Radeon 9800 PRO graphic issues

Hepper

Hello,

I have a 9800 pro 256mb 256bit graphics card and I am getting some insane graphical problems. My first experience with it was when I tried playing World of Warcraft under Direct3d, I was having weird triangles poping up and stretching from random areas of the screen off into all different directions. So I ran it in Open GL, and everything seemed to be fixed for a while.

At this point I decided to try Half-Life 2 to see if the problems were occuring in other games. Low and behold, same exact issues in HL2.

With in the next few days I tried the omega drivers, and they did nothing to help. So I switched back to catalyst.

Giving up hope after hours of trying to fix this mess, I went back to playing WoW for a few days. A few days passed with absolutely no problems in openGL then, all of a sudden, I started getting the worst graphic glitches I had seen yet. And now when I play any game all I see are horizontal lines smearing the screen and cant see anything.

After that issue started happening it just got worse and worse, I could sort of see around the horizontal lines, but now there are so many that it completely covers the screen. And now I cant play any game that uses
Open GL or Direct3d I have so far concluded. Even the little race car in the catalyst control center now has the horizontal lines smearing acrossed it.


I also noticed that since it started happening, some of the desktop icons dont appear. Just the picture, the text under it still shows. I can keep refreshing the desktop and some appear and then others dissapear. When I uninstall the video card drivers, this problem stops.

I tried playing Counter-Strike the original, not source, in software mode just to test it, and that works fine. But when I switch the video mode into openGL or D3D the lines appear again.

I have lost all hope and tried to do everything I could before having to come post for help on the forums. I will call customer support once I can, but they are down for the hollidays.

Thank you for any info you can give! I appreciate anything.

Specs:
Windows XP Professional SP2
Asus P5P800 mobo with 865PE Chipset, with LGA775 support.
P4 3.4g 800fsb 1MB L2 cache LGA775
Radeon 9800 PRO 256MB 256-bit
1gig of corsair ram
26gig WD Raptor hard drive

No_Style

Greetings and Welcome to DH

A very well laid out first post, thanks for making it easier for us to help you. This may be kinda off the radar, but have you installed the latest Intel chipset drivers?

Those "triangles" you speak of are probably artifacts. These can be caused by an overheating video card, primarily overheating memory. Please check to see if your case is unusually warm.

If heat is not the issue, it may be clockspeed issues. Have you overclocked the card? If so, please return them back to default speeds. If they are at default speeds, you may want to consider underclocking the card to see if the artifacts go away. If you do have to underclock the card try using RadLinker or some software based equivalents. If underclocking the card gets rid of the artifacts, I suggest you get it replaced if it's under warranty.

We'll try to make it a happier holiday for ya

P.S - I may not respond for about 10 hours since I'll be sleeping!

Geminiwave

another problem may be insufficiant power? Usually the computer will just reboot when the power gets too low but you may be in the realm of things working but barely. Its just an idea...but maybe.

another idea is that maybe the card is really defective. Its probably still under warentee, yes? So maybe you should RMA it.

have you tried the new 4.12 cats yet also? Those could be the ticket to fixing your problems.

First I'd go through and update drivers though. update your chipset drivers and such first, and then run drivercleaner and install your graphics card drivers pronto. have you ever had an nVidia card on the computer? This could cause problems(hence the suggestion to run drivercleaner)

me972

welcome -

during max graphics and when this problem appears check or record your 3.3 Volt rail.

you shouldn't have any thing less then 3.2V -

use your motherboard hardware monitoring software... if you dont have it look for one at google.

if your 3.3Volt does go low when this issue appears you'd have to get a better and much stronger PSU.
a 500Watt PSU is what solved my problem. I had the same.

BRgds
me972

Geminiwave

hahaha...my PSU dips down to 3.1v often...its a sad sad sight. Fortunately I got a new PSU...just gotta install it now ;D

anyway listen to me972. hes a smart dude about this stuff.

The_Neon_Cowboy

How about some screen shots???

Hepper

Alright guys, thanks a bunch for the tips and info.

Im almost positive that all my drivers are up to date. I tried to download the latest graphic driver for the 865P chipset and it said my machine don't meet the minimum requirements.

My computer does run cold, I have it in a basement with 7 fans going on it. I figured it was going to run very hot with the processor thats on it. I have not overclocked my card, it is currently at 378/337.5
I don't know much about clocking video cards so I will wait for some advice as to how much to underclock it.

I am using the latest catalyst 4.12, and never put anything but this card in it.
I am still under warrenty, the first thing I will probably do when customer service comes back up is send it back for a new one. But I would like to see if it's possible to fix this first, I may have the same problem and this one may not be defective.

My 3.3volt rail is running at 3.3+ all the time. It raised to 3.4ish when I was loading stuff in game. My PSU is 420Watt right now.

Remember this is happening any time that I use openGL or D3D, I will show you what I mean in some screen shots. The little car test in the catalyst 3D settings is even showing the problem.


The first is just my desktop. I was not having this problem untill the huge glitching started to occur. These have not been modified except for changing the quality, resolution, and image type to host them.

Here we see how the icons are dissapearing. There are a few lines that are running thru some desktop icons and the audio symbol in the lower right by the McAffe and MSN is missing. The folder images are also missing. Again, this is not due to shrinking the image, this is how it really looks.



Here we see the car in the catalyst control center having the graphic problem.



Here is an ingame screen shot of World of Warcraft running in D3D this problem was always present, from the second I installed it. Changing to OpenGL fixed the artifacts and made it a clear, crispt bueatiful picture that it's supposed to be.




Here we see the begenning of the horizontal line problem.



And this is the next day.



I could show you screen shots from other games, but it looked exactly the same as this. HL2 had the weird artifacts going as in the 3rd screen shot. Now they all look like the last one.

Sorry for all the screen shots. I thought it was vital in maybe giving you guys a little more info for fixing/understanding the problem I am having.

Thank you very much for everything so far.

me972

the problem seems to bee too specific ....to D3D...
I think you should try a blank (format HD) install of windows XP.
without SP1 or SP2...
dont update any thing
accept your AGP and Motherboard INF drivers and then install
the latest OMEGA or CATS and see what happens.
if the problems is still there your card is DEAD...
and you need to RMA it if possible.

brgds
me972

Geminiwave

no. get a new graphics card. send that sucker in, its defective no question.

if you really want to be sure, download the DirectX 9.0C file(the HUGE one) off microsoft.com and reinstall it.

if that doesnt fix the problem, honestly its definatly the card.

Another possibility, however unlikely, is that sometimes the PSU does freaky stuff to the graphics cards. well maybe not the PSU so much but...do you have anything else hooked up on the same cord? The cord to your graphics card, is there anything on the line before or after it? If so, try disconnecting those and connecting them to something else. Always make sure that graphics cards have dedicated power lines.

Hepper

I tried my friends GF 5200fx today, and it worked fine. So yea it must have been just the card. Thank god. Hopefully when I get my new one it wont have the same problem, or I will just have to dump ATI with this comp.