Vista - System Freezing Problem AMD Chipset / Nvidia Graphics

Hey everyone,

I've been having this system lock up problem on my PC.

System:

350watt power supply
Asus M3A78-EM
AMD 5200X2
2GB OCZ Platinum DDR1066
Maxtor 320GB PATA
NEC DVDR

The problem occurs when I installed an 8500GT Nvidia graphics card. The system would run for a little then completly lock up. All I would be left with was an EventID: 6008 in the Event Viewer once I reset.

Once I remove the 8500GT and run on the onboard 3200HD drivers all is well.
Nothing locks up the system responds fine.

I dont think the system is infected with anything as this is a fresh install on a fresh hard drive. Previously the system ran with XP on a different hard drive (120gb, the 320 was storage) and had no trouble with lockups.

I'm not sure what the problem could be. Originally, I thought it might be power supply--but after trying a 430watt nothign changed. A friend of mine suggested drivers. All mine are up to date. Hopefully someone here could help.

Thanks,

Kris

Hi Kris and welcome to Vista Forums

I have had a look at the motherboard specifications: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. and I think your problem lies here.

As you can see, the motherboard has an ATI GPU built in and you are trying to add an NVidia card and, I suspect, make use of the above feature.
Unfortunately, ATI and NVidia use different drivers and I think that your problem is caused by a driver conflict. If you want to take advantage of this feature of your motherboard, then you will need an ATI graphics card.

Hm. I agree with you on the driver conflict issue. I was using nvidia's latest drivers for my 8500 (174s) and it was nothing but freezing problems. So I tried Omega Drivers based on 169s and the system is much better off than it was. I am still having difficulty with it however. I was copying a 8gb file off of the C drive across my gigabit network to another computer and ram usage on the host machine spiked to 99% the entire time. I looked through the task manager's applications list and there was nothing using anything more than 50mb of ram. I have 2gb in there right now.

I would have thought AMD would have been wise enough to disable features like that Hybrid Crossfire when a non ATi card was installed.

I also dont like the fact that there is no direct method of getting AMD chipset drivers as there is for nvidia. AMD's driver page is mainly for graphics drivers. I dont see anything about chipsets. At Nvidia's its all contatined in one menu/location.

surely he could disable the onboard graphics card from the bios?

Drivers & Tools | GAME.AMD.COM

Scroll down and under "Additional Downloads" you will find the southbridge driver.

lol yeah I saw that like 10 minutes after posting that. lol.