Radeon 9700 Pro GAHHHHHH

[mbunny]

I have a Radeon 9700 Pro that crashes my system =(

It is really bizarre. It can play half-life 4x AA, 4x AI without crashing the system. Once i fire up Warcraft 3 to play for more than 5 minutes... LOCK UP!!!

It's not only Warcraft 3 though. It even locks up on my SereneScreen Aquarium screen saver and intermittently when i play AvP2.

Is this because of my 300W power supply or do i have one of the early 9700 Pro's that was stuffed with everything?

Umm... Specs for PC....

Asus A7V8X (latest bios already flashed in)
Powercolor Commando 2 Pro (Radeon 9700 Pro in other words)
It's not drivers cause i have tried Cat 2.0's Cat 2.5's and Cat 3's and even Omega's set of drivers.

I have a niggling feeling its AGP 8X but the problem is that SmartGart will not let me change it to 4X despite the fact that my bios has it set to 4X.

Does the ATi's have the same fast write issue as the nVidia's???

Any help would be helpful cause this is seriously pissing me off. Radeon 9700 Pro that can play Half-Life.... wow....

 

[Glaanieboy]

As the Radeons are very powerhungry, I think it is your powersupply. Halflife is an old game, doesn't take up that much resources (on the vidcard). But Warcraft 3 is a new game and uses some more advanced graphical features and therefore the cards needs power. Upgrade to a minimum of 350 watt (400 to be on the safeside, for future upgrades if you want)

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by mbunny
I have a Radeon 9700 Pro that crashes my system =(

It is really bizarre. It can play half-life 4x AA, 4x AI without crashing the system. Once i fire up Warcraft 3 to play for more than 5 minutes... LOCK UP!!!

It's not only Warcraft 3 though. It even locks up on my SereneScreen Aquarium screen saver and intermittently when i play AvP2.

Is this because of my 300W power supply or do i have one of the early 9700 Pro's that was stuffed with everything?

Umm... Specs for PC....

Asus A7V8X (latest bios already flashed in)
Powercolor Commando 2 Pro (Radeon 9700 Pro in other words)
It's not drivers cause i have tried Cat 2.0's Cat 2.5's and Cat 3's and even Omega's set of drivers.

I have a niggling feeling its AGP 8X but the problem is that SmartGart will not let me change it to 4X despite the fact that my bios has it set to 4X.

Does the ATi's have the same fast write issue as the nVidia's???

Any help would be helpful cause this is seriously pissing me off. Radeon 9700 Pro that can play Half-Life.... wow....

per what you have stated and your system specs you have more than adequate juice to run your system..

ati does recommend that you run with 300watt power supply... but this is only as precaution... if you have a good PSU you can even use it with low end PSU's like dell does... putting a 9700pro with a 200 odd watt PSU...

the quality of the PSU does make a difference however and you would probably have to make sure that the one you have is a good setup... there are some psus that claim 300-400 watts and are POS's...

change your fastwrite settings to off in bios if you can so we can eliminate one possibilty..

since it is locking up it could be some conflict in your setup...

it is possible that it is the agp8x that you have stated... that is not ati's fault btw... its the mobo makers.. the latest bios should have fixed this for asus... but you can dbl check with em and contact ati as well...

hard locks are very different from stuttering problems people claimed that they were experiencing with certain setups/driver sets...

I have an early 9700pro myself and I am certainly no expert when it comes to hardware... so far I have had no issues with my rig in anygames I have played.. incl WC III and NVN...

you might want to consider using the card in another rig to make sure that it is working fine... if not RMA it.. if it is then we will workk on your rig

 

[Kevin Ar18]

deleted

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Kevin Ar18
Did you have a Geforce card in there before you installed the Radeon?
If so, have you uninstalled the stuff the drivers added?

that would be something to look into... but I cant' see the residual nvidia drivers causing hard locks... it is not something that should happen...

game exits to desktop or lower framerates or other driver related errors yes... but a hard lock ? I dunno...

still better to eliminate all probable causes

 

[Taurus]

his 9700pro might have a cooling issue? i'd take off the heatsink and see if the thermal compound underneath was evenly applied. then take it off, clean both, and put a even, thin layer of as3. just to eliminate heat being the culprit.

 

[Nick M]

Um...

I think it's either power issue, or cooling. More likely power, since I don't expect the new card to come with a ****ty ass cooling system, but heck, who knows?

Mbunny, how does the card feel right after this happens? hot? warm? Cold I wish

 

[mbunny]

Cooling's not an issue... (unless its the Ram chips... but i doubt it) I already removed it and put AS2 on immediately upon getting the card home.


I also tried blowing air from an actual room fan into my case so i have monster CFM flushing out hot air (i wish i had 12 degree system temps all the time)

Its not always a hard lock. It sometimes crashes but WinXP is completely distorted. ie NOTHING is understandable. It primarily looks like pastel green and white.... So of course reset is the only option. Other times the computer just hard locks, then the screen goes into sleep mode.

I'll give the system test a go in a few hours after my friend is done using his computer.

Fast Write has always been off but i was wondering if i could enable it. I guess not.

However, i still have the issue with SmartGART not listening to my commands for it to change to 4X. BIOS settings have it at 4X however SmartGart detects it as 8X and even enabled FastWrite at one point after installing the new drivers/cp

I got a decent PSU.... its not a crappy one. This is really erking me... hopefully its a power supply problem as i don't really want to get a new motherboard

 

[DeepBlade]

ya, probably power management of your MB. when i upgraded my crap nvidia vanta lt, to a geforce 3 ti500, it kept hanging when i played ANY opengl or d3d game. so i decided to update the bios of the MB, and voila, problem fixed. i'm guessing that there wasn't enough power was being fed to the card.

 

[Sazar]

hope you haben't overclocked your gpu also coz some of the green hues and stuff you describe are oc burn related...

still check out the card in anohter setup and go from there..


fastwrites does not really affect performance...

 

[mbunny]

Nah, its not overclocked. The picture on screen is completely fubarred and looks like 320 res.

I'm gonna try it out on my friends comp in an hour or so... hopefully it will play up on his so i can send it back and get a new one =)

 

[mbunny]

Okay... i plugged it into my friends computer and absolutely no issues.

Played 3 Warcraft 3 scrims and it did not falter once.

He even has a 300W PSU.

So now i'm narrowing it down the Motherboard or AGP 8X...

The problem is, ATi's SmartGART won't budge from 8X AGP and always stays at 8X AGP even when i change it to 4X AGP and reset.

It is already set to 4X AGP in the bios... any ideas anyone?

 

[Taurus]

i'm gonna go with deepblade and say it's your motherboard. and if you already have the latest bios, i dunno what to tell you man. :huh:


[edit] well, on second thought, could it maybe be some kind of driver issue.. with the catalyst's and 4in1's? you should try different versions. after a reformat.

 

[Sazar]

here is the thing...

a lot of the mobo's that CLAIMED to be agp 8x compliant were actually not... they went with the standard before it was adopted proper and specs were finalized therefore there are certain issues...

the r300 cards do not have issues with agp8x standard... though they did make modifications in a revised version of the card to help solve the problem...

your problem is probably stemming from the mobo.. thats all I can think about though to be honest I woulda thought that the prob would have been solved with the bios updates..

 

[mbunny]

I purchased a new power supply (Antec TruePower 430Watt) to ensure it wasn't power that was causing the problems and it wasn't.

It still crashed while playing warcraft 3.

So i decided time for a format. Maybe that will help. In the end. It was the VIA drivers. Don't know why i didn't think of those earlier but they were it. So i went back to the 4.43's and now its all working fine and dandy.

Peh...

 

[Taurus]

Originally posted by taurus
could it maybe be some kind of driver issue.. with the catalyst's and 4in1's? you should try different versions. after a reformat.

 

[BonyTony]

Just in case anyone owns a Shuttle SFF Pc the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro works super on its tiny >> 200 Watt Psu <<.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by BonyTony
Just in case anyone owns a Shuttle SFF Pc the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro works super on its tiny >> 200 Watt Psu <<.

it is not required to have a big psu to run the r300... more so it is recommended...

the gf FX REQUIRES a 350watt psu when running full tilt per the specs being given out... but I would have to wonder if part of that does not go into the cooling solution