Anyone had probs with Ti4200 64mb? (gainward)

[ZeuS]

Sometimes out of nowhere my comp will lockup with a bright pink screen (can see how the screen is made up of squares), tracked down the prob to the vidcard.

Theres a nice big thread on MO about it as well, as lots of ppl seem to be getting the same sorta prob.

http://discuss.madonion.com/forum/showflat.pl?Board=techdisplayadapters&Number=973234

I've tried tons of things to remedy it, but its hard to recreate the prob as its hella random, has only happened to me in Warcraft 3, NWN and now MotoGP, but happens often enough to piss me right off (if I didn't save in NWN, then everything I would have done in the time playing goes bye bye as the only solution is reboot/powerdown).

slightly modded card = being ASII instead of standard thermal g00p under GPU heatsink and homemade ramsinks (carefully made so they curve up at the sides and avoid contact with anything but the ram chips).

Happens at any speed GPU/mem and totally random. (defaults also), haven't acutally tried underclocking it, but there is no heat probs :cool:

Can supply with system specs etc..., just this post is already getting rather long.

Probably not being able to return the card (modded), I was hoping to find another solution.

[Agent666]

yes exact same prob in a box I put together for my bro solution is to exchange it as over time he found it only got worse.........

Offtopic
he is in the process of returning it but stylesPCs representative he is dealing with never answers his bloody phone or emails........ he has had the card for over 2 weeks while my brother waits (took over a week to even make first contact with him to get it tested)

StylesPC is a good company to deal with .... but.....
John answered my initial email complaint about the card within 20 minutes and refered me to his sidekick who is letting the team down............. moral of the story try and deal with john if possible else prepare for getting shagged around somewhat.

[ZeuS]

I got it from StylesPC as well, but currently I sent back my dead 60 gig, so hopefully that gets dealt with first, stupid dieing hardware.

Guess it couldn't hurt bringing up the GF4 issue when he emails me back about the hdd, Hopefully the 60 gig gets to him, damn dodgy NZ post.

[Joshsti_NZ]

Originally posted by Agent666
Offtopic
he is in the process of returning it but stylesPCs representative he is dealing with never answers his bloody phone or emails........ he has had the card for over 2 weeks while my brother waits (took over a week to even make first contact with him to get it tested)

StylesPC is a good company to deal with .... but.....
John answered my initial email complaint about the card within 20 minutes and refered me to his sidekick who is letting the team down............. moral of the story try and deal with john if possible else prepare for getting shagged around somewhat.

Still offtopic - I've had a bit of the same, I wanted a Vantec Stealth0r Fan .. emailed John and his trusty(?) sidekick Clive emailed me back,

Good evening Josh
Yes I can get a Vanec Stealth noiseless fan up for if you like when do you
wont it by week end so you can go to the Tcosy this week end

Needless to say I couldn't understand that very well so I went elsewhere, John is excellent still, just his other guys aren't too good.

[Jazzed]

off topic yet again, but have been having the same problems with Styles...

Recommended him to a workmate as he seemed to have a good rep with this forum. Workmate was told it would take a couple of days to build the case and get in the Vid card. Got most of the parts promtly, but was given the runaround trying to find out when the case and vid card would show up. After 15 days of not getting answers he got a refund on the case as Styles couldnt deliver and is still waiting for the vid card.

Now I look like a chump to a workmate...:(

[Agent666]

something else........ I really dont think it is heat... yes the card does get damn hot but it only occurs on the 64Mb version (128Mb and 64Mb cards both have same cooling solution) and running without the side panel + lots of air made jack all difference to it happening.......... I think it is faulty memory on the card...... someone did make the point that every other manufacterer uses samsung ram except gainwood (could be the problem?).......

good to see in this thread and thru PM's that I am not the only one having probs dealing with some of the stylesPC staff...........

[[H]arls]

Dont turn this into a Johns lackies bashing thread guys, this is about the busted card. (forum nazi? I think so :) ) if you have a problem talk with JB, he'll help you out.

We sell mostly Gainward Geforce 2/4 MX cards at work, and are trying out some Albatron ones at the moment, and it seems to me that a hell of a lot of the gainward cards just up-and-die for no reason at all. Even pixelview didnt have such a rediculously high RMA rate, and they're terrible cards.
Ive had trouble with their Geforce 3 cards before, and I wont be buying another personally again.

[I.R]

Huh? Did some posts go missing....... I thought JB had already posted in here about the "service issuses".

On topic: I sent my Gainward GF4 4200 64MB card back..... I'm probably getting a Leadtek one in exchange!

[dumass]

(Clive is Coolmhz)

oh know, ive said to much!

[Agent666]

yes he had posted in here IR........... and my brother is still waiting............. stupid suppliers...........

[Smudge]

ive got the Ti4200 as well & an Iwill KK266plus, & cant install 2k or XP it locks up on the boot installer screen any1 else's do this? cause i dont know if its my mobo or not.
Works fine if i install with anyother vidcard but im kinda wanting 2 sell it

[Agent666]

just install it with other vid card then swap cards.......... easiest way ... there is other ways with the gf4 in there but cant be assed explaining it.... if first suggestion doent work come back and I will take time to explain other things to try

[Smudge]

yip thats wot i did but im wanting 2 sell the G2MX-tv out, that iz using 2 install XP with, i dont really want a vidcard lyn round that i use once everycouple months.

sooo explain away ;oP or post a link

[swiftynz]

just get an old pci graphics card ($10 or so) and use that to do the install.

[Agent666]

ok.. .here you go......

most if not all problems during install are due to conflicting bios settings and the install routine....... firstly load the failsafe defaults and enable any settings you really need like ATA channels etc..... then try to install it ..... if it is successful then enable them all slowely ie a few settings per boot to ensure there are no conflicts on the desktop........

some people think you are mad when you suggest this and dont even want to give it a go .... but 99% of the time it works .....

send the beer to my house ;)

[Smudge]

ill try it nxt time round (which is soon cause XPs screwy again)
i never bothered lasttime cause thats a bit much effort compared with swapn cards

thanks

[veghel]

Originally posted by I.R
Huh? Did some posts go missing....... I thought JB had already posted in here about the "service issuses".

On topic: I sent my Gainward GF4 4200 64MB card back..... I'm probably getting a Leadtek one in exchange!


After having the same problems sort of (see pic) I sent mine back to www.pp.co.nz and they replaced it with a Leadtek gf4 ti 4200 64 mb MyVIVO and gained 1500 points in 3d mark 2001

[Agent666]

yep after a long wait my bro is finally getting a replacement card and a 128Mb one at that cos they ran out of 64Mb ones or something ........

[Smudge]

reinstalled XP with BIOS safemode & cant install with the Gainward card ( had this issue with Gainward G4MX as well)

assuming they dont like my IWill mobo

[Agent666]

ok... what other cards do you have in there ..... rip them all out except for the vid card and give that a go

[Smudge]

thats wot i tried, XP runs crap if i install with all my cards in, i install with min evrythng & add stuff afta

i installed with 3banks ram in thats the only otherthing i could try but im not gonna bother
thanks anyway

[Elle T]

I've been hearing simular problems to this alot with the Gainward GS Ti4200 64mb.
The best example: The card runs q3 at 30 fps on a XP 2000 with 256mb DDR333, etc etc.
And quite often crashes the machine.

Some have had the problem fixed my formatting and reinstalling,
But I figure the first batch into NZ was stuffed up.

Send it back get different brand :)

[Joshsti_NZ]

Originally posted by Elle T
The best example: The card runs q3 at 30 fps on a XP 2000 with 256mb DDR333, etc etc.

WTF?

Shouldn'y it manage at least 70-130FPS?

Thats some serious grunt right there but only 30 FPS?! :confused:

[Elle T]

Yeah its weird alright,
I've been wondering why no reviewers have run into it.

[Gronk the small]

Got a Ti4200 128 Golden Sample.... (gainwood) and have had zero issues at all so far... unless you call locking up and crashing at 595MHZ an issue (way way past where it's supposed to clocked to and a dodgy experiment at best!)

It's on a Soltek board which incidentally is running at 148MHZ with an Athlon 1800XP & 512MD of 2700 Corsair Ram....it's all good.... 11.5 X 148 = 1702 MHZ = stable as can be.

[Agent666]

yeah gronk the problem only seems to be with the 64Mb version which makes it all the more weirder

[Gronk the small]

They use the same breed of memory too don't they?
I wondered if turning down the clock speed of the memory would help at all? Coz' the first sign of instability I ran into was very similar to what's described here.... and then at insane speeds it just locked up.... turning it down to about 15MHZ past the Golden Sample limits seemed to sort things out....

[Agent666]

yep same type of memory........ the problem with the 64Mb cards happens at default speed let alone overclocking it

[Gronk the small]

Ah. Bloody strange.
I am becoming more and more glad that I coughed the extra $$ for the 128MB version.

[Joshsti_NZ]

And the moral of this story is (so far):

Don't buy a Gainward Ti4200!

[I.R]

I just got my replacement this morning..... this is the same modle except it now has nice red Gainward ramsinks on both sides...... I haven't OCed it yet coz I still need a sound card but I'll let you guys know how this "new" card turns out ;)

[Antallica]

Lets not home it's the EXACT same card (kinda fixed) just with ramsinks on it eh hehe :rolleyes:

[I.R]

:p Just found out it's a Golden Sample :p

[Antimatter]

Sounds like Gainward tried to get to much speed out of their RAM.

[simjen]

I too am having the checkerboard type screen.
My first Ti4200 was doing it everytime I powered on....got a replacement but this does it every couple of hours or every half an hour when playing DVD's (really annoying). Its a 128mb GS version too!
I see that the newest batch have bigger coolers on them too, but its definately not a heat problem..

SimJen

[Agent666]

yeah I reckon that its not a heat problem to ... more a case of bad ram or a bad design on that particular card

[Smudge]

still cant install with any G4Ti4200s (128Mb gainward/64Mb pixilview).
& comp wasnt turning on vidcard most boots, incresed voltage 2 agp slot 5% ( i got a VIO jumper) & thats fixed that issue

[DaNzA]

hmm I have a Gainward Ti4200 too, it used to do the red square thingy on my video card when playing cs or ra3, the I added some extra cooling on the ram and GPU, haven't had a problem since

link here (http://www.gpforums.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&threadid=97194) for the detail on the cooling

[linga]

hello guys,
i got exactly the same problem here! (gainward gf4ti4200 64 mb/not clocked)
this ~6 month old card crashes since some days especially while im gaming 3d games (tryed it in unreal2 -> runs 2 minutes -> freeze). i thought first its the heat and provided for better cooling but nothing changed, same problem.

if it crashes it looks funny like that: http://www.kochenmachtspass.de/Linga/gpu.JPG

summarized: ram sucks and ive to send my card back to wait for a new one, right? :\

[Ragnor]

Yup.. go back to the retailer you got it from armed with the links to the stories and articles about the issue...

Ask if you can get a different brand as a replacement (eg: leadtek) as lots of people got new gainwards that had the same problem later on..