is my card bad?

Jadion · Oct 29, 2003, 09:03 PM

Just bought a ATI 9600 npro 256 mb, damn thing has not worked well with the omega or ATI CAT drivers (latest drivers). My PC had an NVIDIA GEFORCE 4200 TI and work fine with all typers of games primarily RAVEN SHIELD. Now, ATI lets me play for about 10-20 mins and shuts the game program (MAX PAYNE2 and RAVEN SHIELD) and at times crashes my pc. Ive about done evrything that OMEGA corner readme files says and upgraded evry damn dirver (for other peripherals) i could think of....can anyone shed some light once more if this was some old problem that laready existed. Need Help! Thanks!

Junk · Oct 29, 2003, 10:32 PM

did you reformat before you installed your radeon card? or have you ran driver cleaner for nvidia files?

have you installed dx9?

new agp drivers?

Fuzzylojik · Oct 30, 2003, 12:21 AM

Go to the ATI drivers forum here and view mypost titled "THAT'S IT"

There are some good suggestions there mate but they did not fix my card so it is going back to the shop.
9800 pro for me, never touch a 9600 again but i got had when i found out that the 9600 i had was underclocked. Well not had but i overlooked it and it has caused me greif. I also purchased a cruddy brand namely powercolor which i have found out is inferior.
I hope you have better luck than i did.

Fuzzylojik · Oct 30, 2003, 12:31 AM

take my reply with a grain of salt to mate as i'm still quite mad at the moment and therefore biased.

One of the Twelve · Oct 30, 2003, 03:57 AM

When I bought Club3D R9600 Pro (128mb) to replace the reliable Sapphire 9000 64mb, my first experiences were pretty similar to yours, Jadion, however without crashes. 3DMark03 gave something 3000pts and the overall performance was not what I expected. Dunno why. I wiped away the OS and after reinstallation the very same 3DMark gave 4300pts. And the performance was clearly improved. Now I've spent some time tuning the card performance up (with omega drivers) and I'm very happy with it. Default 9600 Pro was not what I expected from "Pro".

Of course reinstallation can not be the real solution; it just worked for me.

Buzzer34 · Oct 30, 2003, 03:43 PM

Update your mobo's chipset drivers.

**MIG-31** · Oct 30, 2003, 03:49 PM

nearly everytime it is best to do a reformat when swapping brand of vga cards.

clean install of os & drivers should resolve that fault.

then next time you need to update your driverds follow this:

1) Download driver cleaner http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/ then install.

2) Open driver cleaner then find the option "cab cleaner" then use. This removes the old 27.42 drivers from sp1.

3) Remove drivers from add/remove option.

4) when asked to restart do so but when restart hold f8 then select "safe mode" from options given.

4) When in safe mode open driver cleaner for a second time then select "NVIDIA” then press clean. This removes any INF files windows leaves behind.

5) When complete reboot to normal, if cab cleaner is successful you should get the add hardware window instead of installing above drivers (27.42).
6) Cancel add driver window unless it’s an unzipped & locate file type driver. If it’s .exe type go to #7

6a) Disable any anti virus software.

7) Locate & install nvidia or ati drivers.

Reboot and things should be fine.

Ps after option 5 you might be worth reinstalling dx9.0b and the latest chipset drivers for your mobo.

it would be a good idea to copy & paste this to word then save to a floppy disk for future refernce.

~~Optimummind~~ · Oct 30, 2003, 11:56 PM

If you turned on a system tweak called "LargeSystemCache," you need to shut that off. I didn't know that that tweak will wreak havoc with ATI cards. Guess what happened?? My system crashed like yours...worse, it destroyed the boot sector and other important files necessary for Windows operation.

Fortunately, I had a Ghost image backup that I could restore to so I didn't have to reinstall Windows.

qweqaz5 · Oct 31, 2003, 02:12 AM

I'm having the exact same problems with my 9600 Pro. FYI I switched from the shitty FX5200 which gave me no problems whatsoever other than crap fps in my games.

My Specs:
XP Pro SP1
XP 2400+ (not oc'ed)
512 DDR PC 2700
ATI 9600 Pro (not oc'ed)

qweqaz5 · Oct 31, 2003, 06:46 PM

Well I might have solved my problem with random shutdowns and lockups during games. I flashed to the latest bios for my motherboard and changed my memory frequency to match my cpu fsb. AND IT WORKED!!!!!!!

I left my computer running all night with no shutdowns and I've been playing SOF2 for the past 3 hours with no problems. FYI I'm still running at AGP 8X, write-combining and fast-writes ENABLED, and VPU Recover DISABLED. I'll update if things start acting up again........

My System Specs:
XP Pro SP1(with all the latest patches)
XP 2400+ 266 MHZ FSB(not oc'ed) with Thermaltake AMD Silent Boost
512 PC2700 DDR now running at PC2100(DDR 266)
Built by ATI 9600 Pro (not oc'ed) with Vantec System Exhaust Blower beneath
Latest Omega drivers(based on Dell leaked drivers)
420 W PSU