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Two years ago, I purchased a Radeon 9800Pro (AGP) from Dells online store. I mostly bought it because at the time I was using an integrated chip by Intel, and wanted to play Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.
So I received the card, installed it, and everything worked fine. It didnt quite run the game as I was hoping, but I was already starting to make plans for a new system altogether, so it didnt really matter.
Last September my screen started locking up and freezing with artifacts. Not being an expert on the matter, I really didnt know what was going on. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Dell, and though they didnt help me, they narrowed the problem down to my video card and advised me to contact ATIs customer support to deal with the issue.
Well, fed up with Dell, I took it to a friend of mine who works with computer instead (I was tired of dealing with phone tech-support). Immediately, he discovered that my 9800Pros fan was broke and was overheating quite significantly. So I purchased a new one from Newegg, and had him replace it.
So after that, things were fine and working again. But then I got Medieval 2: Total War and put the game in. It would run the beginning / scenes perfectly fine, but when the gameplay started, the screen would totally go out. The game was still running, and I even heard it in the background. But I just couldnt see anything.
Really wanting to play this game, I called Dell to see if they could at least point me in the right direction to fixing the issue. We did some troubleshooting with the monitor, but that didnt seem to fix it. So he told me the only other factor was the video card, and that Id have to talk to ATI about it.
So I finally decided I would talk to them. At first, I couldnt find their number, but then realized you have to register your product first to get access to their phone support. So I registered it and then got the number I was to call.
So I called the number, but got the busy signal. I thought what the heck? How can their phone support be busy? I figured maybe theyre just temporarily not working, and so I would call back later. A few hours later, it was still the busy signal. So I waited a day, but continued getting a busy signal (I even double-checked making sure I was dialing the right number).
So getting fed up, I just started dialing the other numbers that were listed in hopes of just talking to someone, so perhaps they could just direct me to where-ever I needed to be. I ended up calling some FireGL workstation deptartment or whatever and managed to get through. But the guy said I would have to leave my name and number, and someone from the customer service center would give me a call. So I did, and after a few hours, finally got a call from an ATI rep.
His name was Alex. I explained to him my problem, and his first words were you better put that old fan back in your video card in case you want us to replace it if its broke.
I thought that was kind of tacky, but figured if it was a case of having a bad video card, it wouldnt matter because Im getting my new system next month anyways.
Then he asked me to go to task manager to see what kind of processes my system was running and if that might be causing the issues with the game. So he told me to open task manager, click ALT-Delete. So I did, but nothing happened. I told him, and he told me to try again. I kept clicking alt-delete and nothing would happen.
So he told me he thought it was because I must have a corrupt OS, or viruses that were causing task manager not to work. He told me that I should call Dell about it. My first thoughts were how does this have anything to do with my video card. Then he told me I was illogical because I didnt understand that it might be an issue with the OS instead of the video card.
So I ended that call quite disappointed. But then found that others were having problems with the game because they didnt have the latest drivers. So I went to ATIs site and downloaded the latest for my card. When I started up my game, it ran perfect. The drivers fixed it. I was pretty pleased.
But then after a while, it started freezing and I was getting all kinds of artifacts again. It was only in the game this time, though. So I just thought screw it, and havent played the game since. Like I said, Ill just wait until I get my new system. If I knew it would have been this much trouble, I would have just taken that stance from the beginning.
Now, I know theres going to be a lot of people who critzise me about not having the latest drivers. But if it was that obvious, why couldnt I have gotten help sooner from the Dell guy and then the ATI rep. (he finally told me to try the latest drivers after I pleaded with him not to get off the phone). Im just an average guy whos really never had these problems before. This was my first video card, and until this point, hadnt really ever had problems with it.
I will say, though, that he was good with emailing me. Through downloading the drivers, I had a few questions along the way, and instead of just calling, I emailed him. He gave me good instructions for cleaning my drivers and downloading the new ones, and always responded in a timely fashion with good answers. So I will give him credit for that.
I just think its a pretty sad day when the companies you buy from cant even help you, but go beyond that and try to push it on someone else. My OS being corrupt? Thats because the command for task manager is crtl-alt-delete, *not* alt-delete. He gave me the wrong command, and then when it wouldnt work, blamed my OS. I never use task manager, so it took me some investigating to finally realize what the real command was. And sure enough, when I typed it the right way, it worked perfectly fine.
I know this has gotten rather long, so my apologies.
So I received the card, installed it, and everything worked fine. It didnt quite run the game as I was hoping, but I was already starting to make plans for a new system altogether, so it didnt really matter.
Last September my screen started locking up and freezing with artifacts. Not being an expert on the matter, I really didnt know what was going on. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Dell, and though they didnt help me, they narrowed the problem down to my video card and advised me to contact ATIs customer support to deal with the issue.
Well, fed up with Dell, I took it to a friend of mine who works with computer instead (I was tired of dealing with phone tech-support). Immediately, he discovered that my 9800Pros fan was broke and was overheating quite significantly. So I purchased a new one from Newegg, and had him replace it.
So after that, things were fine and working again. But then I got Medieval 2: Total War and put the game in. It would run the beginning / scenes perfectly fine, but when the gameplay started, the screen would totally go out. The game was still running, and I even heard it in the background. But I just couldnt see anything.
Really wanting to play this game, I called Dell to see if they could at least point me in the right direction to fixing the issue. We did some troubleshooting with the monitor, but that didnt seem to fix it. So he told me the only other factor was the video card, and that Id have to talk to ATI about it.
So I finally decided I would talk to them. At first, I couldnt find their number, but then realized you have to register your product first to get access to their phone support. So I registered it and then got the number I was to call.
So I called the number, but got the busy signal. I thought what the heck? How can their phone support be busy? I figured maybe theyre just temporarily not working, and so I would call back later. A few hours later, it was still the busy signal. So I waited a day, but continued getting a busy signal (I even double-checked making sure I was dialing the right number).
So getting fed up, I just started dialing the other numbers that were listed in hopes of just talking to someone, so perhaps they could just direct me to where-ever I needed to be. I ended up calling some FireGL workstation deptartment or whatever and managed to get through. But the guy said I would have to leave my name and number, and someone from the customer service center would give me a call. So I did, and after a few hours, finally got a call from an ATI rep.
His name was Alex. I explained to him my problem, and his first words were you better put that old fan back in your video card in case you want us to replace it if its broke.
I thought that was kind of tacky, but figured if it was a case of having a bad video card, it wouldnt matter because Im getting my new system next month anyways.
Then he asked me to go to task manager to see what kind of processes my system was running and if that might be causing the issues with the game. So he told me to open task manager, click ALT-Delete. So I did, but nothing happened. I told him, and he told me to try again. I kept clicking alt-delete and nothing would happen.
So he told me he thought it was because I must have a corrupt OS, or viruses that were causing task manager not to work. He told me that I should call Dell about it. My first thoughts were how does this have anything to do with my video card. Then he told me I was illogical because I didnt understand that it might be an issue with the OS instead of the video card.
So I ended that call quite disappointed. But then found that others were having problems with the game because they didnt have the latest drivers. So I went to ATIs site and downloaded the latest for my card. When I started up my game, it ran perfect. The drivers fixed it. I was pretty pleased.
But then after a while, it started freezing and I was getting all kinds of artifacts again. It was only in the game this time, though. So I just thought screw it, and havent played the game since. Like I said, Ill just wait until I get my new system. If I knew it would have been this much trouble, I would have just taken that stance from the beginning.
Now, I know theres going to be a lot of people who critzise me about not having the latest drivers. But if it was that obvious, why couldnt I have gotten help sooner from the Dell guy and then the ATI rep. (he finally told me to try the latest drivers after I pleaded with him not to get off the phone). Im just an average guy whos really never had these problems before. This was my first video card, and until this point, hadnt really ever had problems with it.
I will say, though, that he was good with emailing me. Through downloading the drivers, I had a few questions along the way, and instead of just calling, I emailed him. He gave me good instructions for cleaning my drivers and downloading the new ones, and always responded in a timely fashion with good answers. So I will give him credit for that.
I just think its a pretty sad day when the companies you buy from cant even help you, but go beyond that and try to push it on someone else. My OS being corrupt? Thats because the command for task manager is crtl-alt-delete, *not* alt-delete. He gave me the wrong command, and then when it wouldnt work, blamed my OS. I never use task manager, so it took me some investigating to finally realize what the real command was. And sure enough, when I typed it the right way, it worked perfectly fine.
I know this has gotten rather long, so my apologies.