Radeon 9500 problems

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n00b
Joined
Apr 8, 2006
Messages
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I recently bought a used radeon 9500 and I can not get rid of artifacts + checkerboarding or stripes. Artifacts appear in overlays. In 3D games I get checkerboard at lower resolutions and either solid bands or groups of strips at higher resolutions. With some drivers I get artifacts in the Windows, and no matter what I do I always get artifacts in the Windows XP logo when booting up.
This happens even when running the card as a 9500 with the catalyst drivers on a clean install!

I have tried disabling Z-buffer and forcing 16-bit and then disabling groups of items at random, but it didn't fix anything, and eventually the disabling caught up with me and games would no longer start. I have tried official drivers and omega drivers, old omega and old official with no luck. I have tried underclocking with no luck. I have also tried a clean install of windows, and that didn't work. There doesn't seem to be a temperature diode on the card (right?), but I am as sure as I can be that the airflow is excellent. I would hope that the underclocking would have had an effect if it was a heat issue anyway (uhm, right?).

I can't think of anything else to try, and the seller continues to say that they ran the card without problems for 2 years.
Is there ANYTHING I can do to fix these problems? What might be causing these problems?

Windows XP SP2
ASUS A7N8X-X
AMD AthlonXP 2700+
GeIL 256Mb PC2700
RD-350W RAIDMAX

Thank-you very much! Any help will be greatly appreciated!
 
Looks like the card was flashed to 9700 to overclock and unlock some stuff without success causing the artifacts, then reflashed back to 9500 and selling it as a stock card..if possible return the card and get your money back

oldmx
 
It actually wasn't sold as stock, it was run as a 9700 by the previous owner for those two years (They sent me the omega drivers they were using for the softmod). Personally though, I'd be happy if I could just get the card to run as a problem-free 9500.
 
If you are getting artifacts in 2d, before any drivers loaded then there is probably something physically wrong with the card, as in something happened to it during the shipping process. Make sure the Fan is actually running, and that it is tightly on the card, also look for any capacitors that may have fallen off during some rough handling in the shipping process. What kind of power supply are you running? A greatly under-powered PSU can cause these problems.
 
The fan is spinning and it also seems to be installed securely. Just looking at the card, it doesn't seem like anything is missing, nothing seems obviously broken.
The power supply is a RD-350W RAIDMAX. +3.3v=16A, +5v=25A, +12v=14A
 
Aw man, I tried a 520watt OCZ ModStream, +3.3v=28A, +5v=52A, +12v=28A and the problem is still the same. That has to be enough power, has to be, uhm, right?
 
Yes that is definitely enough power. The problem lies with the videocard or motherboard, it seems.
Could you test another videocard on the same motherboard?

Also, maybe somebody more familiar with the 9500/9700 mods could help more with this, but is it possible the original owner flashed to an incompatible 9700 BIOS? Perhaps as a last resort flashing to a good 9500 BIOS might help?
 
I'm not using it anymore, but I have an OEM Sapphire 9500np that would softmod to a 9700 with the proper drivers. Omega Drivers gives you an option of installing that softmod driver. No BIOS flashing needed for me. IIRC, 9500 radeons that softmodded usually had the memory placed in an "L" shape.
 
I reinstalled my old card and it seems like the checkerboard/stripes and artifacts are gone. I don't see anything bad in the overlays, games, atitool's cube or in 3dmark. It's not really comparable hardware-wise though, it's a radeon 7000, but the problems are gone. Both are AGP. 7000 4x agp, 9500 8x agp

The BIOS is an interesting idea, where can I go to learn more about that? How can I tell exactly what BIOS the card is using now?
I'm going to retry setting the 9500 to agp 4x, but I think a problem I had was that it kept resetting to 8x - is there a way to make it stay at 4x?


The card I have does have that famous "L" shape, and I saw that option in omega. I tried to use both the regular omega and softmod omega, but neither fixed the problem. Using the softmod did improve the fps though, but the cherckboard/stripes were the exact same.
 
Look for the Smartgart section of the drivers and it will allow you to reduce the AGP speed as well as play with a few other options.

I've seen people overclock 9700's and 9800's too high and the artifacts became permanent at that point. I seem to remember it happening most when people overclocked their ram without any ramsinks.
 
I haven't tried the 9800 thing, when I saw it in omega I actually thought it was some kind of error or that it always offered that no matter what card you actually had (I didn't know a 9500 could become a 9800).

I've been to all over the control panel/control center, including smartgart, and when I turn the slider down to 4x it looks like it goes back up to 8x. When I go back to smartgart after I reboot the slider isn't at 4x anymore, it's at 8x again.


EDIT: I just tried to set the card to 4x again, and now I remember what happened. I have to disable 8x agp in the bios before changing smartgart for the card to run at 4x. Even in 4x everything is the same.
 
I asked the seller, and he said he never flashed the card, so the BIOS can't be causing the problems.
 
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