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Sapphire Radeon 9600 problems

R

Radish

n00b
Joined
Feb 4, 2004
Messages
7
System Info
OS: Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1
Processor:_AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz
Motherboard: Amptron K7-810LMR (SiS 730 rev 2 chipset)

I've installed the videocard drivers (Catalyst 3.9), and now my monitor blacks out shortly after showing the login screen background, and before showing the user list. It displays a "refresh rate out of range" error, wherein it displays it's correct range, and flashes the incorrect refresh rate that forced it to black out. The value of this flashing number varies, but it's always under 30, too low for my monitor to handle. Which is very very odd. Safe mode doesn't give me the option of changing the refresh rate, and nothing I do in VGA mode seems to help, either. I tried installing official drivers for my monitor, again no help. I tried using another monitor, no help.

Opening the monitor driver inf file, I noticed the refresh rate range set in it was wrong (didn't match what the monitor error message displayed), so I changed it and reinstalled the driver. That seemed to solve the problem, I could now get into Windows. Then I tried playing Neverwinter Nights, and once it got to what should be the menu it refused to show anything but the cursor, and the cursor looked distorted. Without the ability to see I had to endtask out of NWN, only to find my entire desktop horribly distorted. I rebooted and tried again, configuring NWN to a lower resolution before starting it, and had the same problem. Then, upon rebooting yet again, the refresh rate error returned, and now it's there to stay.

Any divine and/or genius insights would be greatly appreciated.
 
Word for the wise: never ever let XP install the drivers for you off the CD. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. But I've uninstalled and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers now, this time telling XP's wizard to piss off and using ATi's install program on the CD instead, and the bizzaro refresh rate problem is no more, and I can get into Windows. The card still does not work properly, however.

I get a horribly distorted picture once Windows starts, then it crashes soon after. When it doesn't crash immediately, the distortion will actually decrease a bit after a minute or 2, but my cursor and icons still don't improve, and it still does crash eventually. This is with display settings at 640x480 16-bit color with a 60hz refresh rate, by the way. Not strenuous by any stretch of the imagination.
 
All problems have been utterly solved. Disabling AGP fastwrites did the trick. Works flawlessly now. Glee!
 
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