and grabbed all the chipset and now it is in a fine shape like a cup of wine.

Then I was busy fixing the VGA video controller shit... they somehow became unknown devices... I didn;t want to risk updating vido drivers to Radeon's Catalyst till I got the shit on VGA and it was really frustrating, but eventually I decided to go without them. Seemed to be fine though... it works now.

What a trek I have gone through. I really approciate the dude who worked in the store, without charging me the mo-bo my case has ruined, and my case, who took the negative-charge away from my vifdeo card. And Matt Althouse, who really gave both emotional amd physical support during this time of crisis... I should put him to my web site.

cr3am
March 28th, 2003, 12:06 AM
uh... yes

Rhenna
March 28th, 2003, 01:04 AM
So, Yian: What sort of system did you finally wind up with? Did the P4 2.6 (?) survive? Just curious...

Yian
March 28th, 2003, 01:14 AM
Well, the CPU was always fine, just the mo-bo kept being fried one after another... right now I have a VIA P4PB 400, a 2.6 P4, the original 3D Prophet 9700 Pro card... with this system i don't have to upgrade for the next 2 years... it is really weird because this combo is the dream of all overclockers, but I'm a guy who never overclock shit...:D

This new mo-bo came with so many new stuff I have never used before... a on-board sound system (6 channels) that's better than my soundblaster 128, two firewire ports, a CNR slot, a on-board Ethernet card, and 3 DDR slots support up to 3 Gb of rams... I got this thing for $115...

sushi128
March 28th, 2003, 02:14 AM
how'd he convince you to get a P4PB??? man, u should have asked for some advice first....

WhoGivesARatsAss
March 28th, 2003, 04:15 AM
now u are thinking why i said that right..

Damn man u had better bend over in front of that guy dammit.. u GOT A VIA MOBO.. RADEON AND VIA DONT GO TOGETHER IN ONE SENTENCE DAMMIT.. ok now i have lost it completely.. damn

by the way sorry for the attitude man.. u DO NOT PUT A p4 ON A VIA BOARD.. and add a RADEON card to couple ur problems.. if u still have some warranty etc on ur thing get an ASUS P4PE with the intel chipset or some other mobo.. from MSI, Gigabyte or ASUS.. ASUS p4533T is also cool man.. but not the VIA one.. even SiS mobos have problems w/ Radeon 9700s.. anyways.. if its working great now its all good but still i would strongly recommend changing that shitty mobo now.. if u can.. ok

i hope this helps and i guess u should have posted this earlier..

Yian
March 28th, 2003, 07:32 AM
Thanks for the advice man but the system is really fine now. 3DMark03 went up 1000 points more, and just played another 6 levels of SOF II... I don't think there is anything wrong with VIA chipset and Radeon card despite the rumors and I got an ASUS board before whith ALI's shit, that thing didn't even work well at 4x AGP, not to mention the other shit it brought me. The CPU works fine right now, and it is a lot faster, too. Thanks for the warning, though. ASUS is just as good as SOYO if it has the newest BIOS, and some ASUS board use VIA chipset anyway, so no difference. Soyo and ASUS gave me the endless memory counting during the boot-up before, so my hands are off them for the next three years.

What importent is, everything is back to order now. This is the first time my video card works at its full speed with no problems of any sort... I heard of shit about how 8500 fucked up VIA's 4in1 the big time, but this is obviously not true for 9700 pro. I guess ATI's new drivers finally improved itself...

Yian
March 28th, 2003, 07:35 AM
Oh, speaking of the shit of the early-stage Radeon 9700 pro, how many people out there heard of the shit that it won't even boot at 8x AGP with some mo-bo? Back in the days when I was still being confident with NV30, I laughed out really loud when I heard that 9700 has that problem and said "Ha ha ha ATI fucked up again...!" Then I heard they corrected the issue, and GFX sucked the big time, I was like " ....huh......?" Man, ATI is doing better over these months...

AVataRR
March 28th, 2003, 07:52 AM
hehe, when I first saw the title, I immediately thought.. "so Yian's finally become impotent".... :D

Yian
March 28th, 2003, 09:00 AM
Originally posted by AVataRR
hehe, when I first saw the title, I immediately thought.. "so Yian's finally become impotent".... :D
Is that what you people think about all day...? The subject matters about penis and boobs...?

cr3am
March 28th, 2003, 09:00 AM
hehehe, you said penis

sushi128
March 28th, 2003, 09:22 AM
well, at initial release, the 9700 pro didn't work with the P4PB, 7VAXP, or the P4S8X (the only 8x boards that were around then). after a revision or two they got that fixed. the GFFX did not fuck up. if it had fucked up, it would be WORSE than the 9700 pro, and as far as i've seen, it does beat it (if only by a slight margin). i'd say the 9800 pro is in the same boat as the GFFX (good, but doesn't meet any expectations). and also, the 9800 pro wasn't delayed for 6 months.....