MY APOLOGIES FOR THE LENGTH.
i got hold of a used 9800pro 128mb card for a low price, so i picked it up. the card i had before this one is a geforce3 (i still have it). it ran "fine", but i needed more power for games like civilization 4, age of empires 3, etc. i could still play those games with the lowest of graphics settings, but thats just wrong.
anyways, i got the original catalyst cd with the card, but i went straight to installing the latest 6.8 catalyst instead. i set the desktop to 1280 x 1024 and 32 bpp.
i got to the windows desktop fine. i could browse the internet fine. i was even able to load up winamp fine. i figured everything was dandy... then i tried to load up the milkdrop visualization in winamp. my computer locked immediately, and all i could do was reboot. i tried to load milkdrop a couple of more times, and it always locked up, and i had to reboot. i tried loading up civilization 4, and it locked up my computer in the initial credits screens (i couldn't even get to the game's main menu). the same for age of empires 3. i didn't get any error prompts or anything. just a complete freezing of the screen and the high pitched sound from the speakers. it wouldn't even load the ancient ALLIED-
freaking-GENERAL. ridiculous!!!
so i started my troubleshooting adventure. i checked all of my drivers and adapters: motherboard, soundcard, network adapter, bios updates, directx 9.0c... the works. system still kept locking up.
i tried messing with the desktop settings: switched to basic 800 x 600 and both 16 bpp and 32 bpp. no luck there. i turned of agp fast write. still froze. turned off vpu recover. still froze.
i checked to see if the video card was overheating, but nope. i have an aluminum case with 3 case fans, but just to be sure, i went ahead and opened it up and stuck a fan right in front of the video card. didn't help at all.
then, i went through different drivers: latest omega only, tried the original catalyst 3.2 (or something) that was on the disc that i got, catalyst 6.7... and i'm on cat 6.4 right now. i made sure to do a complete uninstall, and used programs like drivercleaner to ensure i got a proper uninstall between the different driver installs.
ati's website had a suggestion to up the agp voltage to 1.6 or 1.7, but my bios doesn't allow it.
the catalyst 6.4 which i'm on right now seems to be the best. the other drivers i had wouldn't play the chimp demo on the factory disc that i got. however, i'm now able to watch the demo for like 30 seconds (yay!) before the system locks (boo!). also, allied general actually loads and plays properly (atleast for a minute or two, i didn't check beyond that time).
i think i'm on hour 15 or so, and i noticed one common trend through my epic journey, and i believe i've isolated the issue: it's a problem with opengl. when i tried to view the 3d settings in catalyst, the computer freezes, but not when i look at any of the other settings. i've seen a working catalyst before, and know that there's a preview of a 3d car that comes up in the 3d settings section. i had opened dxdiag on the old cat 3.2 to test direct3d, and it was craaaaazy. the test cube was spinning SUPER fast, to the point the cube was blurring, and the system would lock right before the direct3d 9 test would start. when i run the same test now with cat 6.4, the cube is fine and all the direct3d tests pass without a problem. so, i'm guessing the direct3d is working fine now, so that just leaves opengl.
all the stuff that locks my computer are 3d related stuff: the newer games, the milkdrop winamp visualization, and 3d settings utility in catalyst.
so, my question here is what the hell should i do next??? i really don't want to revert back to the geforce3. i'm aware that ati has issues with via chipsets, but i'm not trying to swap to intel either. i've pretty much resolved myself to getting this damn card to work on my system.
maybe i should just storm ati's headquarters up in canada, and hold their engineers hostage until they fix my problem(s).
if the psu voltages come out to be stable and ample, do you have any idea as to what else might be going on?
