ATI HD2900XT in games. Help needed!

sylvios

Hi all!

This is my first post and I really hope I'll get some help from you guys. Maybe others might find something useful here if they have the same problems with me. I recently upgraded my old Sapphire Radeon X1950XT 256MB to a GeCube Radeon HD2900XT 512MB. After a lot of searching around the web I decided to go with an ATI card once again since I 've always been an ATI fan and the HD2900XT seemed pretty good for its price/performance. As fas as noise is concerned I am totally satisfied, it's even less noisy than my Sapphire X1950XT even when playing games. Problem is that in ALL games I have tried so far, there are various corruption problems of different kind in all games. In details:

Gothic 3:NOT PLAYABLE!
Starts off and all I see is white screen flashing and some lines running in perspective as if the objects and characters are pulled in a warp or something. Moving the mouse around a bit I see everything running OK for a sec or two. Release the mouse and everything dissapears again to plain white screen with black boxes flashing.

Colin McRae DiRT: NOT PLAYABLE!
Starts off and there are the same black lines running from the edge of objects towards the center of screen, or the road totally dissapear and reappear again, or black boxes (shadows I think) are everywhere in the scenery where cliffs and mountains should be.

Lost Planet Extreme Conditions (in DX9 mode since WinXP): PLAYABLE if you manage to reach the "new game" or load a saved game
This one runs very very fast and with no graphic glitches or anything, but while on the menus of the game the whole system goes into bullet time speed. 1 FPS when moving from menu to menu and about 10-20 minutes to manage to either launch the saved game or quit to Windows. In game however everything runs damn fast and no strangle lines or artifacts!

Test Drive Unlimited: NOT PLAYBALE!
Starts off and the screen starts flashing as if like you have a cell phone next by your monitor and you receive a call, you know how the whole screen goes left right and screen tears up and down. No artifacts or black lines here but it certainly isn't playbale.

Using Catalyst 7.6 I don't have ATI Overdrive option to overclock/underclock the card. Is that OK or is there something wrong? I read somewhere that Catalyst only support ATI Overdrive for X800 and X1000 series. HD2900 series is not yet supported. Is that correct?

I tried underclocking the card using Riva Tuner v2.02 but the results were the same. Graphic corruptions still remained in all games.

I am going to try lots more games, F.E.A.R, Overlord, Ghost Recon 2, Oblivion, Titan Quest, Silverfall etc which all of these and those mentioned in detail were ALL PLAYING perfectably well on my X1950XT using the same exact rig and maybe if you also care I will post my results here.

I really think that the card DOES NOT have a hardware problem since it is brand new. I think 99% this is a driver issue. Second guess is that my card doesn't get the power it needs to run properly. To make sure I went out and bought this and connected it to the HD2900XT. I think it should get the power it needs after that. Last thing I can think of is that maybe it NEEDS to run at a PCI-Express 16x bus and not on a PCI-Express 4x bus that it is running now since my ASRock M/B only support 4x PCI-Express speed.

Don't know what you would suggest or if you have any similar experience from any HD2900XT yourself. Please help me out here if you can what should I do next.

Rig specs are:
Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.3 GHz (Default speed)
ASRock Dual-VSTA M/B
2GB Kingston DDRII SDRAM @ 667MHz
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
Thermaltake 500W TR3 Main PSU + Thermaltake 250W Pure Power Express VGA PSU
Windows XP Service Pack2 + .NET Framework 3.0 + All Windows Updates
ATI Catalyst 7.6 CCC drivers
No Overclocking to CPU or GPU

Veridian3

Hi, i dont have time atm to give you a detailed response however will do in the morning (its 2am here so in about 6 hours). What i can say quickly is that there is a hotfix driver for Lost Planet.

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=28298

Tipstaff

To be honest you aren't the first person I've heard that has had troubles with the X2900XT on that particular board (both Dual-VSTA boards, in fact). From every indication it has to do with the chipset the board uses, that being VIA, and because of the way VIA has created this dual AGP/PCIE funcionality. See, the fact is that the boards PCIE graphics slot doesn't actually run full speed. By this I mean it's actually a 4x slot, and not a true 16x slot. Yes, it accepts it, but due to the design of the board it only runs in 4x.

BTW, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, according to AsRock, the X2900XT isn't supported on that board. Not that it doesn't mean it won't work, cuz they said the same about the X1950, yet it does (obviously), but it might require them to update the system before it will... if at all.

The only thing I can suggest at the moment is to try updating the bios for the board, as well as reinstalling the VIA Hyperion drivers, but not the ones of AsRocks site. Try installing the official updated drivers, which you can get HERE. After that, reboot your machine, and reinstall your display drivers.

I can tell you, for certain, that you won't get access to Overdrive with the setup you have now. I have to assume that you are using the Thermaltake True Power Express VGA PSU to power your card (so you have both 6 pin connectors in use), however on the card is an 8 pin, and a 6 pin connector. While the card will run fine on 2x6pin connectors, in order to get Overdrive to work, you need to be using a true 8 pin connector for it. If you check your manual you will see it mentioned (it should be, that is) that ATI purposefully turns off Overdrive functionality if it's not used.

ChaosMinionX

4x is not enough for the master x2900xt to run off of.
Crossfire slave card yes.
Master no
it requires a 16x PCI-E slot or it will not run properly at all.

You need to upgrade your motherboard. Its one of the problems your going to run into with buying entry level motherboards and putting mid-highend hardware on them unfortunately. Buy an Asus P5K or P5K deluxe they OC real well and it has a 16x PCI-E slot.

Veridian3

Looks like i didnt need to come back, everything i was going to say is in the above posts

sylvios

Thanks all for the replies.

I think you are all very right that I need to go for a better MB at least for starters, (bigger PSU might come next) and this is what I'll do as soon as I manage to keep some money in my pocket (very hard to do that in summer time btw especially with all those great bands coming to Greece this year! James are playing in 2 days!). I don't know if you can feel me but it's the worst thing to have spent all your available money on building a "good" rig, bought some good games too and just before the end not to be able to play any of them just because 1 last piece is not good enough and the whole system goes to waste - least for now. Just hard to swallow! Anyway....one more question for you guys. I did a short search today on the net about good price/performance MB's and I don't know what I should choose between these chipsets: Intel P35, nVidia 650i SLI or Ultra or any ATI chipset. I think I'll go for any Asus or DFI with the P35 but I am not sure yet.

Any suggestions here?

And thanks again to all and may all have a great hot summer!

Tipstaff

Truthfully, there's really only 1 reason to go with an SLI board: if you decide to run SLI at some point. It'll run the one card fine, be it an ATI or Nvidia based one, but you won't be able to run a Crossfire setup on it.

Right now the big wait is on DFI's LanParty P35-T2R board (you can get a sneak peek HERE), however it got pushed back a bit. Be sure to look over Stuarts P35 board review to give you a better idea on what board to look at.

As for the 650i chipset, the Asus P5N-E SLI is a pretty decent board. I've only sold about 2 of them so far, and I've yet to have those clients complain about them, nor did I have any problems setting them up. I would personally, however, go with the P5N32-E SLI instead, or the P5N32-E SLI Plus. Unlike the P5N-E SLI, both of these boards PCIE16x graphics slots run full speed, while the P5N32-E SLI Plus has a 3rd PCIE16x slot. With the P5N-E SLI, if both slots are filled the board bumps the speed down to 8x for each card. Now, if you are only planning on using the one slot, or are going to be using just ATI cards on it, your fine, but if you decide to switch to Nvidia down the road to do SLI, then having full PCIE16x speed on all the cards makes the world of difference in games.

kris23

there are a few things id like to point out, first is the GPU power supply, it doesnt have the 8-pin connector you need to use the ATi overdrive feature of the card.... the card WILL run but you cant use overdrive

next, like everyone said, the 2900XT wont run properly in a 4x slot.

since you are about to get a new motherboard, i highly suggest a P35 based board.....

the best one being the Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 $238.99USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128046
the next best being the ASUS P5K DELUXE $219.99USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131182
third best is the Abit IP35 Pro OFF-LIMITS $184.99USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127030
and last and cheapest MSI P35 Platinum $169.99USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130097

i highly recommend either the P5K DELUXE or Abit IP35 boards,

the major con of the Gigabyte DQ6 is the cooler choice, the only good one to fit on there is the Tuniq tower, but if you have one, then it should be fine to get that

sylvios

Following everyone's advice I went out and bought today a new MB. I got the Asus P5K which I think is a pretty decent board for what it offers, and doesn't cost way too much. As the moment of this post I am still installing my progs, games etc, on a clean Windows XP setup from scratch. So far everything looks very stable, and I think the HD2900XT now feels right at home in this 16x PCI-Express board. As soon as I finish installing some benchmark tools I'll post results to let you know if you were right about the MB failure.

I have one question thought....I've noticed right from the moment I installed Asus Probe II that the MB goes very hot at IDLE times, while the CPU has much lower temperature. The MB is around 50-56 Celsius while the CPU is around 35 to 44 Celsius max. What do you think about that? Is this normal? From my experience over the years, the CPU always runs a little bit hotter than the MB, not the other way around! Any comment from an owner of an Asus P5K maybe? And how high is it safe for the MB to go before it gets damaged? I fear how hot it will get when I 'll run a game for an hour or two!

kris23

thats one of the issues with P35 boards, they generate alot of heat.....

i highly suggest reapplying thermal paste with something like Arctic Silver Ceramique or Arctic Cooling MX-2 compound onto the chipsets that should lower your temps greatly...

im sorry i forgot to mention that when i showed you the list of boards

also, 60C should be the maximum safe limit for temperature for the board..... though recommended temps are around 35-40C any higher and performance takes a hit if a few things

sylvios

kris 23: Friend, the MB has now reached even 58 Celsius and that's at idle times, while surfing or writing DVD's on Windows etc. I definetely need to do something to keep the heat lower. About the thermal compound you said, should I remove any heatsinks off the MB to apply it? I do know how to do it between the CPU and cooler that there are no heatsinks, but I've never removed any chipset heatsink before. How is this done? Just pull it until its removed? And after that how am I going to replace it on the MB again? Just the compound will hold it? Hope I am not being too tiring but I DO worry about it.

Thanks

Tipstaff

With the P54 it looks like you will need to remove the board in order to remove the sinks. The southbridge sink (the smaller one) looks to be held by 2 plastic pushpins with springs in between tops of the pins and the board. More than likely the release for the pushpins are on the underside of the board, so you will have to remove the board in order to 'pinch' the pins through.

As for the nothrbridge (bigger bugger), the top piece beside the back connectors are held to the board the same way as the south bridge, but the sink above the northbridge itself is held in place by 2 metal wires (more like tensions springs). In order to remove them you it should be just a matter of pushing the wire out of the arch holding it in place.

Honestly, your best bet would be to get some active cooling on the sinks. For the southbridge you could replace the sink completely with a chipset cooler (specifically made for it), or add a small fan (like the size of the ones used on the old 486 CPUs). An even better idea would be to pickup something like the Antec SpotCool that would allow you to mount the fan anywhere in the case, and adjust the position of the fan to blow directly, or indirectly on the 2 sinks. They usually run about $11US a piece (I got mine from NCIX actually).

sylvios

Problem solved! MB temp is now around 40-44 Celsius max and CPU temp is around 27-33 Celsius max, even after playing Lost Planet for about one hour! Couldn't be better I think. Followed your advice again and installed two small fans I took off from an old 5 1/4 HDD cooler I had and tied them with wraps over the chipset heatsink and over the other heatsink with the pipe next to the CPU (don't what heatsink is this). Also I installed the latest Bios although the Bios has nothing to do with the temperatures drops I think. I didn't wanted the hassle of removing the MB and chipset heatsink etc to apply thermal compound and I gues I won't have to anymore. I have to say I am pretty amazed about what two small fans can do! 16 Celsius degrees lower just like that! To be honest I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my eyes. Anyway, thanks again for the advices!

kris23

I guess there's no circulation between the vid card and CPU, good thing you got the fans, as long as its running cool its fine.... you just increased the lifespan of your system greatly!