HTPC - Fix or upgrade?

Alex53

Alex53

Alex53

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Joined
3 Jun 2003
Posts
1,776
Location
Gibraltar
This is my current HTPC spec:

Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case
Corsair Value Select 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2)
Abit AN-M2HD nForce 520 Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Its never been very stable with XP, but since I decided to install windows 7 64-bit, I get constant crashes. Most of them seem video related, with videos freezing and strange lines all over the screen, or the screen simply going black and after a few seconds the 'no signal' image appears on the TV.

The problem seems to be Windows 7 installs an nforce driver that simply doesnt work properly. It detects the nforce chipset as a more modern one (610i / 7050). In fact for a while it confused me into downloading that driver from nvidia, but eventually I remembered that was not the nforce chipset on my motherboard. Upon going to the nvidia site I cant even find a Windows 7 driver for nforce 520.

I guess there might be a fix for this, maybe installing a Vista 64-bit driver in compatibility mode, but even in the XP days this setup never proved very stable, so maybe there is a better motherboard out there I could put my current memory and CPU in? I am even willing to buy a motherboard + cpu if the intel chipsets are more stable. Performance is not an issue here so long as I can play video.

Grateful for any suggestions :)
 
or simply bypass the onboard and go sapphire 4550 passively cooled pci-e grfx? £30 odd
 
Thanks for your suggestions. Both sound reasonable and inexpensive. That Asus mobo looks very good actually.

Last night I installed a Vista 64-bit driver for nforce 520 (plus some others, since nvidia packages them all together). Windows 7 still shows the display drivers as the 610i/7050, but up to now it has not crashed.

The moment it does I'm ordering some new hardware. (Maybe it knows and that's why its behaving :) )
 
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It keeps crashing, on a clean new installation.

Just before I order a new motherboard, would it be worth running 32-bit Windows 7 instead of 64-bit? I say this because this system used to be stable enough with Windows XP 32-bit. Maybe its running a 64-bit OS that it doesnt like?

The crashes I am getting are strange, for example a video will freeze visually and still be heard for a few seconds, then a loud noise is heard, and then the whole screen is covered in colourful lines, after which all I can do is reset, or press the power button for a few seconds to power off.
 
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wouldn't make any difference as 64bit drivers are plentiful so i can't see the 32bit ones being any better.
 
Hmm I see your point. The latest thing I have tried is to change from HDMI to the RGB output. It's a stab in the dark but I wonder if the HDMI output is faulty. Been watching a video for about 30 mins and no crash, but then again sometimes it was taking a lot longer to crash anyway

edit: doh, it crashed again, on the screensaver :/
 
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