I cant belive I am looking at radeon 9800 pro problems again. This thread has been really good and gave me a lot of ideas to try.
Here is my story just as a reference:
I had a good and faithful nvidia geforce4 mx 440 (old..). So after doom iii i wanted to upgrade and i choose an radeon 9800 pro agains the NVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.
The card worked awsome for the first couple of weeks. Later I got me an ati tv wonder ve pci card and installed it. Everything was ok for a couple of days but I start getting weird texture artifacts in any 3d game or application. The textures in the triangles drawn in the screen would flicker really fast in different colors.
I uninstall the tv card but the problem was still there. I tried different sets of drivers for the card as omega drivers, old radeon drivers, reinstalled directx, opengl and nothing. I decided to even reinstall windows! and nothing...
Note: I never overclocked the card, when I start having the problems I underclocked it but it had to run at like half of the factory speed to get rid of the texture corruption in 3d.
I contacted ATI and they send me the RMA and replaced my 9800 pro. I installed the second card and it worked fine... for a couple of months. Remmember my new TV card? well I decided to install it again. And after 2 days of having my my TV card installed, I was playing Counter Strike Source and got really bad 3D screen corruption. I turned off the computer and cooled the card. I removed the tv card, turned on the computer and everything was fine. I got worried a little because when it happened I noticed a little smell of something burning but when I turn my computer back on everything seemed to work ok.
However, something did happen to the card because now, after another couple of days the screen corruption is back and even in the windows desktop as soon as I turn the computer on.
I contacted ATI again and they gave me another RMA! They asked me to send back the tv card and the radeon.. :shakehead
Sorry for the long message, here are the conclusions:
1. ATI knows that these card sucked!!! they kept sending me RMA even for my second card!
2. ATI 9800 pro sucks:
go to google and search for
+corruption +ati + radeon +9800 +pro
and you get 8400 links
search for
+corruption +GeForce +FX +5900
and you get 2450 links!!!!
Similar results if you replace corruption for overheating
3. I should have bought the 5900! they were the same price.
4. Also the Linux support for ATI is so lame... nVidia drivers for linux work right out of the box. Installing 3d aceleration for an ati in linux is next to imposible.
Finally,
Now I am using my good all faithful nvidia mx440 so no CS:S tonight...
I do not want to spend more money buying an extra fan for the card! I just simply dont get it. If the card is running hot, why is in the market in the first place?
All right good luck to all of you guys that are having these hot cards in their machines. I hope all of you get the RMA and get their cards replaced.
(sorry long message again.. i am sooo pisseeedddd)
lol thats all your problem is! sorry, i am just as pissed as you are at ATI, but my thing is before i thought they were a really really good company but now my trust is definitly almost gone. But i just dont understand nvidia, their card numbers just dont make sense to me. If anyone could give me like a best to worst of their cards, or how they number them that would be cool.
Texture coruption is usually related to heat, ram is getting hot and such. Sometimes its driver related but usually a heat issue.
ATI cards have the worse time with fast writes, this should always be disabled in the bios. Aperature size is important, this denotes how much system ram the video subsystem will use for texture storage. Good rule of thumb is half the video ram. Agp voltages should be adjustable. On intel boards they may not be, I know that I can up most any voltage on my mobo, but run the ever faithful Abit NF7s v2 AMD system.
When moving to a new card, especially from nvidia to ati its best to do a clean install, create new partitions, format, and do a clean installation. Most times people dont, the just install the new cards and leave the old drivers, then wonder why it all acts wierd or they dont get the performance they should.
Nvidia cards. the higher the number the better the card unless it has a MX in the number. Just like ati and se cards. Higher is better.
well, i see your point, but for thoose issues 1. I tried running ATI Tool and the card did not seem to run that hot when it crashed. 2. I looked in my bios and i couldnt find the voltage for the card. 3. I sent in in about 2 weeks ago, so i should get it in a week or so. 4. i have the newest ATI drivers. 5. I emailed ati and they gave me like 10 suggestions so my system should be completly running right! so, i guess i would like to take a poll, what would everyone suggest for the best graphics card manafactuer? (for future referances )
wow this is fun. Im pulling my hair out waiting for them to get me my card back. They recieved that damn thing on jan. 31 and now its feb. 17 and im pretty sure I won't get the card in a day by tommorow. This is insane, in their policy it says 10 days to repair and ship out, well its not been 3 weeks. I know excluding weekends thats only 15 days but since i shipped it ground thats 4 weeks and i think they will match my shipping and ship it back ground ( correct me PLEASE if im wrong, i hope i am) that will be 5 weeks!!!! To add the the agony, last monday i bought far cry to play when i got my card back and now im still waiting!!!! :bawling: I am offically never buying ATI again. I guess my next computer will have a NVIDIA which hurts because as a said before i thought ATI was a VERY good company, lol!
i dont think words can describe how angry i am at ATI, its now offically been 3 weeks and ill now have to wait untill next week!!! Also there phone support sucks, come on, only being open from 9 - 7 east coast. Im on the west coast and that means i would have to call before 4pm!! i dont even get out of school till 3. that means i would have to get up at like 6 am and call!! :bawling: :bawling: :bawling:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Im f***ing going insane this is the bigest fing pile of BS i have ever seen. This is now the 5th week they have had it, offically a month now. I called them LAST monday and they said "we are going to replace your card but we ran out of stock of that card but now got it back in so you should have it by the end of the week. Well now its Fing monday of the NEXT week, this is a pile of crap. I am offically making a pledge to all of you to hear, I, Alex, am never going to buy ANY product remotly related with ATI or its subsidiaries, and that all purchase of GPU will be bought from Nvidia. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH this is driving me insane.... :bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling:
pft this is a big run around. Well i called ATI again yesterday morning, and again they said that they were "out of stock" but this time i wont have my card tell next week. I really have no faith in them anymore. I guess Ill have to call on friday and make sure they shipped it out (they said it should be by then) and if they havent im gonna get really billigirant on the phone! lol this is a nightmare...
well the ****ty ass people at ATI did it again, they said they would ship it out on friday but they didnt so i tried to call and guess what, there closed before they even say they do. It was 3:50 here (oregon) and they said that they are open till 7 east coast and by by understanding it should be 6:50 there. Am i wrong? also, last time they sent it back i got an email saying they did, would i get one also when they shipped it out this time(because thats what im going by that they didnt ship it back)?
Please welcome me guys as the newest member of the dead AIW 9800pro club. Got my refurbished AIW 9800pro today to replace my aging 8500 (you don't wanna know what all I had to do to get that 8500 working), and so I installed it and fired up my system. Well, the monitor displays nothing but screen corruption for a second or two until the computer reboots and then the pattern continues. I have to reboot about 5 times before windows actually loads, and even then I have to reboot again to get the corruption to go away on the screen. The first time I got the card working, I rebooted a few more times and the prob didn't come back. Then I shut off the system for an hour and turned it back on. the rebooting prob was back, and so again after about 7-8 reboots I got the corruption to go away, but then came back about 5 minutes later. Now I am very familiar with PSU issues and cards from my 8500, and so just to be sure that my PSU wasn't the prob (shouldn't be as it's an Antec TruePower 430w, very capable), I busted out my spare PSU (Antec True 480w) and put my hard drives on it. Still same prob. So I put the card on the spare PSU. Now it should work if it was a PSU prob as the card is now drawing all it's aux power from a dedicate power source. Still no fix. Now there may be a correlation here between this prob and what the prob was with my 8500. Back when I got the 8500 there were MANY people having stability issues with it, with no possible fix in sight. For a year and a half me and a few others kept trying to crack the prob. What we think it was is a power prob with the capacitors onboard the 8500. The 8500 comes in three different capacitor varieties: ones with black marked caps, ones with blue, and ones with green. Most 8500's used black marked caps (as in the caps had black colored marker on them), and these cards worked fine. Everyone that had stability issues had either blue (mostly) or green marked caps. Bare in mind these are ppl who had perfectly good working systems before the 8500. Now to fix the prob, we did a few things:
1: buy a PSU that was overkill for the system. This helped, but did not totally fix the prob.
2: flash the card with a modded bios that disabled one of the cards ramdacs. This allowed the power requirement for the card to be slightly lower and this fixed most of the rest of the prob. The card works fine for me now except a minor screen glitch when accessing the advanced display properties.
My AIW 9800pro has green marked caps (surprise surprise), and again this looks like a power prob. Only other post I've found on the net about this specific prob with the AIW 9800pro went unanswered. It quite obvious why the card was originally returned to being with, and as always, ATi did NOTHING to fix it. I only buy ATi because they have slightly better image quality than nVidia. I miss nVidia. Never had a prob with their cards...
Okay well I fixed the prob. Turned out my PSU was dying on me. Seems like a capacitance prob with it. The +5v took a while to gain enough voltage to correctly power my rig. Anyways switched it out with a spare one and all is fine again. I guess the added draw of the 9800 accelerated the process. BTW, it seems that this is a known prob with Antec PSU's and mobos that don't use the ATX aux +12v connector. If any of you having the corruption prob are using this combination (or even if you aint), check your voltages. The +5v should not be lower than 4.8v, and anything lower than 4.75v is out of spec. My rig after it warmed up was doing around 4.6v. Now it's a steady 4.87v (still kinda low but nothing out of spec for my PSU).
... ok you lost me there. So your saying if i get it back and its having the problem i should trying upping the voltage, on the card? or what?
EDIT: well i looked in my bios and under the power and the 5v thing said it was at like 5 to 5.1 and it didnt let me lower it, just disable it. P.S. im running an asus p4p8x with a vantec 500w PSU
this is sad, i got the card back, the problem is still present. So i called ATI and they said that they think it might not be the card. But what else could do this?? They also said that if i tried it in another computer and the problem starts that i should call back and i should also run a stress test with something like Prime95 to check my ram and proc ( i did this for 8 1/2 hours and it found no errors so I dont know what the problem is). This is SOOOO much fun!! :bawling:
Your +5v rail is good. If your mobo uses the +12v aux connector then the +12v rail is the more critical one, but I'm sure in your case it's not PSU related. Try the card in another system though. I wouldn't be surprised if it does work. ATi cards can be like that *cough* 8500 If your mobo is not giving enough voltage on the AGP port this can happen. Upping AGP voltage in the bios can help, but not always (usually helps to fix stutter). Quite a few ppl run their ATi's at a AGP voltage of 1.6-1.7v. Another thing you can try is running memtest86. Very good RAM testing prog. Also Try running Prime for a full 24 hours.
well this is strange, if i under clock my card using ATI Tool the card works fine (a little slow albeit). I played about 2 1/2 hours of farcry last night on 1024x798(?) and settings all on high. So, would that mean it is the card?
Any news on your RMA Enk1du? They just got my card in on wednesday (3/9) and of course I've gotten no feedback from them at all. Are you going to call monday to find out if they have gotten them in stock?
EDIT: Just read the last page.. disregard what i posted
Ok i have a DFI Lanparty 875p-t with a 3.0 p4 processor 1 gig of ram and a..... radeon 9800 pro. Im an avid cs player and i recently got a 9800 pro to be ale to play source hl2 ect... so when i was buying it i naturally got a new case (antec super LANboy) this is all fine and dandy but when i play source or even 1.6 i keep getting wierd boxes and things and graphical errors when i play, ive read through this thread top to bottom and im convinced its an overheating problem. I am merely asking for a second opinion what do you think??
my aim is bunkbeds89 if you would like to see some screenshots.
change drivers and things to see if you can remedy the problem, maybe look into an aftermarket cooler or something. do the errors happen immediately or does it take a while to happen? sometimes its just random errors, sometimes minimizing the game can cause weird depictions of graphics. RMA's for ati are a pain in the ass, so look into a remedy outside it before you try it.
Well im pretty sure my mom is the coolest person in the world. She came into my room and asked my why i was sad and i told her about my video card problems. So she was like "Just buy a new one" and i was like hells ya and now as we speak a 6800 is being shipped to my house. Oh god i am so lucky.
Well im pretty sure my mom is the coolest person in the world. She came into my room and asked my why i was sad and i told her about my video card problems. So she was like "Just buy a new one" and i was like hells ya and now as we speak a 6800 is being shipped to my house. Oh god i am so lucky.
That's pretty awesome. I'll pay you $10 to send me that busted 9800 pro. I'm serious.
Well, I'm another person with the Radeon 9800 Pro issues. First off my specs.
Asus A7N8x-Deluxe
AMD Athlon 2500+
512 Ram
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro AIW w/ Artic Cooling v2 HSF
400W PS
and about four fans, half sucking in the others out.
As for my problem, I'm an avid CSS player and have recently gotten the issues most others have. I'm thinking it was my temps that were the issue, and I tested it with my incase temp sensor. When running CSS the temp of my memory module reaches over 130°F, and that is when I get the funky colors and warped effect. My case was around 80°-90°F, and I never had the issue before. I cleaned all my fans, including the one on the videocard and it worked only for a while.
Now, I'm thinking about getting ramsinks for my memory, in attempt to cool them at least abit. But I have some questions first, and I read pretty much the whole thread and was wondering about the AGP voltage, the option to change the MB used for textures, forgot the options name, and also the fast read on the bios. I can easily disable fast read on my card, but I'm wondering about the other options, as I'm pretty much in a tight bind when it comes to cash. I'm trying to find a solution that doesn't cost much money, and I don't want to deal with tech support.
So I ask:
1. Will ramsinks help my situation?
2. Will changing the AGP voltage help?
3. Will allocating 64megs for textures help?
4. Which is the best option?
I'm efficient with computers, just this problem has stumped me for a better part of a month now, and the issue has come and gone in that time, as did the temps where I live.
[Edit]
Well, I disabled the fast write in the both the BIOS and within the ATi Control Panel. I also checked for the 64meg option, which it was already set to, and I checked the AGP voltage. At current the voltage is at 1.5v, but I could change it to 1.6 or 1.7 if I desired. Now, would an increase in AGP voltage do any good?
Hey Enk1du, sorry to hear about all your troubles with your ATI card - what a nightmare! If I were you, if this last attempt by ATI doesn't resolve your issue, I'd buy a nVidia card and sell your ATI on eBay to recover some of the expense. I used to be an nVidia fan boy and ran GeForce cards until ATI started beating them in comparison tests. I personally don't consider under-clocking your card to be an adequate solution. You purchased the best card you could buy for the money, and having to run it at lower speeds than it is rated for to get it to work is just wrong.
Cubano, if money isn't too tight I'd look into RAM sinks since you indicated you already have a cooler for your ATI card. 130 F isn't quite up to 60 C, which is where you should really start getting concerned, but if you can consistently determine that corruption kicks in when components get to a certain temperature, that's a good indicator that heat is the problem.
I have several posts earlier in this thread, and I thought I should follow-up and let readers know that the Arctic Cooler resolved the graphics corruption problem with my system, specifically with the ATI All in Wonder 9800 Pro model card. I have NOT experienced the corruption problem with any game I have played since I installed the cooler back in December, even during marathon 12 hour gaming sessions (and since I've been out of work for a while now there have been a lot of those!).
So it is very possible that a cooler will resolve graphics corruption issues with ATI 9800 cards IF overheating is the culprit.
Keep in mind my problem was purely a heat issue. . .the version of the ATI drivers, the version of my BIOS and my BIOS settings had nothing to do with the corruption. Apparently in my rig the AGP slot is close to the CPU, so with that 3 GHz Intel chip and the 9800 Pro a mere few inches away it got hot enough in there to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies!
Cheers!
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Intel P4 3.06 GHz w/HT
1 GB Corsair PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro All-in-Wonder
Western Digital 250 GB HD
Western Digital 120 GB HD
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 eX Platinum
Super Flower Mid-Tower Aluminum Case
Vantec Stealth 420W Power Supply
Well, it seems that my system didn't like the videocard, and over the weekend my computer refused to load with it in my rig. I have since removed it and placed my old Radeon 7500 for a temp backup. I have contacted the company I bought the card from, newegg.com, and they are giving me a refund for my card and I'm going to purchase a Geforce 6800 for the same price as my 9800Pro AIW. The whole process will take some time though, shipping and what not, but in the long run I will have a better card for the same price. Also, I'm gonna try and unlock the extra pipelines and pixel shaders to get extra performance. And can anyone guess where the ramsinks are going.
Comments
Here is my story just as a reference:
I had a good and faithful nvidia geforce4 mx 440 (old..). So after doom iii i wanted to upgrade and i choose an radeon 9800 pro agains the NVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.
The card worked awsome for the first couple of weeks. Later I got me an ati tv wonder ve pci card and installed it. Everything was ok for a couple of days but I start getting weird texture artifacts in any 3d game or application. The textures in the triangles drawn in the screen would flicker really fast in different colors.
I uninstall the tv card but the problem was still there. I tried different sets of drivers for the card as omega drivers, old radeon drivers, reinstalled directx, opengl and nothing. I decided to even reinstall windows! and nothing...
Note: I never overclocked the card, when I start having the problems I underclocked it but it had to run at like half of the factory speed to get rid of the texture corruption in 3d.
I contacted ATI and they send me the RMA and replaced my 9800 pro. I installed the second card and it worked fine... for a couple of months. Remmember my new TV card? well I decided to install it again. And after 2 days of having my my TV card installed, I was playing Counter Strike Source and got really bad 3D screen corruption. I turned off the computer and cooled the card. I removed the tv card, turned on the computer and everything was fine. I got worried a little because when it happened I noticed a little smell of something burning but when I turn my computer back on everything seemed to work ok.
However, something did happen to the card because now, after another couple of days the screen corruption is back and even in the windows desktop as soon as I turn the computer on.
I contacted ATI again and they gave me another RMA! They asked me to send back the tv card and the radeon.. :shakehead
Sorry for the long message, here are the conclusions:
1. ATI knows that these card sucked!!! they kept sending me RMA even for my second card!
2. ATI 9800 pro sucks:
go to google and search for
+corruption +ati + radeon +9800 +pro
and you get 8400 links
search for
+corruption +GeForce +FX +5900
and you get 2450 links!!!!
Similar results if you replace corruption for overheating
3. I should have bought the 5900! they were the same price.
4. Also the Linux support for ATI is so lame... nVidia drivers for linux work right out of the box. Installing 3d aceleration for an ati in linux is next to imposible.
Finally,
Now I am using my good all faithful nvidia mx440 so no CS:S tonight...
I do not want to spend more money buying an extra fan for the card! I just simply dont get it. If the card is running hot, why is in the market in the first place?
All right good luck to all of you guys that are having these hot cards in their machines. I hope all of you get the RMA and get their cards replaced.
(sorry long message again.. i am sooo pisseeedddd)
1.heat
2.voltage
3.defective card
4.drivers
5.improperly configured system.
Texture coruption is usually related to heat, ram is getting hot and such. Sometimes its driver related but usually a heat issue.
ATI cards have the worse time with fast writes, this should always be disabled in the bios. Aperature size is important, this denotes how much system ram the video subsystem will use for texture storage. Good rule of thumb is half the video ram. Agp voltages should be adjustable. On intel boards they may not be, I know that I can up most any voltage on my mobo, but run the ever faithful Abit NF7s v2 AMD system.
When moving to a new card, especially from nvidia to ati its best to do a clean install, create new partitions, format, and do a clean installation. Most times people dont, the just install the new cards and leave the old drivers, then wonder why it all acts wierd or they dont get the performance they should.
Nvidia cards. the higher the number the better the card unless it has a MX in the number. Just like ati and se cards. Higher is better.
Now I know what NOT to buy from you in the FS/FT depot
1: buy a PSU that was overkill for the system. This helped, but did not totally fix the prob.
2: flash the card with a modded bios that disabled one of the cards ramdacs. This allowed the power requirement for the card to be slightly lower and this fixed most of the rest of the prob. The card works fine for me now except a minor screen glitch when accessing the advanced display properties.
My AIW 9800pro has green marked caps (surprise surprise), and again this looks like a power prob. Only other post I've found on the net about this specific prob with the AIW 9800pro went unanswered. It quite obvious why the card was originally returned to being with, and as always, ATi did NOTHING to fix it. I only buy ATi because they have slightly better image quality than nVidia. I miss nVidia. Never had a prob with their cards...
-Brian
-Brian
EDIT: well i looked in my bios and under the power and the 5v thing said it was at like 5 to 5.1 and it didnt let me lower it, just disable it. P.S. im running an asus p4p8x with a vantec 500w PSU
-Brian
EDIT: Just read the last page.. disregard what i posted
my aim is bunkbeds89 if you would like to see some screenshots.
That's pretty awesome. I'll pay you $10 to send me that busted 9800 pro. I'm serious.
Sorry man
Asus A7N8x-Deluxe
AMD Athlon 2500+
512 Ram
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro AIW w/ Artic Cooling v2 HSF
400W PS
and about four fans, half sucking in the others out.
As for my problem, I'm an avid CSS player and have recently gotten the issues most others have. I'm thinking it was my temps that were the issue, and I tested it with my incase temp sensor. When running CSS the temp of my memory module reaches over 130°F, and that is when I get the funky colors and warped effect. My case was around 80°-90°F, and I never had the issue before. I cleaned all my fans, including the one on the videocard and it worked only for a while.
Now, I'm thinking about getting ramsinks for my memory, in attempt to cool them at least abit. But I have some questions first, and I read pretty much the whole thread and was wondering about the AGP voltage, the option to change the MB used for textures, forgot the options name, and also the fast read on the bios. I can easily disable fast read on my card, but I'm wondering about the other options, as I'm pretty much in a tight bind when it comes to cash. I'm trying to find a solution that doesn't cost much money, and I don't want to deal with tech support.
So I ask:
1. Will ramsinks help my situation?
2. Will changing the AGP voltage help?
3. Will allocating 64megs for textures help?
4. Which is the best option?
I'm efficient with computers, just this problem has stumped me for a better part of a month now, and the issue has come and gone in that time, as did the temps where I live.
[Edit]
Well, I disabled the fast write in the both the BIOS and within the ATi Control Panel. I also checked for the 64meg option, which it was already set to, and I checked the AGP voltage. At current the voltage is at 1.5v, but I could change it to 1.6 or 1.7 if I desired. Now, would an increase in AGP voltage do any good?
Cubano, if money isn't too tight I'd look into RAM sinks since you indicated you already have a cooler for your ATI card. 130 F isn't quite up to 60 C, which is where you should really start getting concerned, but if you can consistently determine that corruption kicks in when components get to a certain temperature, that's a good indicator that heat is the problem.
I have several posts earlier in this thread, and I thought I should follow-up and let readers know that the Arctic Cooler resolved the graphics corruption problem with my system, specifically with the ATI All in Wonder 9800 Pro model card. I have NOT experienced the corruption problem with any game I have played since I installed the cooler back in December, even during marathon 12 hour gaming sessions (and since I've been out of work for a while now there have been a lot of those!).
So it is very possible that a cooler will resolve graphics corruption issues with ATI 9800 cards IF overheating is the culprit.
Keep in mind my problem was purely a heat issue. . .the version of the ATI drivers, the version of my BIOS and my BIOS settings had nothing to do with the corruption. Apparently in my rig the AGP slot is close to the CPU, so with that 3 GHz Intel chip and the 9800 Pro a mere few inches away it got hot enough in there to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies!
Cheers!
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Intel P4 3.06 GHz w/HT
1 GB Corsair PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro All-in-Wonder
Western Digital 250 GB HD
Western Digital 120 GB HD
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 eX Platinum
Super Flower Mid-Tower Aluminum Case
Vantec Stealth 420W Power Supply