could there be any chance per say that you just tried to overwrite the 3.7 cat drivers or some portions of ATI control panel remained when you installed the 3.8 cats?
woo hoo
maybe there is something in what you did which finally explains this all.
when i installed my 3.8's i did what i usually do, run uninstall on all previous drivers from windows control panel "uninstall programs" windows and then delete the ATI folder in program files? maybe that was why i didnt have any problems?
Actually no, it wasn't mmc causeing the issues, it was the 3.8's, plus the fact I NEVER ever have installed over the top, I've never trusted that way of doing it, no matter what anyone says, I always do a uninstall, and fresh install, I figure no way or chance of left over stuff giveing me issues that way.
No matter what version I used with the 3.8's installed, the monitor would lose signal. Useing the same exact mmc versions with 3.5's I had no issues.
Not sure exactly what's different, but it's working. Only thing I did different in all this thing, is I uninstalled everything and satrted from scratch this time, so maybe I will get in a habbit of uninstalling mmc+tv+rw+drivers and satrt from scratch again when I wanna upgrade just drivers. Kinda a pain in the butt if you ask me, but if that's what it's gonna take to maek everything work correctly, well, then I spose it'll b something I have ta except and get used to then, evne though ati themselves and ati beta testers have all told me there is no reason to take out mmc or rw or anything else, when jsut upgradeing drivers only, and that all I had to do is take out drivers only and put the new ones on, and it should be jsut fine......seems maybe not the case .
Anyways, all is going fine here, I will continue to test for the next 2-3 days to a week or better and see what happens, an post my final results.
seversphere had this to say now that I think about it, I wonder if it can affect motherboards too. I had stress tested a system for a week with Folding and prime95. I had ati drivers off the cd for that week. Then installed the 3.8 drivers to test out playing games. I could play games for a few minutes then blue screen with page fault errors. Eventually a chip on the mobo burned up right after reset during posting. Only thing is it's a 9200 128mb card and supposedly not affected by this. I've used the card in three other systems and it's fine with 3.7 drivers and no way am I gonna test 3.8s again. Is it definite that 9200 are not affected?
SimGuy had this to say AFAIK, the 9600, 9200, 9100, 9000, 8500 & earlier cards are not supposed to be affected by this as many believe it's caused by a driver feature for the R300 cards only.
So far, nobody with any of those cards has brought forward any information regarding a Catalyst 3.8 heat-related issue.
IMHO, I wouldn't chance it though.
got the replacement board in today and assembled it. I changed nothing from when it burnt up (I couldn't cause no board and it's SATA raid for the OS drive) to when I just put it back together. I stressed it first then rebooted and played the game. No problems for 3 hours of gaming. So it was just a lemon motherboard.
Im only reading this thread out of interest, i personally own all nvidia cards, however, those of you who are reading this thread exclusively (all the guests etc) might want to read this,
mondi had this to say Im only reading this thread out of interest, i personally own all nvidia cards, however, those of you who are reading this thread exclusively (all the guests etc) might want to read this,
mondi had this to say Im only reading this thread out of interest, i personally own all nvidia cards, however, those of you who are reading this thread exclusively (all the guests etc) might want to read this,
just read through it, I take lightly the advice and comments of these run-through posters (IE this guy has never been to Short-Media before other than to post his opinion, which he appears to state as fact) and obviously hasn't experienced this problem first hand. People who try using grandesque language and likening a now widely recognized problem (cat 3.8s or otherwise) to stupidity and 'mob mentality' dont really get any credibility points in my book. Sorry for going OT, how's it going with your testing MediaMan?
got the replacement board in today and assembled it. I changed nothing from when it burnt up (I couldn't cause no board and it's SATA raid for the OS drive) to when I just put it back together. I stressed it first then rebooted and played the game. No problems for 3 hours of gaming. So it was just a lemon motherboard.
i wouldn't just say the R300 and R350's, thing they all have in common is DirectX9? The cards past 9200 and going up are all DirectX9 compatible boards - and the main problems seem to all be happening in games using DirectX as well.
Had to have a bite to eat. sorry...paused for the moment. MM says in his Homer Simpson voice "me so hungy"
Updated post upstairs... ^ that way.
Read the thread in question. Interesting read. The poster presented information without resorting to foul language and outright flaming and that person is free to post their comments in such a sensible way considering the emotion that may be behind any posters comments.
i just got my shuttle XPS with the radeon 9500 pro up and running. will run tonight and see what happens. then tommorrow will try a little savage battle for newerth and maybe some bf42 dc.
would try it with the 9800 pro but like i said, i am a bit cautious.
friend emailed my earlier and told me same opinion, he didnt beleive the rumours but didnt want to tempt fate (hehe).
i think that this is what is happening with alot of ATI owners right now, since this is like the 8th or so person who told me this today alone.
In the moment I have problems with my pc, one of the problems seems to have been the Cat 3.8 drivers.
I play Live for Speed alot, and on Sunday I had fragments all over the screen. It lookes as if there was a repeating see-through pattern behind the real graphics. After I rebooted on the Windows XP bootup screen the progression bar had funny colours and fragments on it (this only happened once).
All this disappeared after I read this thread and reinstalled the 3.7 drivers after running a catalyst remover.
I cant certainly say this was because of the drivers because I also had a 350 watt power supply installed, too little for my system, but this only happened when I had the 3.8 drivers installed.
I dont want to spread rumours here but I have just wanted to say that I have also had glitches witht he 3.8 drivers installed.
Hi everyone. I've been following this thread with great interest and though I'm having no such issues myself with my Radeon 8500 running Catalyst 3.8 on XP Pro, I'm still keen to follow developments.
One thought did occur to me: Did all of the people who are experiencing heat related issues and monitor failures download their Catalyst 3.8 drivers directly from ATI? Is it possible that some have downloaded their drivers from other sources and maybe, just maybe, they have been altered in some way?
I don't know if it's technically possible for drivers to cause the damage that some are claiming but if it IS possible then it's important to establish if those affected have used GENUINE ATI drivers downloaded directly from the ATI website.
The fact that many are experiencing no problems whatsoever with the new drivers suggests that some variable is being overlooked.
Like I say, it's just a thought so please don't accuse me of trying to fuel a conspiracy theory! I'm just thinking out loud.
First of all, I am not trying to spread rumours nor slam ATI, just want to post the facts as I see them from my little part of the world here at my desk. I had posted my issue awhile back in the thread, but have been posting much more at abxzone.com where I normally call home. I recently tried a little experiment, because I had begun to believe in the possibility that this was all coincidence and maybe I had just had some bad luck.
Here is what I posted at ABX:
Well, I just lost my 9700 Pro about 30 minutes ago, completely dead.
I know that this has become a pretty 2 sided discussion, those who think there may be something wrong with the 3.8's and those that don't. For the sake of argument, I will not even bother to tell you what I think right now, but suffice to say I am pi$$ed off. I have now lost a 9800 Pro and a 9700 Pro in the last week. I will stick to the facts.....
1. Bought a 9700 Pro beginning of this year and have used it as my main card everyday.
2. I always updated to the newest Cat drivers each time they came out, never had an issue. Last driver I had on the card in Sept was 3.7's.
3. Bought a 9800 Pro in beginning of Oct, put it into my system with 3.7's, ran just fine for about a week.
4. Last Thursday night, 10/16, I loaded the 3.8's onto my system with the 9800 Pro.
5. 24 hours or so later, Friday night, 10/17, my 9800 Pro was dead. No signal to computer, no nothing. Tried a different computer, no good.
6. I put the 9700 Pro back in my system, worked fine. Because of warning's of 3.8's causing problems, I went back to 3.7 just in case.
7. 9700 Pro has run flawlessly in my system since Friday, 10/17.
8. Decided to experiment to see if 3.8's caused issues because I was starting to doubt the theory based on feedback on this forum and some other forums, including ATI formally saying that they had found no issues. I loaded 3.8's yesterday, 10/21 @ around 1PM PST. Drivers went in fine, no problems.
9. This morning when I came down to my office, the computer had a No Signal on monitor. I manually rebooted computer, it came back on and booted into windows where I was met with error that Graphics Driver has caused a serious problem. I sent report to Microsoft.
10. About 30 or so minutes ago, WHILE using the computer it lost signal. When I tried to reboot, monitor did not come back on. I tried again, no monitor signal. I put the 9700 Pro into another computer, still no monitor. Checked the monitor on another computer with a 9000 Pro in it, monitor is OK, works fine. 9700 Pro is dead.
I will let everyone make their own decisions on what might have happened. I do not want to slam ATI, but I am not happy about this. As I stated in my last post, my 9700 Pro has heat sinks on the RAM, so I can not RMA it, so I am screwed. I wish I hadn't done this test now.
For anyone who does not belive the 3.8's are causing problems, I am willing to send my worthless 9700 Pro to you for proof. If you are an engineer or work for ATI, or know someone who does, PM me, I will donate this care to ATI if they can figure out what the heck is going on. What I think I may do once I figure out how the heck I am going to get by without a card until next week is try and contact Catalyst Maker at Rage3D or S-M and see if he will take it for analysis.
Any ideas or theories on why 2 video cards would work just fine with Cat 3.7's, one for almost 10 months, the other for a week, but both die within 24 hours with Cat 3.8's. Just curious....
Again, I am STILL open to the fact that some weird kind of mojo might be going on, so if any one has any ideas on how I can lose 2 cards in a week with very similiar circumstances, I am listening...
And Catalyst_Maker, if you are following this at all, I will be happy to send my 9700 Pro to you for testing. I don't know if it will do any good, but it is worthless to me right now.
that's quite a story YoBoGo, sucks to hear you lost two such great cards. My suggestion for you would be to send a PM to "MediaMan" with you email address and/or phone number and let him know that you wish to contact ATi about this, he'll give you all the contact info and forward your info to some people directly involved with the Catalyst drivers @ ATi. I sent them an email letting them know about my monitor problem yesterday, I am awaiting response. The way I understand it, they really want to get all the information they can about this and find out what's happening and why, but they need people to contact them letting them know the problems.
Apparently the Register thinks we're all a bunch of nvidia fanboys trying to give a bad name to ATi. Kinda funny, seeing as how it couldn't be farther from the truth, I've never owned an nvidia card, and I've never really liked them, went straight from my Voodoo5 to a Radeon 9700 Pro, well I guess the drama continues...
Such is the level of willy-waving among some of the more infantile graphics card fanboys, we wouldn't be at all surprised if followers of a rival company had posted the claims in order to damage ATI. Nothing new there - in the past, ATI buffs have tried to suggest major problems with Nvidia cards. It's all part of the bizarre war these idiots believe they're fighting on behalf of their favoured firms.
Edit: meant to say I never owned an NVIDIA card, I love my 9700 pro, damn I'm not making any sense tonight!
Oh well, this has obviously gotten a lot of attention for ATI and most of it negative and that is really unfortunate. I think ATI is a good company that puts out a great product. I personally own a 9000, 9700 and 9800 (or did at least ) and will continue to buy ATI products as long as the put out the best, IMHO, video card around.
I am not posting to this thread just to have fun and or try and hurt ATI, I don't have the time. I have an issue I am trying to figure out, and in my experience I have found that users on these forums are a great source for solutions. This is a good way for many to talk about problems and ideas, not a forum just to slam a company.
FWIW, I DID CALL ATI (article and Catalyst_Maker both say no one has called) and spoke with a rep on Monday, 10/20. I told him my issue, and he said he had gotten MANY calls that day, more than he could ever remember. Obviously that is heresay and not a fact, but the fact is at least 1 person has called in and reported having an issue with his card possibly related to drivers.
oops now I look like a moron, my above post I meant to say I've never owned an nvidia card because I never really liked them. Point being, what have we got to gain by downplaying ATi? Nothing, most of us, like YoBoGo and I here, just want to get to the bottom of the issues and find out why this is happening, as said before, we need to continue the investigation even though it seems the issue is starting to die off. Why would ATi have taken SO MANY calls regarding the same issue...if there was no issue?
Speaking of investigation, hey Mediaman, any results on your testing??
hmmmm. That certainly brings up an interesting point. It does seem that some people are running them without issue while others are having problems as seen, so, maybe perhaps it could be a certain batch of cards...but it would seem to me that the wide variety of manufacturers and models of cards involved in the malfunction that it couldn't be just a 'card', perhaps certain components or cores used? This is certainly something worth looking into...
Great. Just great.... I have a 9800np flashed to 9800pro. I recently did a fresh clean install of winxp pro and installed the Catalyst 3.8 drivers. Everything seemed perfectly fine. I went over to overclockers.com and saw the article on the Cat's 3.8 drivers were bad. So I uninstalled the drivers from the control panel. I then deleted the entire ATI directory. I went to guru3d.com and downloaded the 3.7 Catalyst drivers and the control panel. I installed the 3.7 Catalyst drivers and did not have to install the control panel as it was already there. About a half hour later my monitor started going really staticy and then cut off completly. I tried to pull the power but I was too late. Now my monitor is not working at all and is sitting in my basement. Was this because of the drivers or was this because my monitor is simply old? Let me know what you guys think. Thanks.
Well, I've just got back to Manchester, where my main rigs are at, only back for a few days mind you. However, I updated to the CAT 3.8's just before I left about a week ago, and of course being the folder that I am, have left all my rigs including my primary, which runs a 9800 Pro, running 24/7. I haven't played any games with them yet, or done anything to really stress the card (except for a few 3D and AQUA mark benches), but so far the system has seen no signs of trouble. However, I've decided not to revert back to the 3.7's, simply because to be honest, I'm curious to see if something does go wrong.
So in a nutshell, 3.8's, a RADEON 9800 Pro (Hercules), no problems so far, and I've been running them since they were released. I don't know how relevant this is also, but I use a TFT monitor not a CRT.
I'm using a 17" KDS Avitron and I'd guess more then 5 years but less then 10. It's pretty old and no, we don't have any common power problems here cept once, a week or two ago where we lost our power for about half a day. At that time I was on the Catalyst 3.8 drivers and I never had any problems with it.
I used the Catalyst 3.8 drivers since the day it was out on ATI's website. Never had any problems with it although I set it to 8x agp and fastwrite on the VPU recovery mechanism resets it back to 4x agp and fastwrite off. But other then that no problems with the drivers. I couldn't really tell if there was an heat increase as I was using the Zalman ZM80C-HP with a 92mm fan blowing it so I really doubt there was any heat issues..
Also I'm using a CRT!
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited October 2003
If the monitor were brand new, and you hadn't had the power outage, It'd be easier to say for sure that something with the driver was at fault, but given the age of the monitor and that blackout, it could just be a coincidence.
Yeah I know...
There could be a few possibilities but I don't think I can ever find out for sure to what caused my monitor to go out like that. But in my opinion I think it could be the monitor just being too old.
Great. Just great.... I have a 9800np flashed to 9800pro. I recently did a fresh clean install of winxp pro and installed the Catalyst 3.8 drivers. Everything seemed perfectly fine. I went over to overclockers.com and saw the article on the Cat's 3.8 drivers were bad. So I uninstalled the drivers from the control panel. I then deleted the entire ATI directory. I went to guru3d.com and downloaded the 3.7 Catalyst drivers and the control panel. I installed the 3.7 Catalyst drivers and did not have to install the control panel as it was already there. About a half hour later my monitor started going really staticy and then cut off completly. I tried to pull the power but I was too late. Now my monitor is not working at all and is sitting in my basement. Was this because of the drivers or was this because my monitor is simply old? Let me know what you guys think. Thanks.
without a doubt - if your going to reinstall the 3.7 cats - you should reinstall control panel.
i heard some earlier posts about people saying that monitors died AFTER reinstall somewhere in the forums - and now i wonder if the only problems with 3.7 are related to NOT uninstalling the control panel.
so if anyone is uninstalling 3.8 cats - i think it VERY VERY wise to reinstall everything including the ATI control panel. just uninstall 3.8 and then after reboot - delete the ATI directory altogether.
that might be the best way to make sure you do it so that you properly reinstall the previous drivers.
in essence you were using 3.8 control panel (with VPU?) with 3.7 drivers, making for potential problems.
Well, my 8500 just died. I noticed increased freezing up, which just from feel of the heat sync I am pretty sure is due to higher temps using the 3.8 drivers.
I can't explain it, but my card certainly is dead. Shortly after I installed the new drivers I noticed that my card was freezing up several times a day. Now it's just dead.
I know it was reported to not affect 8500 cards, but maybe those other guy's cards are just running different systems, refresh rates etc. Just fyi, I run 1600x1200 @ 85 hertz and 1024 @85 Hz for gaming.
Anyway, I guess I'll wait a few days and then get a FX 5700.
:banghead:
-edit-
ok here is some additional info:
I'm running a P4 3.0 800MHz fsb setup. 512 ram, 2100 speed (dumb i know but I'm lazy)
I'm not overclocking anything, not the card or cpu etc.
Running XP, I mostly play UT2k3, which freezes up after a few minuets, but also I was freezing at the desktop, not even using 3D! WHich I thought was very wierd.
I would say that I have adequate cooling in my box, but not anything excessive. I can tell you the temp on the cpu is about 50-55 when gaming and about 38-39 when idle. I don't have a clue what the temp on the video card is.
Also of interest, I had just cleaned out the dust on the heat sync about a month ago, so it had plenty of airflow.
Comments
Actually no, it wasn't mmc causeing the issues, it was the 3.8's, plus the fact I NEVER ever have installed over the top, I've never trusted that way of doing it, no matter what anyone says, I always do a uninstall, and fresh install, I figure no way or chance of left over stuff giveing me issues that way.
No matter what version I used with the 3.8's installed, the monitor would lose signal. Useing the same exact mmc versions with 3.5's I had no issues.
Not sure exactly what's different, but it's working. Only thing I did different in all this thing, is I uninstalled everything and satrted from scratch this time, so maybe I will get in a habbit of uninstalling mmc+tv+rw+drivers and satrt from scratch again when I wanna upgrade just drivers. Kinda a pain in the butt if you ask me, but if that's what it's gonna take to maek everything work correctly, well, then I spose it'll b something I have ta except and get used to then, evne though ati themselves and ati beta testers have all told me there is no reason to take out mmc or rw or anything else, when jsut upgradeing drivers only, and that all I had to do is take out drivers only and put the new ones on, and it should be jsut fine......seems maybe not the case
Anyways, all is going fine here, I will continue to test for the next 2-3 days to a week or better and see what happens, an post my final results.
got the replacement board in today and assembled it. I changed nothing from when it burnt up (I couldn't cause no board and it's SATA raid for the OS drive) to when I just put it back together. I stressed it first then rebooted and played the game. No problems for 3 hours of gaming. So it was just a lemon motherboard.
i have no opinion, expressed or implied
the 'reality' ???
Just read it. Still trying to digest though. Lots to read for one post...
just read through it, I take lightly the advice and comments of these run-through posters (IE this guy has never been to Short-Media before other than to post his opinion, which he appears to state as fact) and obviously hasn't experienced this problem first hand. People who try using grandesque language and likening a now widely recognized problem (cat 3.8s or otherwise) to stupidity and 'mob mentality' dont really get any credibility points in my book. Sorry for going OT, how's it going with your testing MediaMan?
/me props feet up on dead monitor.
i wouldn't just say the R300 and R350's, thing they all have in common is DirectX9? The cards past 9200 and going up are all DirectX9 compatible boards - and the main problems seem to all be happening in games using DirectX as well.
Updated post upstairs... ^ that way.
Read the thread in question. Interesting read. The poster presented information without resorting to foul language and outright flaming and that person is free to post their comments in such a sensible way considering the emotion that may be behind any posters comments.
would try it with the 9800 pro but like i said, i am a bit cautious.
friend emailed my earlier and told me same opinion, he didnt beleive the rumours but didnt want to tempt fate (hehe).
i think that this is what is happening with alot of ATI owners right now, since this is like the 8th or so person who told me this today alone.
so far its windows xp and the 3.8 cats
I play Live for Speed alot, and on Sunday I had fragments all over the screen. It lookes as if there was a repeating see-through pattern behind the real graphics. After I rebooted on the Windows XP bootup screen the progression bar had funny colours and fragments on it (this only happened once).
All this disappeared after I read this thread and reinstalled the 3.7 drivers after running a catalyst remover.
I cant certainly say this was because of the drivers because I also had a 350 watt power supply installed, too little for my system, but this only happened when I had the 3.8 drivers installed.
I dont want to spread rumours here but I have just wanted to say that I have also had glitches witht he 3.8 drivers installed.
Cya all
One thought did occur to me: Did all of the people who are experiencing heat related issues and monitor failures download their Catalyst 3.8 drivers directly from ATI? Is it possible that some have downloaded their drivers from other sources and maybe, just maybe, they have been altered in some way?
I don't know if it's technically possible for drivers to cause the damage that some are claiming but if it IS possible then it's important to establish if those affected have used GENUINE ATI drivers downloaded directly from the ATI website.
The fact that many are experiencing no problems whatsoever with the new drivers suggests that some variable is being overlooked.
Like I say, it's just a thought so please don't accuse me of trying to fuel a conspiracy theory! I'm just thinking out loud.
Here is what I posted at ABX:
Well, I just lost my 9700 Pro about 30 minutes ago, completely dead.
I know that this has become a pretty 2 sided discussion, those who think there may be something wrong with the 3.8's and those that don't. For the sake of argument, I will not even bother to tell you what I think right now, but suffice to say I am pi$$ed off. I have now lost a 9800 Pro and a 9700 Pro in the last week. I will stick to the facts.....
1. Bought a 9700 Pro beginning of this year and have used it as my main card everyday.
2. I always updated to the newest Cat drivers each time they came out, never had an issue. Last driver I had on the card in Sept was 3.7's.
3. Bought a 9800 Pro in beginning of Oct, put it into my system with 3.7's, ran just fine for about a week.
4. Last Thursday night, 10/16, I loaded the 3.8's onto my system with the 9800 Pro.
5. 24 hours or so later, Friday night, 10/17, my 9800 Pro was dead. No signal to computer, no nothing. Tried a different computer, no good.
6. I put the 9700 Pro back in my system, worked fine. Because of warning's of 3.8's causing problems, I went back to 3.7 just in case.
7. 9700 Pro has run flawlessly in my system since Friday, 10/17.
8. Decided to experiment to see if 3.8's caused issues because I was starting to doubt the theory based on feedback on this forum and some other forums, including ATI formally saying that they had found no issues. I loaded 3.8's yesterday, 10/21 @ around 1PM PST. Drivers went in fine, no problems.
9. This morning when I came down to my office, the computer had a No Signal on monitor. I manually rebooted computer, it came back on and booted into windows where I was met with error that Graphics Driver has caused a serious problem. I sent report to Microsoft.
10. About 30 or so minutes ago, WHILE using the computer it lost signal. When I tried to reboot, monitor did not come back on. I tried again, no monitor signal. I put the 9700 Pro into another computer, still no monitor. Checked the monitor on another computer with a 9000 Pro in it, monitor is OK, works fine. 9700 Pro is dead.
I will let everyone make their own decisions on what might have happened. I do not want to slam ATI, but I am not happy about this. As I stated in my last post, my 9700 Pro has heat sinks on the RAM, so I can not RMA it, so I am screwed. I wish I hadn't done this test now.
For anyone who does not belive the 3.8's are causing problems, I am willing to send my worthless 9700 Pro to you for proof. If you are an engineer or work for ATI, or know someone who does, PM me, I will donate this care to ATI if they can figure out what the heck is going on. What I think I may do once I figure out how the heck I am going to get by without a card until next week is try and contact Catalyst Maker at Rage3D or S-M and see if he will take it for analysis.
Any ideas or theories on why 2 video cards would work just fine with Cat 3.7's, one for almost 10 months, the other for a week, but both die within 24 hours with Cat 3.8's. Just curious....
Again, I am STILL open to the fact that some weird kind of mojo might be going on, so if any one has any ideas on how I can lose 2 cards in a week with very similiar circumstances, I am listening...
And Catalyst_Maker, if you are following this at all, I will be happy to send my 9700 Pro to you for testing. I don't know if it will do any good, but it is worthless to me right now.
TIA
Apparently the Register thinks we're all a bunch of nvidia fanboys trying to give a bad name to ATi. Kinda funny, seeing as how it couldn't be farther from the truth, I've never owned an nvidia card, and I've never really liked them, went straight from my Voodoo5 to a Radeon 9700 Pro, well I guess the drama continues...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/33492.html
Edit: meant to say I never owned an NVIDIA card, I love my 9700 pro, damn I'm not making any sense tonight!
I am not posting to this thread just to have fun and or try and hurt ATI, I don't have the time. I have an issue I am trying to figure out, and in my experience I have found that users on these forums are a great source for solutions. This is a good way for many to talk about problems and ideas, not a forum just to slam a company.
FWIW, I DID CALL ATI (article and Catalyst_Maker both say no one has called) and spoke with a rep on Monday, 10/20. I told him my issue, and he said he had gotten MANY calls that day, more than he could ever remember. Obviously that is heresay and not a fact, but the fact is at least 1 person has called in and reported having an issue with his card possibly related to drivers.
Speaking of investigation, hey Mediaman, any results on your testing??
Maybe there are some faulty cards that were both part of a batch of ones that do not like some element of the driver.
I see this as a hardware issue with the card as many others are using these drivers without any errors.
Once again though software driver updates themselves cannot destroy a MODERN CRT/LCD monitor and that is going to remain a truth solidly.
BAD CARDS?????
A very strong possibiliy as if drivers such as the new self overdriving setting may cause crappy electronics to crap out.
So in a nutshell, 3.8's, a RADEON 9800 Pro (Hercules), no problems so far, and I've been running them since they were released. I don't know how relevant this is also, but I use a TFT monitor not a CRT.
Cheers
I used the Catalyst 3.8 drivers since the day it was out on ATI's website. Never had any problems with it although I set it to 8x agp and fastwrite on the VPU recovery mechanism resets it back to 4x agp and fastwrite off. But other then that no problems with the drivers. I couldn't really tell if there was an heat increase as I was using the Zalman ZM80C-HP with a 92mm fan blowing it so I really doubt there was any heat issues..
Also I'm using a CRT!
There could be a few possibilities but I don't think I can ever find out for sure to what caused my monitor to go out like that. But in my opinion I think it could be the monitor just being too old.
And with probably a million people using ATI cards its easy to say that just by coincidence some monitors failed..
I bet we could find some people using NVIDIA cards with failed monitors at this same time as well.
Think maybe?????
without a doubt - if your going to reinstall the 3.7 cats - you should reinstall control panel.
i heard some earlier posts about people saying that monitors died AFTER reinstall somewhere in the forums - and now i wonder if the only problems with 3.7 are related to NOT uninstalling the control panel.
so if anyone is uninstalling 3.8 cats - i think it VERY VERY wise to reinstall everything including the ATI control panel. just uninstall 3.8 and then after reboot - delete the ATI directory altogether.
that might be the best way to make sure you do it so that you properly reinstall the previous drivers.
in essence you were using 3.8 control panel (with VPU?) with 3.7 drivers, making for potential problems.
Has anyone just installed the 3.8 cat drivers and NOT the control panel after having problems???
the previous post made me think - whoa, maybe something is amiss with the ATI control panel !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the guy trying the 3.7 drivers on 3.8 ATI control panel might be on to something!
I can't explain it, but my card certainly is dead. Shortly after I installed the new drivers I noticed that my card was freezing up several times a day. Now it's just dead.
I know it was reported to not affect 8500 cards, but maybe those other guy's cards are just running different systems, refresh rates etc. Just fyi, I run 1600x1200 @ 85 hertz and 1024 @85 Hz for gaming.
Anyway, I guess I'll wait a few days and then get a FX 5700.
:banghead:
-edit-
ok here is some additional info:
I'm running a P4 3.0 800MHz fsb setup. 512 ram, 2100 speed (dumb i know but I'm lazy)
I'm not overclocking anything, not the card or cpu etc.
Running XP, I mostly play UT2k3, which freezes up after a few minuets, but also I was freezing at the desktop, not even using 3D! WHich I thought was very wierd.
I would say that I have adequate cooling in my box, but not anything excessive. I can tell you the temp on the cpu is about 50-55 when gaming and about 38-39 when idle. I don't have a clue what the temp on the video card is.
Also of interest, I had just cleaned out the dust on the heat sync about a month ago, so it had plenty of airflow.