Alternative to DFI SLI-DR

[Moja]

Hiya, after MANY problems from what I can only narrow down to being the MotherBoard itself (sound crashes etc with Half-life (one) engine - any other sound runs flawlessly, and as i play Team Fortress Classic a lot, this isnt the MotherBoard for me if it crashes so often!

So... I was looking for an alternative, it needs to be SLI preferably, but not sure what is a good alternative against this motherboard? So was just after some suggestions really. Specs atm are

AMD Ath 4000+
XFX GeForce 6800GT 256MBDDR3
DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR
2*74GB Raptors (SATA)
1*250GB WD HDD (IDE)
1GB OCZ Dual Channel RAM
+ A lot of cooling

Thanks in advance,
Moja

 

[Nubius]

DFI is some of the best boards out there especially for overclocking.

Are you sure it isn't your RAM having errors or your PSU being too weak?

Or perhaps the XFX cards, I've heard a lot of peopl having problems with those.

If it was the motherboard itself, it'd either not work or work, so that's what leads me to believe it's something else.

of course also make sure all the plugs are put into that board, the extra molex, floppy that goes near the PCI-E slot, aux pin things like that

 

[Moja]

Hm you could be right, im not too up and these computers, this was the first one i built

How could the GFX Card effect the sound though?

Moja

 

[Trifid]

How about the sound drivers?

Have you tried rma'ing the motherboard. For those specs, you need a very very good psu. I hope you haven't under estimated the importance of a good psu.

For your question, how about the Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi? But the dfi is alot better than the asus.

 

[Moja]

The PSU is a 600W OCZ PowerStream , as seen at the bottom of this page:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/OCZ.html

Moja

 

[Moja]

Bit of an update for you, dont know how I can narrow it down much more but it kinda proves Nubius or Triffid are right. I just disabled the sound in BIOS, so all i got on is the crappy speaker in the PC, and suprise suprise it crashed. So what does that mean? Is it a prob with RAM? - What should i try next?

Thanks,

Moja

 

[Moja]

Should I try a different Graphics card, RAM, - whats the sorta think I should start off with?

Moja

 

[dhw200]

I cant answer the question, but about getting a vid card for a new comp, u should no something about XFX. They tend to be very good overclockers, but often fail to work on delivery. Go with an eVGA card.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

About XFX, yeah they make good and bad cards, alot of them are broken, and the good ones overclock pretty far. I am one of those people who have had problems with 1 (and 2, but I think it's the DACs' now )

Well hopefully you will try these 2 things, and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Try a different graphics card #1, use a driver cleaner to remove the drivers.

#2: If this does not work try reinstalling windows, make sure you use a slipstreamed copy of windows and not a old windows CD (it's legal)

Also post more detail about the audio problems please

 

[Moja]

Ok i'm going to try a different graphics card later on tonight and try what you said.

The sound problem basically - when playing games (this appears to only happen with Half-life one engine) - the sound crashes at random places, and the sound just loops, every 0.5 second, the same sound, then the computer totally locks up, and the only thing to get it working is to hit the reset switch.

Now i know Valve have problems with this, and Ive checked and tried all there FAQ answers. Such as not putting SoundBlaster card in the bottom slot etc. Updating all drivers/BIOS, everything! Yet it still doesnt work. Here's some pictures of my comp if you wanna see whats plugged in, will probably only make sense to someone with a SLI-DR themsevles adn the pictures are pretty crap tbh . Btw, whats the little light thats on next to the third RAM slot mean?

Pictures:




Moja