OK, I admit it. I enjoy video games, and EverQuest is my chosen addiction. ItÂ’s a 3D intensive game, so when I saw an Emachine T2625 system at a good price, I jumped.
The system performed great on everything I ran on it. Except, that is, for the most important applications:
*blush*
My 3D games.
Everquest freezes solid every time within a minute or so, requiring a hard boot to recover.
Here are the system particulars:
FIC AM-37 Motherboard with Athlon XP 2600+ running at 2100mhz. (266 Front Side Bus) (onboard S3 Savage Video, Realtek Ethernet adapter and AC97 Audio)
Athlon approved cooling fan shipped with CPU and installed by EMachines.
512megs of PC 2100 DDR memory (Emachines Generic), upgraded to 1 gig (512 stick of Corsair 2700 DDR added after the freezing problem discovered.)
120 Gig Western Digital Hard Drive
NEC DVD Burner
JLMS DVD Player
PCI 56K Modem
Standard Floppy Drive
250 Watt Power Supply
Windows XP home addition
--------------------------------------------------------------
It didn’t take me long to see that the on board Savage video card was freezing during EQ and wasn‘t up to the task. I replaced onboard video with an Nvidia Geforce4 MX 440 128K video card in the AGP slot provided on the motherboard. I went into safe mode and disabled the S3 before installing the Geforce4 and then installed the Nvidia 44.03 detonator driver.
While inside, I noticed that there were no fans except for the power supply, so I added a PCI Slot fan under the Nvidia Card, and a case exhaust fan as well. Presently, the CPU gets to about 51degrees when Everquest is doing itsÂ’ thing.
Realizing the 250 watt power supply was marginal at best, I replaced it with a 350 watt supply.
Still, the freezing in Everquest persisted. Sometimes the system would freeze at the character selection screen BEFORE the full program launched.
In over a month of troubleshooting this exasperating problem, I performed the following at the direction of the technical minds at Emachines and Sony (the parent behind EverquestÂ…)
1) Disabled the onboard sound card and ran the game without sound.
2) Installed every Detonator drive in the Nvidia library released in the last 18 months.
3) Installed the latest Via 4 in 1 (Hyperion 4.49) drivers.
4) Attempted to update the Motherboard Bios, but realized that Emachines had installed a proprietary bios to remove the possibility of regulating CPU voltages. Went to the FIC web site, prepared to install the recommended bios for my motherboard, but was intimidated away before flashing when I received “The Program file’s bios-lock string does not match your system” message. Motherboard Bios thus remains stock.
5) Removed the side of the computer, and directed the full force of a Lockheed C-130 Turbo prop into the case (OK, maybe IÂ’m overstating the box fan a bit. But it SURE was windy in there and it kept a 6 pack of soda quite frosty tooÂ…)
6) Turned the bios AGP down to 2X, back to 4X, disabled and enabled fast write. Adjusted the AGP aperture setting from 128 to 256 K and back.
7) Installed Direct X9b and tested it flawlessly each time with DXDiag.
8) Swapped the Corsair Memory for the Generic, changed slots, tried every permutation of 512 and 1 gig memory installations allowable with two sticks and two slots.
9) Restored Windows XP and the entire system back to stock with the provided Emachines system restoration disks (Symantec Ghost.)
IÂ’m sure I tried several other things, as I was scouring the Internet for ideas, and saw that this freezing problem seems to plague many others besides myself.
NOTHING helped.
UNTILL TODAY !!!
I donÂ’t particularly like this fix, but it SOLVED the freezing problem.
I moved the Front Side Bus jumper on the motherboard from the 133 setting (266 actual with the doubling) and downgraded it to the 100 setting (200 actual.) The system memory is still running at 133 (266.)
Son of a gun - EverQuest is running rock solid now.
Someone please tell me, if you could, what in the HELL did removing 25% of the bandwidth in my Front Side Bus do to solve the problem? And what are the ramifications?
Bad motherboard? Bad bios? Bad processor? WRONG processor?
I know, I know, the application is running fine, and I am grateful. But I would sure like to see this system perform according to specifications, and the FSB pipeline IS designed to run at 266 after all.
Anyone got any ideas?
(Thanking you all in advance.)
The system performed great on everything I ran on it. Except, that is, for the most important applications:
*blush*
My 3D games.
Everquest freezes solid every time within a minute or so, requiring a hard boot to recover.
Here are the system particulars:
FIC AM-37 Motherboard with Athlon XP 2600+ running at 2100mhz. (266 Front Side Bus) (onboard S3 Savage Video, Realtek Ethernet adapter and AC97 Audio)
Athlon approved cooling fan shipped with CPU and installed by EMachines.
512megs of PC 2100 DDR memory (Emachines Generic), upgraded to 1 gig (512 stick of Corsair 2700 DDR added after the freezing problem discovered.)
120 Gig Western Digital Hard Drive
NEC DVD Burner
JLMS DVD Player
PCI 56K Modem
Standard Floppy Drive
250 Watt Power Supply
Windows XP home addition
--------------------------------------------------------------
It didn’t take me long to see that the on board Savage video card was freezing during EQ and wasn‘t up to the task. I replaced onboard video with an Nvidia Geforce4 MX 440 128K video card in the AGP slot provided on the motherboard. I went into safe mode and disabled the S3 before installing the Geforce4 and then installed the Nvidia 44.03 detonator driver.
While inside, I noticed that there were no fans except for the power supply, so I added a PCI Slot fan under the Nvidia Card, and a case exhaust fan as well. Presently, the CPU gets to about 51degrees when Everquest is doing itsÂ’ thing.
Realizing the 250 watt power supply was marginal at best, I replaced it with a 350 watt supply.
Still, the freezing in Everquest persisted. Sometimes the system would freeze at the character selection screen BEFORE the full program launched.
In over a month of troubleshooting this exasperating problem, I performed the following at the direction of the technical minds at Emachines and Sony (the parent behind EverquestÂ…)
1) Disabled the onboard sound card and ran the game without sound.
2) Installed every Detonator drive in the Nvidia library released in the last 18 months.
3) Installed the latest Via 4 in 1 (Hyperion 4.49) drivers.
4) Attempted to update the Motherboard Bios, but realized that Emachines had installed a proprietary bios to remove the possibility of regulating CPU voltages. Went to the FIC web site, prepared to install the recommended bios for my motherboard, but was intimidated away before flashing when I received “The Program file’s bios-lock string does not match your system” message. Motherboard Bios thus remains stock.
5) Removed the side of the computer, and directed the full force of a Lockheed C-130 Turbo prop into the case (OK, maybe IÂ’m overstating the box fan a bit. But it SURE was windy in there and it kept a 6 pack of soda quite frosty tooÂ…)
6) Turned the bios AGP down to 2X, back to 4X, disabled and enabled fast write. Adjusted the AGP aperture setting from 128 to 256 K and back.
7) Installed Direct X9b and tested it flawlessly each time with DXDiag.
8) Swapped the Corsair Memory for the Generic, changed slots, tried every permutation of 512 and 1 gig memory installations allowable with two sticks and two slots.
9) Restored Windows XP and the entire system back to stock with the provided Emachines system restoration disks (Symantec Ghost.)
IÂ’m sure I tried several other things, as I was scouring the Internet for ideas, and saw that this freezing problem seems to plague many others besides myself.
NOTHING helped.
UNTILL TODAY !!!
I donÂ’t particularly like this fix, but it SOLVED the freezing problem.
I moved the Front Side Bus jumper on the motherboard from the 133 setting (266 actual with the doubling) and downgraded it to the 100 setting (200 actual.) The system memory is still running at 133 (266.)
Son of a gun - EverQuest is running rock solid now.
Someone please tell me, if you could, what in the HELL did removing 25% of the bandwidth in my Front Side Bus do to solve the problem? And what are the ramifications?
Bad motherboard? Bad bios? Bad processor? WRONG processor?
I know, I know, the application is running fine, and I am grateful. But I would sure like to see this system perform according to specifications, and the FSB pipeline IS designed to run at 266 after all.
Anyone got any ideas?
(Thanking you all in advance.)