HELP Saphire Radeon 9000 Pro 128

B_Rad_G · Oct 12, 2005, 02:11 PM

I am having a problem with my Saphire Radeon 9000 Pro. Everything works fine in 2D but when I get to 3D, mainly Americas Army, after 30 min or so the screen turns weird colors and turns into this mess of triangles centering at the middle. Its hard to explain, kinda like a vortex with flashing colors. I have a few screens just not sure how to post em. I have tried several new drivers and old ones. I had this problem before and fixed it some how, just can't remember 3 years ago. I am running an Abit KV7 mobo, 2600+ Barton, 512MB DDR, onboard sound etc. Any suggestions, ideas or comments, feel free cause I'm all out.

daedal · Oct 13, 2005, 10:52 AM

From the symptons you've described, it sounds like your card is overheating.
The first thing I would check is to make sure that your fan is still spinning; the fan on my Sapphire 9000 Pro died a while ago.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 14, 2005, 02:48 PM

Hey, same mobo as me =D

B_Rad_G · Oct 14, 2005, 03:40 PM

Yeah, the fan seems to be working fine and just to make sure i put a house fan next to the case with the side off and the same thing happens. I have went through about 8 drivers in the past 4 or 5 days, the only annoying thing is that it takes up to an hour to find out that the problem is still there.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 14, 2005, 04:22 PM

How are your power supply rails? Try checking them in BIOS and see if they're close to spec

B_Rad_G · Oct 16, 2005, 07:15 PM

Power supply trails
+12V = 11.6
VBat = 3.0
Vcore = 1.66
DDRV = 2.7
AGPV = 1.5
+5V = 5.1
+3.3 = 3.2
5VSB = 4.8

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but its from Abit EQ, which i dont use when I play games. I took the fan off my 9000 Pro and modified a 2600+ heatsink and fan to attatch to the card so there can be no way the chip is overheating. I thought for sure that this would have solved my problems but low and behold, 35 min into Americas Army, it screws up again. Funny thing though, it only screws up with AA and not with Monopoly tycoon. I know that AA is way more demanding but they are both 3D. Maybe there are driver issues with AA but I have gone through a list of drivers a mile long. Any other ideas??????

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 16, 2005, 07:44 PM

Your +12v rail is low but everything else looks fine.

An AMD heatsink mod onto a 9000? Overkill + 500!

B_Rad_G · Oct 16, 2005, 08:16 PM

I know, this card is a pain and i dont want it to have any excuses of why it isnt performing. I had the same problem with it years ago on another system and i forget how i fixed it. Could it be that the card doesnt support direct X 9. I am not sure if i have DX9 but would it allow me to play 30-50 min of a game and then just screw up? One more question, is there anyway i can post a screen shot so you guys can take a look at what is happening, it is really hard to explain?? Thanks for the input.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 16, 2005, 08:25 PM

Sure, screen away!

B_Rad_G · Oct 17, 2005, 01:23 AM

Not too sure where to upload or how to post an image but i did turn off fast write and turn off cpu to agp write and played AA for over 2 hours without a screw up

. The first time ever that i got tired of the game before my card did. Not sure if its fixed yet but its improving. I am using Omega cat 3.0 with most of the settings on the performance rather than quality. let me know how to post a screen and i'll show you. it is really messed!!!

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 17, 2005, 04:05 PM

You can email it to me if you like, should have email address in profile

B_Rad_G · Oct 17, 2005, 04:58 PM

Just when you think something is fixed. It did it again. Sometimes it is good for a while and sometimes it isn't. Does anybody know what is going on???

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 17, 2005, 08:45 PM

Judging by the screen shots it looks like bad ram modules on the card

Which makes sense as 2D doesn't stress the memory all tha t much....

Have you looked at cleaning the modules with some rubbing alcohol? Or using ATI Tool to test for artifacts?

Try underclocking the memory by 50 MHz and see if that helps and if so its bad Vram

B_Rad_G · Oct 20, 2005, 10:05 PM

well, things have been strange. Wiped it down with alcohol and I underclocked it 20mhz and it was ok, little slow so i cranked it up 10 so it was underclocked 10. worked fine but if i underclock it by 5 it screws up a little bit but enouight to fix it without a restart. I am slowly putting up the quality and playing multiple times before restart and hopefully find a happy medium. But i don't like happy medium so I bought a 9800XT off ebay for 180CDN. So I just have to put up with this for 10-14 days

. Thanks for your help, I'll need it when I put this in my old computer.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Oct 21, 2005, 09:23 AM

Good work