lockups + boot problems :/
 

I recently got a radeon 9700pro graphics card,. and now I'm experiancing lockups 5-15 minutes into playing games, this sint happen immediately after getting the card however, it seemed to crop up later and stay. Also when I restart my computer, or turn it on, the monitor often stays on standby and im not blessed with all the usual booting up sounds, so basically it doesnt start up, after a while of turning the power off, turning pc on it eventually starts up normally (can take dozens of tries through, or sometimes even just 1).

The lockups seem to happen mostly in 3d games.. including half-life, (well natural selection, a mod for it), medievil: total war (the big battles), and some others I forgot.

One of the first things I thought might be the problem was the really really lousy PSU I have in my computer... some 250watt one, I've ordered a new 550watt one which should be on its way in a few days, but until then I'd like to isolate any other possible causes.

my system is a mixture of old and new parts.. so a lot of it is crap... :
1.33ghz tbird
256mb ram
via kt266 mobo
radeon 9700

Another possible cause I thought might be overheating, and if so that situation has been made worse by me unplugging my extra exhaust and case fans in order to get the PC to boot up properly (it seemed to help in that department).
Before this card I had a horrible kyro 2, it didnt lockup like I'm currently getting however, so that does lead me to believe it may be more to do with power than overheating.

also maybe my ram has suddenly gone faulty? it would make sense if it had, at least to me :) as the timing of these problems cropping up isnt 100% consistent with what i would have thought.

oh one more thing, I am currently using the directx 9 and the new ati drivers that are made to work with it (most recent). but I have had these problems on the old drivers and old directx too.

well, if anyone has any suggestions as to what they think may be wrong and what I can do about it please say.

Is the motherboard 8x agp?

that would be my first guess that the 250 ps just isn't enough. That 9700 is a power hog.

.
 

mobo isnt 8x agp, reviews seem to say the card runs good on 4x anyway.

on the power thing, the new PSU arrived today, I tried to install it, i had all the bits plugged in right (as far as i know) and tried to start it up, it turned on for like 1 second and then stopped somtimes, othertimes i tried to turn it on it would just not do anything. I'm really clueless as to whats wrong, someone said something is shorting it.. but i dont see what can be.

I had a problem kinda like that. I would turn in the pc it would run for like 2 or 3 secs and then turn off. I thought I had some bad ram. So I RMA'd the memory and got the new stuff in and it did the same thing. So I took the cpu off and pull the cpu out and put it all back in. Well when I put it in this time I plugged the hsf fan to a different spot and boom it all works now. It really pissed me off cause I went without my pc for like 1 week.

well I sure wish someone knew what might be going wrong with the PSU i bought... maybe i should make a new topic about it. It just refuses to power up properly :/

Im pretty diapointed with Radeon performance lately

I got a 9000 in Sept havent had good Morrowind grapihics the water is pure silver.....

NExt card i buy will b a geoforce

oh morrowind looks VERY sexy for me, well at least it did until i can no longer play that game due to my comp going broken.


maybe you should try some more recent drivers? sure the water is meant to look silvery... but its meant to have motion. There are some screenies of i took in morrowind here: http://members.lycos.co.uk/wookiehouse/

http://members.lycos.co.uk/wookiehouse/rain.JPG shows water under rainy conditions, and a few others there show some water too.

I think the problem is obvious. No lockups/problems before ATI so it's clearly the card.

I'm not surprised... a majority of ATI owners experience the same problem no matter what system they are used in. Just do a search on any search engine and you will see this is widespread. ATI continues to sell sub-standard products and why people continune to fall for it is beyond me. Great PR spin I guess.

But hey, as AI mentioned, if you want great benchmarks, go with ATI. But if you want both quality and reliability, go with nVidia.

:wavey:

but the thing is, it worked fine until recently (ie 1-2 weeks ago)
and i recieved it roughly around the date 21/09/2002 so that would mean like 2 months of faithful service until now... previously i thought this was less but looking at the order date I can see it was longer than i first thought. still, im confused, very.

Great biased statement. That really helped him to figure out his problem considering it worked great until 1-2 weeks ago.

My ati is rock solid and is excellent in all the games that I have played. So I would seriously have to say that if the system is setup right then there should not be any problems at all. Mental you did say it worked great. Maybe there is a setting in the bios or maybe just a good o'l reformat would clear it up.

Mental you mentioned it work great until 1-2 wks ago. Have you did any upgrade on the drivers. If so you might want to try to reinstall all the ati drivers you got and reboot and then install again. But keep digging it will come around

hehe.. Polpot goes balistic everytime someone says anything bad about ATI.

BTW.. didn't you use to have a Soyo motherboard? Oh yea, I remember. The ATI card wouldn't work with it. :wavey:

it worked great with the soyo I was just unable to overclock my cpu so therefore it wasn't ati's prob it was soyo . No I don't go balistic just tired of the rud ejesters that get made when someone asks for help.


Thank you, have a nice day

LOL.. no need to get upset there Polpot. It's funny that you always say you have no problems out of the ATI card when in fact I know better. :rofl:

I remember you coming down here just a few weeks ago and us trying all day to OC your system and the culprit was the ATI card. Funny how my 4600 worked fine IN YOUR SYSTEM. :lol:

Oh yea, since you mentioned overclocking... How come you list your system has OC'd to 3.3 (or now that you just updated it to 3.4) when I've seen for myself it wont do over 2.9? You wouldn't be exagerating would you? :lol:

Do you seriously think anyone would believe you can OC a 2.5 to 3.4 using only aircooling??? I seen your system for myself... It would BARELY get 2.9 stable.

Lets see some wcpuid screenshots to back that speed up. :biggrin:

It's easy to edit your sig to say anything you want. See....

_________________
---Specs---
Intel P4 2.8Ghz @ 4.0Ghz
Giga-Byte GA-8IHXP Motherboard
512MB PC1066 RDRAM
MSI GeForce4 Ti4600
WD 100GB SE Hard Drive
SB Audigy Sound Card
40x16x48 CD-RW
56x CD-ROM
Chieftec Dragon Case
3D Mark 15735

no the problem was that the soyo bios there was no option to lock the agp/pci ratio.



Enough said, over and out

Got pics of the CPU speed OR the water cooling?

You've got an awsome system there and I'm sure everyone would like to see pics of it.

Come one.. we want to see pics!!! :clap:

EDIT: Humm.. you edited your last post. You said you had water cooling and then took it out after I asked for pics. Makes wonder if your telling the whole truth there Polpot. :crazy:

I had the same problem and found out that the fan on the ati card was defective. I also had the card for about two months when I started seeing this issue. I ended up removing the fan and bought a after market heat sink kit for the card. Has been working great ever since.

I believe I can help you with this issue considering i had the same problem with my GF2 MX400 TV on a FIC AN11 Stealth Via KT266a MB.

if you havnt flashed your bios (not shur if that issue has even been addressed in a flash)

the solution is :

First check your IRQs if there is 3 devices on the IRC containing your Video card .*mostly likely it will be* Video card, AC97 enhanced audio control and modem .... then your issue lies right there..

However the Bios funtion for assigning IRQs doesnt exactly work right.. the solution is going to be an odd one but just trust me

Go into bios and turn off USB mouse support.. if you have a USB mouse dont sweet it as most of them run off a Proxy program in windows...(has not problems out of his USB mouse) accept the 4th and 5th button not funtioning like programed (4th acts like the wheel as well in a way)

by doing that your AC97 EAC will move down one IRQ .. your 3D games will start funtioning properly .. but as far as the boot problem.. i didnt notice that but maybe i missed it.. Good luck, hope this helps

hmm
 

Well thanks for the replies.. but I ended up frying my mobo so I bought a nice nforce2 mobo and things are running more stable then I have ever had. In a way I'm happy I fried my old mobo, It was based on the original VIA KT266 (not the revision) and manufactuered by chaintech, who I am told are terrible, and I've always had a LOT of trouble with my PC while running that mobo. Well, new mobo, and I havnt had any problems yet. I probably should have replied earlier, as I've had my pc up and running for a while now, but I forgot about the post :).

Any other ideas I have the same problem and and removed usb mouse support and still those IRQ's for 11 are the same you had !

morrowind problems
 

Hey guys just a quick question i have morrowind and a Gigabtye ATI 9700 pro it used to crash 2 mins into the game untill i got Dirextx 9 and now shes purring like a kitten...anyway When i play Morrowind now the game looks GREAT everything is amazing one problem the WATER !!!! it looks like mercury stange i looks like its wrinkled and mean that in a bad way its looks kinda bad what is the the matter???



ATI 9700 pro
2400 AMD Athjlon Asus a7v8x/a (8X agp)
512 DDR Ram 2700
good sound
direct x9 :rofl:

I have a similar problem. Mind you, I also have a DirectX 9.0 installed.
I can't run MW with my new Gigabyte RadeOn 9700Pro, the game crashes when I try to exit buildings into the open spaces. I already tried reinstalling the drivers, installed the latest version of Catalyst (5) but it only made things worse. I was able to run around a bit in the wilderness (5minutes) then the game crashed again and all the other 3D applications refused to work properly. Now I put the older version of Catalyst so everything else works now, not MW though. HELP!

Mental Case:::I would suggest you get the new Catalyst 3.5 drivers from ATI. They were just released the first of this week.
If you have not done so as yet, go to MS Downloads and get the new DX9.0a and install it also.
These drivers are certified to give about a 15-20% increase in performance as well as fixes for a lot of games that were not running like they should.
Be sure you get the control panel also, and I would suggest getting the Rage3d v3d Tweaking software.
This combo really sings over all other drivers I have used.