weird problem: monitor goes into powersave while gaming.

i've recently put together a new pc for my family and everything went well with the install. however as the title says, whenever we get into online gaming, say counterstrike, a few minutes into it, the monitor will switch to powersave mode and i'll be forced to restart the computer before it will kick in again.

i've tried a few things to remedy the problem but nothing has worked. my first thought was that my monitor didn't register that it was being used while gaming so that it would go into screensave mode, so i went into the power properties in the control panel, but its set to never powerdown the monitor.

i'm using the latest catalyst drivers and can't figure out what's wrong.

my system is:
amd 64 bit 3000+ socket 939
soltek sl-k8tpro - 939 mb
1 gig of pc3200 ddr, in dual channel ram
ati 9800 pro
400 watt name brand psu


any thoughts?
thanks,
rk

Check in the BIOS.

well, once it goes off, how do you get it back on?
do you have to restart the comp or move the mouse/something like that?

What video card? Reinstall the drivers ?

Sorry, Ati 9800 Just reread . I see your mobo has a port 80 diagnostics card built in . Thats interesting have you tryed it ?

I believe it to be vid card related. Bad card or drivers. Try the game with no drivers installed, just the XP generics and see what happens

i just did a fresh install of windows xp, reinstall sp1 and 2 and tried the game with the basic drivers that windows sp2 installs and the same problem occured.

i had to restart the computer.

i already tried before the reinstall with the latest ati drivers but i'm going to try it again. this has me stumped.

virtualbody - what should i check for in the bios? i've looked over the basic stuff and everything looks good.




rk

Download this part of your manual BIOS Setup section: http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/down...-AwardBIOS.pdf

Look at page 67 (Power Management) and disable any of the settings that refer to Suspend or Video off etc.

Maybe it's something as simple as rightclicking the desktop, going to properties, moniter, advanced, and turning off all those auto off thing's.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Duffman3

Maybe it's something as simple as rightclicking the desktop, going to properties, moniter, advanced, and turning off all those auto off thing's.

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he said he did that. ;)

nope...

tried those changed virtual, and it still did it within 60 seconds of getting in the game. if i didn't have to work this weekend i would package this p.o.s motherboard back up and send it back to newegg.

i swapped out the 9800 pro for a 9600 pro to verify it wasn't the videocard and it did the same thing... so that narrows it down to the motherboard or monitor would be my guess.

anyone else have any suggestions?
thanks,
rk

What version of DirectX are you running, and where did you get it?

I've seen something similar once, the problem was that the game was taking control of the keyboard and mouse and there was no notification that any activity was taking place, so the power save cut in. Of course, even then moving the mouse/pressing keys was still intercepted by the game so it wouldn't come out of powersave.

That was in a specific game, so assuming the same thing happens with more than one game it seems likely that either DirectX (or some other piece of activity monitoring software) is causing the problem.

Yes lynx, but he should be able to turn off any power saving features of his system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234

Yes lynx, but he should be able to turn off any power saving features of his system.

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Agreed, but that cures the symptom, not the cause. I imagine he wants to find the cause too so that he can eliminate it.

running dx9.0, i've emailed both ati and soltek about the problem but they haven't responded yet... still waiting on both of em.

figured out that it wasn't the power supply being undersized, i swapped out a friends 500watt psu and the same problem occured.

this is getting annoying. i'm thinking about flashing the mb bios back to a older one as it came shipped with the newest one from soltek... at this point i have nothing to lose.

Don't flash to an older BIOS revision. Your 90nm CPU requires the new revision to function properly.