7800GT Keeps Crashing

Rambo

Rambo

New Member
I recently bought myself a Leadtek WinFast 7800GT. I hooked it all up, installed latest drivers, sparked up UT2004 and started playing. Well, after about 5 minutes of gaming, the PC decides to just freeze. I have tried different drivers, but they haven't helped. Gave underclocking it a shot - no help (I took core and memory down by ~15Mhz). I am pretty certain it's not a temperature problem...

A problem that was known with my card was that the manufacturer set the geometric delta clock to 40Mhz, when it should of been on 0. So I read the BIOS, and saved a new one with the above chnage. Flashed it with WinFox, and it didn't help :(

I am at a loss here... Do you think it's a power problem? I have the 6 pin PCI-Ex cable from my PSU plugged into it. Should I use the power splitter it came with?

Thanks for reading, please help me!

EDIT: I have only tried playing with UT2004 at the minute. When I get my DVD drive back (don't ask) I'll test out Battlefield 2.
 
Well I figured it out... Since I was overclocking, I just overclocked a little less, and hey presto! I'm running at 2.31 Ghz instead of 2.46 Ghz, but hey, I'm not too bothered! :)
 
jancz3rt said:
Hmm kinda OFF-TOPIC I guess but I did some reading into this matter and it's not a problem of any sort. I would advise reading this: http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=2836. Glad you have your problem fixed now.

JAN :D
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Wow, that's exremely interesting! I didn't know that! I shall flash back with the extra 40 Mhz again then... The only thing is, if you read the reviews for my card on Newegg, there are two discussing the fact they had to flash the geo-delta clock to 0 to get it to work without artifacts. However, I shall try mine like it was with 40 Mhz... I will keep you posted! ;)

Thanks very much JAN!

EDIT: here's the reviews:

StellBlueXI said:
Pros: After modifying the BIOS, this card ran fine at stock speed and even overclocked up to 471 without any artifacts. Looks like the hardware does the job just fine....


Cons: My card had lots of artifacts. I RMAed and new card had the same problem. Turns out Leadtek sets the geometric delta in the BIOS to 40 causing the geometric clock to run at 490 (causing artifacts). EV... More »
GA made the same mistake and corrected it with a BIOS flash. I modified my card's BIOS with a 0 geo delta setting and everything works great now, even overclocked beyond stock settings. Heat is NOT the issue, as mentioned below. My cards both ran under 50c under load.

Other Thoughts: I'd rather stick a nail in my foot then deal with the Leadtek tech support department (which consists of 1 guy, who doesn't speak English well at all). They're completely unaware of their BIOS problem even though EVGA made the same mistake and fixed it with a BIOS update. Good card, but you'll need to write your own BIOS to make it work at 100%.
Click to expand...

AND

Theo said:
Pros: Great performance without spending too much (over $xxx), but check your BIOS....


Cons: Like others I had issues with seeing "tearing" or "artifacts". I RMA'd my first card, but the replacement did the same thing when playing games that were demanding. After repeated driver updates, ma... More »
ny emails with leadtek service, and even a complete system rebuild I had all but given up, but after reading SteelBlueXI's review I checked the BIOS settings and noticed that indeed the geometric delta was set to 40. I raised this again with leadtek service. I even copied parts of SteelBlueXI's post, and leadtek delivered a new BIOS for me to flash. Sure enough the new BIOS had the geo delta set to 0. Since I flashed that new BIOS I have not seen any of the original tearing or artifact issues.

Other Thoughts: Thanks SteelBlueXI and thanks newegg for providing the forum for me to solve my problem!
Click to expand...

UPDATE:

I flashed back with my backup BIOS, start BF2... about 15 minutes into the game, it goes jittery... The only thing I can pin that down to is the 40 Mhz geo-delta clock... Gonna flash back.
 
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Well I figured it out... Since I was overclocking, I just overclocked a little less, and hey presto! I'm running at 2.31 Ghz instead of 2.46 Ghz, but hey, I'm not too bothered!
Click to expand...

I find this odd. You already said previously that you underclocked it with no joy.
 
yeah

Kinda weird.....give your processor more juice and try if it fixes anything. I doubt that it has to do with the 40Mhz delta thing. My bet is the processor.

JAN :D
 
Blue said:
I find this odd. You already said previously that you underclocked it with no joy.
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I meant I underclocked the graphics card... :o

jancz3rt said:
Kinda weird.....give your processor more juice and try if it fixes anything. I doubt that it has to do with the 40Mhz delta thing. My bet is the processor.
Click to expand...

You mean up the VCore a little bit? I've a feeling that it is the 40Mhz delta thing that caused the "jittery-ness" (lol), becuase I've just been playing BF2 for about 1 and a half hours with no problems...

My conclusion as of yet:

The overlclocking of the CPU was causing the computer to freeze during the running of a game (must of been a compatablility issue with the 7800GT, as I was running fine at 2.46Ghz with my X800...).

After I less-overclocked it, there were no crashes - I could play games fine (with the geometric delta clock @ 0). I then flashed the BIOS of the card back to the original one (geometric delta clock @ 40 Mhz), and it was packing up 10 minutes into the game (makes sense after reading the 2 reviews from newegg stating the same problem and how they fixed it). So I re-flash back to the edited BIOS I have, and I've since been playing BF2 for 1 and a half hours with no problem.

I will give overclocking it, (the CPU - just to remove any confusion) another try in the morning, and put the vcore to 1.425 or the next one up... Thanks for the help so far JAN and Cromewell!
 
That's odd, because I have a leadtek 7800GT and I haven't modified any of the stock clocks and I have had no problems (aside from the WinFox stuff)
 
Did you try uninstalling then reinstalling the game? Know it sounds strange but I've noticed games fail to run after hardware changes and reinstalling them fixed the problems.
 
Blue said:
Did you try uninstalling then reinstalling the game? Know it sounds strange but I've noticed games fail to run after hardware changes and reinstalling them fixed the problems.
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So are you souggesting that I re-flash the BIOS once I reinstalled the game? I'm getting confused now, becuase there was two problems. The computer crashing when in-game, and the "jittery-ness" when using the 40 Mhz geometric delta clock... But I'm not sure which problem you are referring to. I'll presume you're talking about the geometric delta clock thing...

I'll uninstall and reinstall UT2004, re-flash the BIOS and let you know how I get on...

that's odd, because I have a leadtek 7800GT and I haven't modified any of the stock clocks and I have had no problems (aside from the WinFox stuff)
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Well, is yours the Extreme Edition?

EDIT:

Should I re-install DirectX 9.0c again too?
 
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So are you souggesting that I re-flash the BIOS once I reinstalled the game? I'm getting confused now, becuase there was two problems. The computer crashing when in-game, and the "jittery-ness" when using the 40 Mhz geometric delta clock... But I'm not sure which problem you are referring to. I'll presume you're talking about the geometric delta clock thing...

I'll uninstall and reinstall UT2004, re-flash the BIOS and let you know how I get on...
Click to expand...

Hmmm so you are convinced it was the 40mhz delta clock so I won't suggest otherwise :P. I feel that it is highly possible that both the Jitters and the crash had to do with the same problem.

So what did I mean? Well I wondered if you uninstalled the game and reinstalled it before you touched "anything" else. It is often a method used when installing new hardware is to simply reinstall whatever software starts to act up. I feel that possibly the Jitters and crashes where caused by the same things.
 
Ku-sama said:
maybe it was your PSU? with the new card and all...
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It's a 450 watt with 32A on the 12V rail... I highly doubt it.

Blue said:
So what did I mean? Well I wondered if you uninstalled the game and reinstalled it before you touched "anything" else. It is often a method used when installing new hardware is to simply reinstall whatever software starts to act up. I feel that possibly the Jitters and crashes where caused by the same things.
Click to expand...

I uninstalled and reinstalled UT2004 (thanks god I got the DVD version) and reflashed the BIOS. Ok, so there were no problems (with the geometric delta clock at 40 Mhz). Although, UT2004 isn't the most demanding game out on the market nowadyas, is it? When I ran BF2 (yes, I uninstalled and reinstalled that too!) I began to see signs of jitteryness. It was like random crashes each lasting about 2 or 3 seconds, then it would come back to life.... So I'm positive it's the 40 mhz thingy. Besides, those two other people who bought the same card as me from newegg had exactly the same problem.

So, right now I have it my card flashed with my edited BIOS. Thankyou very much for all your kind help Blue, JAN and Cromewell :)
 
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