digerati

I have a Radeon 9800xt that has been running solid for probably a good 2 years now, and suddenly the other day it seems to have crapped out.

I had been writing some emails and left my desk to go run some errands, and when I came back the computer was still running but when I turned on the monitor and moved the mouse the screen stayed black. I proceeded to restart the computer, but the system wouldn't post. After turning it off and leaving it alone for an hour or so, I tried again with the same results, the screen would stay black and the system wouldn't post.

When I took out the 9800xt and put in an old 9500pro I had sitting around, the system gave a nice beep and booted up into windows just fine.

I have an artic cooling silencer rated for the 9800xt installed, and I checked, it was still working just fine when the power was on.

Anyone have any idea what might be wrong with the 9800xt? I'm hoping something can be done to get it up and running again, though I'm worried it may have just died out.


The system it was running in was:

AthlonXp 2500+ w/ stock hsf
2x512mb Kingston value ram ddr333
Biostar M7NCG 400
Soundblaster Audigy Platinum EX
Liteon cdrw
asus cdrom
WD 200gb eide drive
Antec 320w PSU

Admiral Michael

WOW!

I lost my AIW 9600XT about a month ago and I too had an Artic Cooler installed. It ran for about a week and a half, I played HL2 shortly after installing the Cooler.


Weird.

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X-Istence

Sounds like a bad graphics card!

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fitz

My AIW 9800 just died too.. of course, of course, it was probably my fault.. running all the devices I have and folding for 24hrs a day on a 300Watt powersupply just couldn't cut it. My power supply finally went caput and took the video card with it.

Got a new power supply but the system wouldn't start up with the vid card it. Grabbed an old GForceTi4200 laying around and system started up just fine.. since I don't have the time to do much gaming anymore, I'll probably leave the old card in there for a while until I do a wholesale upgrade of the board/CPU and grab a PCIe card then.

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LeeJend

Only thing to try is to put the 9800XT back in making sure the secondary power connector is plugged into the card securely. If it still won't boot the 9800XT is dead.

As I recall the 9800PRO and up won't boot without the second connector installed. The newer cards boot into 2D mode but put a message uon the screen that tells you to plug the connector in.

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digerati

thanks for the help guys, I think the card is just plain kaput.

The system has been running just fine with my old 9500pro in there, and when I tried putting the 9800xt back in, and making extra sure the power plug was secure, the thing still wouldn't boot up. Oh well, guess at least I got 2 or so years out of it.

The system is actually one I built for my girlfriend and she has a strong aversion to ever turning the thing off. When I opened it up to pull out the vidcard it was like an egyptian tomb in there with all the dust. Cpu and system temps always reported in normal ranges though.

Oh well, c'est la vie.

thanks again all!

Admiral Michael

Man it's hilarous how similiar this was to my card dying, while it wasn't running when it happened, I went to boot up my desktop and nothing.

It's also funny how, while they aren't the exact same card, there both XT modems.

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Shamus MacNoob

Yes it does not say much for the durability of the XT line from ATI

digerati

Well, here's to hoping their XL line is a bit better.

I just gave her my x800xl and nforce4 mobo and athlon64 3000+.

Figured I'd just upgrade myself and give her my old parts since it seemed silly to go out and buy her another agp card nto to mention I was itching to get some new stuff anyways.

The x800xl just has the stock cooler, but I did use arctic silver 5 before starting it up for the first time. Of course, I did that for the 9800xt too...

Now I have to decide between getting myself a 7900gt or x1800xt. I've been using ati's forver, but maybe it's time for a switch.

I'm also wondering if I should just hold out for another month or so and see if ati releases something like an x1900xl or something to truly compete with the 7900's.

I hate jumping in at the wrong end of the product cycle, evn if I'm not a bleeding edge early adopter.

Admiral Michael

I went to NVidia after my ATI died. I got a Xfx GeForvce 6600 256MB AGP card. I'm not a gamer and this card seems to be in the middle.

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LeeJend

New vid benchmarks. Ignore 3dMark scores they are too CPU dependent.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

The attached file is a list of the basic spec's on all the recent cards. I've been building it and maintaining it for my next upgrade. It is not 100% complete. Some of the detail spec's are not published for all the cards. Prices may have changed since I looked them up 3 weeks ago.

Attached Files

Nvida 6-7 series.zip (13.9 KB, 15 views)

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lancer

i wondered if lee would get his chart in there somewhere haha

Isn't the x1900 out already?

I would absolutely just go with the 7900gt or gtx (not really worth the extra money), as they are cheaper and i believe faster than the x1900 which starts at about $550, the 7900gt starts around $320, little bit of a difference for a card that is either equal or better.

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LeeJend

$434 for the X1900XT, about $100 more than the comparable Nvidias. I have no idea why they are running so much higher (other than they require more expensive cooling solutions and are using large die geometries, which still should not account for a 30% price premium.)

One interesting thing I noticed is that ATI is spending a lot of die area on multimedia features like VIVO. Nvidia seems to have dropped these features from their high and cards and is focusing on price and game FPS.

I really wish I could afford to get comparable Nvidia and ATI cards and run them both in the same machine and playing the same games to see how the appearnace and performance compares..

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