Does this sound like it might be a PSU issue?

So you might remember this thread which I posted as after rebuilding my PC from Vista to 7 and adding in a few new bits of hardware and then finding that the old PCI gpx card that was driving the 3rd monitor seemed to be causing massive performance problems with just about every aspect of using the computer. Set it to disabled in device manager and instantly the PC was better.

Anyway after reading various things on the internet I’d assumed the Geforce 6200 just wasn’t Win 7 friendly so I finally replaced it today with this:

So I was expecting to drop this is, enable and turn my 3rd monitor back on…but no…

Appreciate this bit is definately a driver thing and I’m posting in hardware but stay with me for a bit. So I pulled the GF6200, installed the new GF9300GS. Win 7 installed the driver (which should come from the same up to date nvidia driver pack that’s running the main 560ti card) but immdiately stopped it with the “Code 43: Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems” message.

Now the old card didn’t do this. So I try reisntalling the driver with the same result. I then forced a driver change to the MS certified version of the same driver (same version number) and the card comes online and starts working…but…this moves the code 43 error to the previously working fine 560ti card and sets it to VGA mode. So I’m worse off!

Anyway, reboot and Windows has sorted the 560ti and set the code 43 back on the 9300GS and it’s been stopped. So I disable it and re-enable it and it comes up and the 3rd screen comes to life. Good. Well no, the same issues exist that originally prompted me to upgrade it i.e. when ever there’s anything displayed on the 3rd screen the performance of the PC goes down the toilet. Even to the point that moving windows around becomes jerky. Moving things around on the 3rd screen is painfully slow.

So I’m £50 odd quid lighter, have the original issue and now a driver issue too. Good work!

As I said the old card worked fine in Vista with much of the same hardware so I was confused but then I thought about the upgrade and rebuild. I did add quite a bit of hardware.

Before:

mobo and Q6600
8GB RAM
GF 9600 GT (requires PSU power feed)
GF 6200
M Audio PCI sound card
1 HDD
2 DVD drives

after:

mobo and Q6600
8GB RAM
GF 560ti (requires 2 PSU power feeds)
GF 6200 or GF 9300GS
Asus Xonar Xense sound card (requires PSU power feed)
4 HDD
2 DVD drives

So there’s a fair amount more that could be impacting the PSU, not to mention the fans in the Antec case. I can’t remember what the PSU is and it’s all put back under the desk now but I seem to remember it costing just shy of £100 and being bought mainly for it being quiet. I think it might be a 750w PSU.

Do you think the performance issues when the 2nd graphics card is enabled could be because of the PSU? I’m going to try unplugging some of the disks etc. and test. If not what else?

And what can I do about the Code 43 errors?

cheers chaps

While not the same problem, you might have seen my thread where I’ve been having random blackouts. I specifically eliminated power as a possible problem, and long story short, since switching the card to AMD I’ve not had any more problems (yet?). I had tried multiple nvidia cards and all had the same problem, so while I don’t think that was hardware, that still leaves the drivers. So back to this problem, I wonder if recent nvidia drivers are particularly sucky in some situations? I haven’t tested that theory on my own system as my problem can’t be induced on demand. As yours can, I wonder if trying a much older driver revision might help? Try the oldest one you can that supports the cards fitted. I’m not sure where to go should it be confirmed or eliminated though…

I’ll try one of the older drivers from nvidia for the 9300GS and see if that helps. Am wondering if the drivers are getting confused at multiple devices that aren’t the same. Sure they must test this sort of thing. Not uncommon really is it.

I think multi-GPU is more common these days for processing, so would hope it works!

well downgrading the driver didn’t do anything different to what I described above. As well as pulling a few disks I might try putting the 6200 back in as that didn’t show the same driver issue.

Shame that didn’t work Spacey :(. Let us know how it goes with the 6200 back in

so bit of an update now I’ve had more than 2 secs to myself.

There’s no way to force the 9300 and 560ti to use different drivers. If I downgrade the 9300 to the built in one in Win 7 it tries to use the same on the 560ti and hence it jumps to VGA mode and on reboot puts the latest Geforce driver back.

Clean reinstall of all nvidia drivers that I could remove seems to have fixed the other problem of the driver crashing and recovering during game play. Good! but hasn’t fixed the code 43 on the 9300 during boot. Even when I force both cards to come up without the code 43 (I can do this by dropping the 9300 to the Win 7 bundled driver then updating the 560ti to the latest nvidia one - works until reboot) the original problem of poor performance with anything on the 3rd screen is back. This means that with the current driver there’s zero value in the 9300 remaining in the PC.

I put the 6200 back in and from a divice manager perspective all is well. No code 43s and both cards appear up. No driver crashes either but original problem still there.

So given the experience I’m fairly convinced it’s just a driver “feature” rather than hardware or power. So the proof would be to try an ATI card and see if the problem goes away. Going to be building a nice little graphics card collection…

Any recommendation for Win7 / Aero capable ATI graphics cards that are either old skool PCI or PCIe x1 that have a very short PCB?

quite a few ATI Radeon 9250 PCI cards on eBay for not much. Seems there are some working fine in Win 7 and some not. Worth a punt you think?

e.g. = http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-Radeon-9250-256-MB-PCI-3D-Video-Card-TV-Out-VGA-DVI-/280621163127?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item4156532277

actually scrap that - still getting tons of driver crashes :frowning:

Have you tried doing a clean install of W7 and then loading up to date drivers with your current setup?

yep previous and exactly the same issue. And this test was with a clean driver install as well. Most annoying.

so stopped the driver crashes. Think the card is just running hot. The Xonar is right next to it and runs hot too. The case is in an enclosure in the desk and I have all the fans set to low. That was never a problem previously but as mentioned in the thread I linked in my first post there’s a lot more kit in the case now.

I’ve de-clocked the 560ti by 20mhz on GPU, memory and shader and it now seems stable. Obviously not fixed my original problem but al least I can play games again!

Might invest in a different case and cooling later in the year…

now back to solving my 3rd monitor issue!

So bit of an update.

PC is stable with the 560ti declocked a bit although things are still running hot because of the back of the desk blocking the main exhaust fan.

I’ve swapped the 2nd graphics card for an ATI HD5450. Installed fine and brought the 3rd screen up immediately :slight_smile: Initial testing appeared ok. Games run ok with the card enabled and the screen up. I’m able to move windows around screens 1 and 2 nice and smoothly. However it’s now clear I’m pretty much back to where I was at the start. If there’s a window open on screen 3 things start to go a little wrong. if it’s a static page in IE all is well. If there’s flash etc. then movement of windows in any screen is slow and jerky. Moving a window onto screen 3 has massive lag. it’s almost a concertina as the window disappears at the edge of the centre screen and takes half a second to start appearing on the right one (3).

So progress but annoying issues remain. Any ideas at this point? I’m now assuming it’s not power related (it’s a 650w PSU after checking - and it’s now driving a lot of kit).

Sounds like Memory timing. You may need to voltage up on it some.