Creative 3dBlaster FX5 5700 Ultra Problems

**xero** · August 15th, 2004, 02:34 PM

Hey all, just thought i'd post this on here and see if anyone can work out the reason behind this problem. Below is a copy of the emails sent between me and Creative's tech support team, take a look and see if you can work out why my card is doing this.

i have also clean installed the drivers many times. (using drivercleaner AND NFR)

===============================================

hello, i sent this question quite a while back now, and the card had been pretty stable on the drivers from the CD.

recently i tried the new game 'Doom 3' and was getting very low frames per second compared to friends who had the same card.

they told me to update to the latest nVidia drivers, which i did and i got a 30fps increase.

but again arose the problem explained in the first place, when i play games for longer than 30mins or watch a video, the computer bluescreens and tells of how nv4_disp.dll has caused the hardware failure.

i've tried everything you said, changed settings to no avail, I've now updated to the latest motherboard BIOS and drivers to no gain, and even halved the card memory from 128 to 64.

Please help, thanks in advance.

James Hill.

www.pwns.org

At 07:14 AM 17/04/2004, they wrote:
Dear James

Thanks for contacting Creative Technical Support.

Please try to update BIOS as well as motherboard chipset driver.
Disable any onboard graphic card and remove the previous graphic card
driver and applications.

Please try to uninstall the software and drivers in safe mode.
Reinstall them in normal mode from the installation CD. Before any
installation, please close any background application if available.

In the computer's BIOS, toggle (i.e. try both enable and disable) the
following options unless otherwise noted.
Refer to the manual and motherboard manufacturer for more information:

Video Bios Shadow
Video Bios Cacheable
System Bios Cacheable
C8000 xxxxx Shadow **Try disabling these values**
Peer Concurrency PCI Streaming
Assign IRQ To VGA **Must be enabled**
VGA Palette Snoop **This must be disabled**
Reset Config Data
Enable ESCD
Power Management **Try disabling this**
Virus Checking **Try disabling this**
AGP Aperture set this to 64MB. If you have this much RAM or less, set it
to half of the system RAM.
AGP Turbo **Try disabling this if there are problems with the card**
AGP Fast Writes **Try disabling this if there are problems with the
card**
VGA boot from **Set to AGP instead of PCI**

Try setting the AGP Aperture Size to a different amount.

You can change the aperture size in your BIOS setup - it may be called
something slightly different, so check for a setting that is measured in
MB and can be set to values such as 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256.

It should be set to half your system RAM if possible, and if not it
should be set at some point below or equal to the amount of RAM that you
have installed on your motherboard.

Please retain all the previous correspondence when replying to this
email.

Best Regards

Aaron Chua
Technical Support
Creative Labs Europe

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
=======================

Subject: CLE - Technical Support Request - LANG - English - AGREE
Name: James Hill
E-mail Address: [email protected]
Country: United Kingdom
Self Description: ID(3) Advanced PC User
------------------
Support Inquiry: ID(3) My Creative hardware stopped functioning
correctly
Product: 3D Blaster 5 FX5700 Ultra
Date Of Purchase: 10/2/2004

------------------
Operating System: Windows XP
Creative Model Number: GX-009-CL
Computer Brand/Model:
Processor/CPU: P4 2Ghz
Memory: 512
BIOS Type/Revision: Latest
System Board/Chipset: P4S333
------------------

Detailed Problem Description:
lo, just wondering if any of you guys can help.

i've recently upgraded from a geforce 4 ti4200 to a 3D
Blaster 5 FX5700 Ultra.

after installing the card, everything seemingly worked
fine with the drivers from the CD. this was not the case,
when i skip through a video the desktop/mouse/video would
start jittering at about 1fps then the pc would
bluescreen and say it was 'nv4_disp.dll' that has died.

now i've upgraded to the latest drivers from your site it
crashes EVERY time i try to play a game/watch a video.

thus i removed these drivers fully and installed the
creative drivers from the CD again. This worked well for
a while, then it started doing it every now and again.
These crashes and bluescreens are very random, sometimes
you can be playing a game and its fine and other times it
crashes in parts that have been fine otherwise; same with
videos.

got any ideas?

tia, james hill.

=======================
James Hill
www.pwns.org

**TechZ** · August 15th, 2004, 03:46 PM

Welcome to WD xero

This might be something else, but did u get the nVidia drivers from nvidia's site and try them too?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_61.76

Maybe the card is getting too hot?

**xero** · August 15th, 2004, 06:37 PM

yeah, they're the ones i tried. tried a few versions before then too.

thanks for the welcome

sureley the card would be reaching the same temperatures no matter what drivers were installed?

thanks, james.

**TechZ** · August 16th, 2004, 06:57 AM

What i meant was, maybe it is overheating, so its crashing.

**NooNoo** · August 16th, 2004, 08:13 AM

If you got a 30fps increase, the card is working harder and getting hotter.

**xero** · August 16th, 2004, 02:04 PM

temperature is not an issue, i did a log of the crashing and it never went above 43 degrees.

could it be something to do with not enough power?

**NooNoo** · August 17th, 2004, 01:06 PM

or the power is dipping because the psu is not reliable... yes.

**TechZ** · August 17th, 2004, 03:09 PM

give us some more details on the psu then.

**xero** · August 18th, 2004, 07:33 AM

right, i've just put in my old gf4 ti4200 which came with the pc and worked fine for months, and its doing exactly the same thing at the same times.

so its not the card is it?

plus the ti4200 works fine in the old pc still.

**clauded** · August 18th, 2004, 05:33 PM

try a good working power supply and see if it fixe`s it

**xero** · August 24th, 2004, 02:15 PM

i've actually just bought a new psu, 550w one.. and it does exactly the same thing.

PLUS i've tested RAM... it all still does the same thing.

dont know what to do

**NooNoo** · August 25th, 2004, 07:28 AM

thought about updating the motherboard bios?
how about updating the agp port driver? (SiS AGP WHQL Drivers for Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP V7.2.0.1170)

several versions of the p4s333 which is yours?

**xero** · August 25th, 2004, 08:47 AM

updated both of them not long ago..

i've reverted back to the drivers off the CD and everything works fine..

somebody told me that with creative cards you HAVE to use the creative drivers because of something with the card being different.

i just need creative to make a recent driver for this card now so games play as fast as they do with the latest nvidia drivers.

i really wish creative would pull their finger out and make some new drivers.