Saturday November 04, 2006 was a very wierd day :-X a friend who's nick name is Simmen of the 30 year old Hobby Computer Club Oude-Tonge where I always go to, had a problem with his ASUS AX 800 XT Platium Edition AGP 256MB GDDR3 Rev.A 0441 :-/

Simmen had some problems with his ASUS AX800XT PE AGP card , it kept on crashing his PC and even after many new installs.

when I put my Leadtek GeForce 6800 AGP 128MB in is system gone were the problems no more lockups nothing.

He asked me to test it and if it works perfect with no crashes and so on he told me to keep it because was gonna upgrade to a faster system, I told him that that isn't nessasary 8)

Simmen just wanted to know if it would work properly in an other system with AGP, so I put it in my AthlonXP 2700+ and all is still going fine no crashed, I played Unreal II for like 5 hours @ 1152 x 864 x 32 FSAA x6T3 & AF x16 with no jigs of jags so I kinda rang him up by telling that it does work fine and that he can get it back I did tell him you don't just give it away, he said okay then you give me that Leadtek 6800 AGP 128MB you can find out if you can get that X800 XT PE AGP to work in your system.

The ASUS AX800XT PE is being cooled with a Zalman VF700 cooler ;D meanwhile my friend was look'n for an XFX GeForce 7800GS AGP so he kinda told me this week, I advised him to wait , because after testing his card here in my AthlonXP it had no problems what so ever.

here are the results after installing it with my Voodoo5 5500 PCI under Windows 2000 Pro USA + SP4:
http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/8056X800%20XT%20PE%20AGP%20V5.jpg

Anywyas I got Radlinker working on it as well :)
http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/2890FSAA%20T2%20T2%20settings.jpg

SO I called him up and said that his card is in great shape, so i kept on playing Unreal II The Awakening on it for like 7 hours per day in the following 2 days and I have finnised the game as well with his X800 XT PE AGP and still no lockups nothing.

Also I ran the Fire demo, a heavy VGA 3D tester, it renders a flame in 3D, ran that for like 24 hours and no problems at all, the card was running only @ AGP x4 so it has to do more work in 3D apps, but never saw a hitch anyways.

So the outcome is that he will pick up his X800 XT PE this thursday and I will recieve my Leadtek GeForce 6800 AGP 128MB back and then he will try to get it working in his system again, if that does not work out he will buy a new system setup, I told him that he could buy my system setup , since I know him that long, he kinda like that idea morely :) So we will have to see what happens next.

here are the screenshots I just shot with Unreal II: The Awakening:

http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/9409U2R420%20a.jpg http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/7294U2R420%20b.jpg

and with Fire 3D, I ran this 24 hours:
http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/2283Fire1.jpg http://www.quickload.hostingvision.com/thumbs/1017Fire2.jpg

As you can see the ASUS AX800XT Platinum Edition AGP still functions perfectly, I used max FSAA settings @ FSAA x6T3 and max AF settings @ AF x16 both tests ran great @ 1152 x 864 x32 max settings in max image quallity.

on his setup these tests seem to fail ??? and with my 6800 AGP 128MB these tests pass, so damn wierd.

only difference is that he uses WinXP Pro NL [dutch]+ SP2 on an Athlon64 3200+ with an MSI K8N Neo Platinum S754 with the nForce3 250Gb chipset and AGP x8, while I use Windows 2000 Pro USA [english OS US style] on an AthlonXP 2700+ with ASUS A7V333-R KT 333 board with VIA Apollo KT333 & Universal AGP Pro50 x4, odd :-/, should actually work stable on both setups, heh.

he had this setup running for about one year no problems nothing and now his system locks up instantly or sometimes after playing a game for like 30 minutes, to 4 hours sometimes a few days, the problem seems to differ quite alot and we just don't seem to understand why.

well after do'n some research the X800XT PE AGP is in good condition there is nothing wrong with it neither Simmen's CPU, Mobo, Ram and HDD"s , I have found out that it's his PSU which created the problem.

Simmen has like 4 HDD's 2 in SATA 150 Raid 0 and 2 as loose drives 1 primary the other secondary, 1 DVD writer, 1 DVD Rom Player, Athlon64 3200+ Clawhammer 2Ghz/1MBL2, 2x 512MB ram and then that X800XT PE AGP , his poor 450 watter just can't take it, with the Leadtek GeForce 6800 AGP 128MB which consumes alot less power than that X800XT PE make the system run perfect without hitches, so it's his PSU that is do'n all the hickups, before his Raid 0 setup of the 2 200GB added HDD's everthing went fine when they were added the fun was all but over :-X

So that kinda explained the problems.

D@mn right it would cause a problem running all that off of 450W!!! :o

It also helps to try and limit the number of fans in your PC case as they tend to eat power from the PSU... ;)

yeah hehe :) I mean my XP 2700+ test sytem uses a small but good PSU an Enermax E365 VE a 350 watter with a max peak of 365watt :)

all it has is 1 Seagate Barracuda III 30GB 7200rpm, 1x LG 16x DVD rom player and a Plextor PlexWriter 48/24/48A CD-Wrtier, the AthlonXP 2700+ CPU, 1x 512MB PC2700, Voodoo5 5500 PCI and the GeForce 6800 AGP 128 MB mainly and for now it has the X800XT PE AGP in it which runs very stable, only have 2 small 80mm case fans active and one Delta AFB 120 HP for hot summer days .

So this is how I kinda found out it was his PSU, compared to my setup his PSU has far more to deal with than the things my 350 watter deals with now :)

Anyways just a conclusion :)

Power supply's can do that, look that issues I first had with my X850 Pro.  :P  Ten minutes into a game, pc would reboot. Bought a 500 watter and hasn't done it since.

yeah, oh well I did tell him he still thought it was kinda hard to believe untill I explained on why then he said oh yeah , yeah ofcourse LoL ;D

Thanx everyone for your kind replies and my friend thanx you all as well :) 8)

I even did a bios check test with atiflash and it pased the test without problems I flashed it with the latest bios also no problems so I gave my X1900 XTX the same service :)

tomorrow Simmen is gonna pick up his card and I will get that Leadtek 6800 AGP back, might replace that with a nice ASUS AX800 XT PE AGP one day too, just like the nice Orange PCB and the performance as Image quallity is also alot better too.

Well for now I'm on to a X1900 CrossFire Edition as upgrade for the X1900 XTX w00t 8)

gonna leave that G80 [GeForce 8800 GTX] aside and go for the AMD.ATi R600 later on next year. :)