Date: 07/08/05 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: no keywords

I purchased a nVidia 6600GT (agp version) a few months back and at apparently random points while playing a 3D intense app (Half-Life 2 / CS: S in this case), it hangs after playing from anywhere between 15 minutes all the way to 45 or more.

To be more accurate, the screen freezes and the sound loops ad infinitum (probably a quarter second sample that just loops infinitely) and the computer doesn't respond to any input short of restarting it.


I've gone through tons and tons of forums and support related sites and I've tried all sorts of things:



1. Not a sound issue - happens w/ out soundblaster or without any sound drivers installed at all.
2. Changed memory setup from dual to single channel - no dice.
3. Changed AGP speed from 8x to 4x - no dice.
4. Enabled motherboard chipset compatibility mode with RivaTuner - no dice.
5. Tested it with fastwrite set to both on and off - no dice.
6. Updated the drivers - neither nVidia's newest or the most current forceware drivers make any difference (currently using nVidia forceware drivers ver. 7.7.7.2).

Nothing is overclocked on the system, so nothing should be problematic on that front.

I thought it might have been an overheating problem, but I purchased an Arctic Cooling (NV Silencer 6) heatsink, and that didn't change a thing. And sadly there is no option in the bios on this particular version of the 6600GT to monitor the temp.

The specs for my system are as follows:
AMD 3200+ CPU
ASUS A7V880 motherboad
2 512 sticks of DDR PC3200 memory in dual channel setup
A single 160 gig SATA hard drive.
A PCI soundblaster live
And the card itself is a nVidia Rosewill 6600GT AGP running the nVidia forceware 7.7.7.2 driver set.



Here's a copy of the hardware report from RivaTuner: (sorry about the length)
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : unknown
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 1106 (VIA)
$0400000002 Device ID : 0269
$0400000003 AGP bus : revision 3.0
$0400000004 AGP status : enabled
$0400000005 AGP rate : 8x supported, 8x selected
$0400000006 AGP SBA : hardwired, enabled
$0400000007 AGP FW : supported, enabled
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 00f1
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : AGP revision 3.0
$0000000005 AGP status : enabled
$0000000006 AGP rate : 4x 8x supported, 8x selected
$0000000007 AGP SBA : hardwired, enabled
$0000000008 AGP FW : supported, enabled
$0000000009 Base address 0 : fd000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : 90000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : fc000000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV43 revision A2 (8x1,3vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 014a (ROM strapped to 0140)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 128-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR (RAM configuration 07)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 131072KB
$0100000005 Core clock : 299.250MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 450.000MHz (900.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz



I am at the end of my rope with this. Do any of you have an idea as to why this continues to happen?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computergeeks/720332.html