Please Help

Curious_101 · Feb 22, 2004, 12:08 PM

I know there are experts here somewhere. Here is the rundown on this brand new system.

EMachine T6000
Windows XP SP1
AMD 64-Bit 2.0Ghz
512DDR 3200
Direct x 9.0b
128 MB ATI Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis (Powered by ATI) apparently made by Sapphire
MSI K8T-NEO-FIS2R - as far as I can tell. I ran the Bios ID by motherboards.org, but it
seems useless without opening the case to have a look. I have not done that just yet.

I have tried the desktop at the following settings:
800 x 600 32 bit 60Hz, 75Hz, 85Hz
1024 x 768 32 bit 60Hz, 75Hz, 85Hz
...same problems.

Quick Notes:
I have always ran 1024 x 768 on my desktop in the past, but usually at 16bit high res...not 32.

I read somewhere that no matter what the desktop is set at, CoD and MoH:AA default to 60 Hz anyway.
I have not tried 16bit on my desktop and 32 in the games. I also read that Call Of Duty requires 32 bit since 16 bit is not supported anyway.

Problems:
First I bought Call Of Duty. I read that I would need the newest Catalyst drivers from ATI, so I downloaded
them. I did a complete uninstall and have since downloaded (Driver Cleaner for future uninstalls

).

I reinstalled the Catalyst 4.2 drivers, minus the WDM...still had problems. Locking up, my monitor goes
out of range sometimes, other times I get booted back to the desktop. I had no previous problems with
this monitor going outof range until I bought this new system.

This happens with MoH:AA as well.

I performed an uninstall of the ATI drivers (again) and downloaded the Omega Drivers. I browsed the readme and noted that he said to turn off fast writes, then he stated that they must be turned
on for some systems. I tried MoH:AA with fast writes off....got the boot as monitor went out of range.

I thought I would enable fast writes as I noticed it mentioned within these forums someplace...and give it another try.

Should this not work, I may download the drivers from sapphire as I am led to believe that they
are somewhat different than (Built by ATI cards) since the card is (Powered by ATI) according to the cards Bios Part Number.

You can imagine my frustration at this point. I am at the Paratrooper level in MoH:AA, but I only get there
a little at a time due to crashes. A brand new rig, two new awesome games and a ton of new headaches.

I'm an old gamer trying to get away from Quake III and enjoy the new stuff, but so far enjoyment has been out of reach.

If any of you can offer ANY insight to these problems I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for putting up with the long winded approach. I just wanted to provide some backgroud information.

Curious_101

riles9262 · Feb 22, 2004, 05:10 PM

anything overclocked? and how strong is your power supply?
make sure that the sapphire is securely seated in the agp slot, and you could try raising its agp voltage by .1 in the motherboard bios. some say that this works.

Curious_101 · Feb 22, 2004, 06:06 PM

Nothing at all is Over clocked. My power Supply is Delta Electronics 300W. I took the side off the case
and everything appears normal. I should have taken a picture. There was 1 Jumper pin on the Video card, but the book showed the pins with nothing on them...and made no reference regarding it. There was nothing written on the card next to the pins for reference either.

The video card itself has nothing but a heatsink on it. No cooling. Probable cause.

The cooling fan on the processor seems to be running fine, but that is the ONLY fan in the case...apart from the PS fan.

I have since downloaded the ATI drivers from Sapphire's website and will give that a try. I have also
installed the latest VIA 4in1 drivers..using the Omega Drivers. Problem persists.

Thank you for the response. If I figure out a course of action I will pass it along.

Curious_101 · Feb 22, 2004, 09:45 PM

Resolved.

I installed the latest VIA 4-in1 drivers version 4.51 as mentioned. Then I installed the drivers provided by Sapphire.

I left fast write enabled, lowered the setting to 4X and I just finished playing MoH:AA smoothly for 3 hours. Ahhh.

Desktop Settings
800 X 600 32 bit

MoH:AA In Game - Identical Settings

I should note, after I installed the Sapphire drivers, it identified the
card as a Radeon 9600 Series.

Thanks for the feedback.

swimtech · Feb 22, 2004, 10:35 PM

An EMachine Athlon 64, cool! Gateway just purchased them a couple weeks ago - Emachines has been a profitable company too.

You should be able to switch your video driver properties over to 32bit with no problems at all. You will likely notice no speed difference within Windows on that machine, except everything should look better. The desktop color depth change may also help to keep any crashes from occuring when going from 32 bit color in games (DX9 in control) to a 16 bit desktop when exiting a game.

If you want to know a very important number for your video card, open System Information (Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - click System Information - expand Components - click Display) and note the PCI Device ID value. That number is specific to your particular make and model of video card. It is used to identify your card within the install programs for video drivers. You could e-mail or PM Omegadrive and he might incorporate your card into the install routine of his driverset - if he hasn't already, and you could use them too if you want to give them a try...

Curious_101 · Feb 24, 2004, 02:41 AM

Indeed. That's how I tracked down who built my card. Thanks again.

P.S. Finished SP of MoH:AA...started Spearhead. Very cool. I haven't even got back to playing CoD online yet.

Thanks again,

swimtech · Feb 24, 2004, 04:10 PM

Curious_101,

TwistedMetal has started a thread that Omegadrive has joined in on to incorporate cards not currently supported by Omegadrive's driverset. If you'd like your card added click here:

Is Your Video Card Supported By Omega Drivers?

Curious_101 · Feb 24, 2004, 06:01 PM

Thanks for passing along the information. I appreciate it.