Radeon 9800 Pro troubles.

[mongycore]

Hey there.

Been lurking for nearly a month now. Great site and forums.

Here are my specs:

PC Power & Cooling 510 Deluxe
A8V Deluxe Mobo
Athlon 64 3800
1 Gig Corsair XMS Ram (2-3-3-6-1T)
two western digital hard drives (80 & 40 IDE)
Audigy 2 sound card, before the zs one appeared
lynksys network card
plextor 708 dvd-burner
tosiba 1612 dvd-rom, flashed for region free playing.

Before, I had a ****ty nvidia Geforce 2 ti powering the bugger. A hold over from my old dell. I got around to buying the 9800 Pro. Installed it yesterday, and have had nothing but headaches. Mainly the games I play freeze up. I used driver cleaner when removing the old nvidia card. The symptoms mirror those complaints had about the old 9600 cards - where the hardware mouse was the culprit.

I'm using the 4.7 detonator drivers directly off of ATI's site.

Any clues as to what the trouble is? Thanks in advance.

[graftonater]

what exactly are your probelems?? blue screens? or frozen screens? or lines across the screen?

[mongycore]

sorry for not being specific enough.

problems:

- the games run okay when I play them, but when I go to the menu screen (say for example the server browser in Unreal Tournament 2004) the whole system freezes up. I cannot alt-cntr-delete my way out of it, having to do a reboot.

- from time to time, in Doom 3 and No One Lives Forever 2 the game freezes up then spews weird garbage across the screen. I shut it down then power it up again, afterwards results in the bios intro screen showing the same kind of garbage.

- After dvd viewing the comp freezes up after closing power dvd 5. Then the card stops sending a signal to the monitor and everything goes black.

I've gone so far as to uninstalling/driver cleaning the ati drivers as well, but eventually these problems keep cropping up. I've also changed out the power cord going to the card, swapping it with my dvd-rom drive power cord, same problems (while no trouble occured with the dvd-rom)...

I'm guessing I got a bad card or something and will be taking it back to the store for an exchange - first time I've ever had comp troubles like this since the introduction of directx.

[Gizmo]

Have you got any kind of OC going on the video card or is it stock? Sounds like it is getting too hot and becoming unstable.

Welcome to AOA!

[mongycore]

No overclocking at all, plus airflow is great in the case (4 fans).

[marcofra2000]

Originally Posted by mongycore

sorry for not being specific enough.

problems:

- the games run okay when I play them, but when I go to the menu screen (say for example the server browser in Unreal Tournament 2004) the whole system freezes up. I cannot alt-cntr-delete my way out of it, having to do a reboot.

- from time to time, in Doom 3 and No One Lives Forever 2 the game freezes up then spews weird garbage across the screen. I shut it down then power it up again, afterwards results in the bios intro screen showing the same kind of garbage.

- After dvd viewing the comp freezes up after closing power dvd 5. Then the card stops sending a signal to the monitor and everything goes black.

I've gone so far as to uninstalling/driver cleaning the ati drivers as well, but eventually these problems keep cropping up. I've also changed out the power cord going to the card, swapping it with my dvd-rom drive power cord, same problems (while no trouble occured with the dvd-rom)...

I'm guessing I got a bad card or something and will be taking it back to the store for an exchange - first time I've ever had comp troubles like this since the introduction of directx.

Try the Catalyst 4.6, I had all those troubles that you are saying with my 9800 pro after installing the 4.7. Try a format if nothing else works.

[mongycore]

using 4.6 only added one more problem to the mix. Occasional crashing, black screen/no signal, occurences during web browsing. I gave the card back to Circuit City and got my money back.

I've been over to newegg, if cooling is an issue, or it was just a crap card to begin with, I think I'll try out those HIS Excalibur 9800 Pro cards instead.

Thanks though for the feedback guys.

[robbie]

What kinda Power Supply do you have?
Rob

[graftonater]

hehe u dont need to appologise :P and like deffo sounds like bad chip...the erorrs seem to random after everything that you have tried for it to be anything else...

[Razorfish]

If youve got a HIS 9800pro ICEQ you wont be dissapointed! Check my sig! Welcome to AOA

[mongycore]

robbie: I have a PC Power & Cooling 510 Deluxe PSU.

Razorfish: The IceQ is on its way. (and damn that's a nice overclock you got going on there)

Look forward to getting back into the games.