Is my 9600 Pro faulty?

J

jas0nt

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 4, 2003
Messages
81
hey guys, it's me again (i posted around a month ago with this same problem, but i was waiting for the right fans to be in stock)

my 9600 Pro has locks up while playing any game. for a few weeks, i strongly believed it was a heat problem, but after i bought two fans (one 80mm fan, another harddrive fan) for the front of my case blowing in air, the problems still exists.

before i start, here are all the things i've tried, and none of them worked.

- Turned off VPU recover in the ATi control panel.
- Turned off fast write in the ATi control panel.
- Reduced Anti-alaising to 2x.
- Reduced the hardware acceleration down two notches.
- Reinstalled the newest ATi drivers.
- Removed one side of the computer case to increase cooling.
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 128 (from 64).
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 256.
- Installed latest motherboard driver.
- Installed latest BIOS driver.
- Installed two fans both blowing in air.
- Decreased the quality of Direct3d through the control panel
- Underclocked my card -16.8% for the engine, -16.1% for the memory using Powerstrip 3.47
- Reformatted

what happens is when i play a game (i've tried GTA3, Vice City, Sim Cicy 4, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003), it will randomly freeze for 2 seconds or so, and a blue screen will show up. the blue screen doesn't have any text on it, and the music cycles. the only way i can get out of it is by rebooting.

one thing that really confuses me is these lockups started right after i upgraded from 3.2 to 3.9. and it appears that the damage is irreversible (meaning if i drop back to 3.2, the problems are still there). but on the other hand, when playing Unreal 2 before upgrading, it would freeze then and not on any other game.

this Monday, my friend is going to let me borrow his Radeon 9600 Pro to see if it will work. i'll upgrade the drivers, if it does run perfectly, then great, i can eliminate the possibility that my card is faulty. if it still doesn't work (it works on his computer), then somehow ATi cards won't work with my computer :eek: and i will have to live with nVidia cards.

i WAS going to buy some cooling for my card (probably Zalman or Vantec Iceberq), but i figured the card isn't even hot at all. my computer runs at around 45C idle (i would think it would hit 55C if it is being used), but if i feel the back of the GPU, it is barely warm. i could comfortably put my hand there for hours and not get burnt at all. so i would guess additional cooling won't do anything.

another thing, i was wondering - once booting up, and playing the same game, how come the game can still run for 5 or so minutes? if the problem is heat related, shouldn't the game
crash less than 5 minutes, as the card is already hot from previous crash?

surely, it is impossible for the GPU to cool down so rapidly since rebooting from the blue screen (around a 10 minute gap)

here are my system specs:

CPU: Intel P4 2.8Ghz 800Mhz with Hyperthreading
RAM: 4x Samsung 512Mb DDR 400Mhz PC3200
PSU: Task (generic) 400W
Video card: Powercolor Radeon Pro 9600 at 398.25/297.00

any ideas/comments at all? i've seen around 6 other people on the internet who also have this problem.
 
hmm... i upgraded to Catalyst 3.10s, and the game seems to be playable for a few extra minutes.

but the problem remains... :(
 
Have you tried disabling the hyperthreading on your CPU? I have a friend with a P4 with hyperthreading, and when he has it enabled he can't run certain games, like Jedi Knight II. I would suggest disabling the hyperthreading.
 
i'll try that, but right now i've disabled the IRQs which were being shared with the 9600 pro. they were 2 USB ports.
 
stupid question-- but are all chipset drivers and whatnot updated to their fullest? i have bad driver update luck..
 
I had the same problem when I built my gf's father his pc. Call of Duty, and many other games froze intermittenly after a few minutes of gameplay. These are the settings that I used to get it running stable, although it took me nearly 2 weeks to acheive this goal.

1. Take of fast writes in the bios, this in turn should also turn them off in the ati display options panel. If not, make sure they are off on there as well.

2. Take vpu recover off. MAKE SURE YOU ALSO UNCHECK THE BOX BELOW THAT VPU RECOVER THING! Seriously, I disabled vpu recover, and felt I had exhausted all solutions, until I unchecked the box below vpu recover. (it goes grey when vpu recover is unchecked) After this the system was 100 percent stable.

4. Set the agp to 4x in the bios. Also, make sure its at 4x in the ATI display options panel.

5. Set the aparature (dunno if thats spelled right?) to half of your system ram. IE 256mb = 128mb aparature size.

6. Use cats 3.10
 
1. Take of fast writes in the bios, this in turn should also turn them off in the ati display options panel. If not, make sure they are off on there as well.
Click to expand...

my Intel PBZ board's BIOS doesn't have an option to disable them. i can only do it through SmartGart and by running SmartGart.exe through ATI's control panel folder through explorer.

2. Take vpu recover off. MAKE SURE YOU ALSO UNCHECK THE BOX BELOW THAT VPU RECOVER THING! Seriously, I disabled vpu recover, and felt I had exhausted all solutions, until I unchecked the box below vpu recover. (it goes grey when vpu recover is unchecked) After this the system was 100 percent stable.
Click to expand...

ah, i never noticed the checked box. i normally just tick the first box till it's greyed out and leave it like that. i'll do it now. :)

4. Set the agp to 4x in the bios. Also, make sure its at 4x in the ATI display options panel.
Click to expand...

again, i cannot do this through the BIOS, only SmartGart.

5. Set the aparature (dunno if thats spelled right?) to half of your system ram. IE 256mb = 128mb aparature size.
Click to expand...

my aperture size is 128Mb, my ram is 2048. should i set it to the maximum my BIOS allows me (256Mb)?

6. Use cats 3.10
Click to expand...

i have. it doesn't crash (i've played for 40 minutes), but the game's graphics are all distorted.
 
my aperture size is 128Mb, my ram is 2048. should i set it to the maximum my BIOS allows me (256Mb)?
Click to expand...

yea, i would recommend you use 256mb.


i have. it doesn't crash (i've played for 40 minutes), but the game's graphics are all distorted.
Click to expand...

Thats a new one to me.... Id check out the powercolor forum (if one exsists) and ask someone about this.

But hey, at least you got it running stable. :D
 
ok, today, my friend let me borrow his 9600 Pro, made by the same manufacturer and is purchased at the same place i bought it. the problem remains.

can i conclude that 9600s won't work with my computer? :(

i've tried disabling HT, set AGP aperture size to 256, no fixes.
 
Is the card firmly seated in the agp slot as this can sometimes have an affect such as you are explaining?
it migh have something logged in there or a bit of dust?Worth a shot anyways;)
 
i doubt it, it's a relatively new motherboard. besides, i've taken it in and out several times, i'm sure i would have put it in correctly atleast once.
 
I wasnt doubting you putting the card in correctly I was maybe thinking you might have a malfunctioning agp slot maybe;)
 
how do i test whether my AGP slot is broken?

anyway, i'm currently running memtest86 testing all my RAM sticks. no problems so far :(
 
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