Ati, is hardware or software shot?

Weiser_Cain

I'm running a Radeon 9600. My system recently burned out though it looks like everything survived. It ran stable for a day before I installed the latest video driver. It now stalls and I get this message about VUE Recover having to reset my graphics card every ten to twenty mins (sometimes it happens at shorter intervals). Is it the card or the software? Also, anyone try that new Nvidia card out yet?

ElysiumGX

read me second post

notman

I haven't been keeping up with ATI's drivers lately, but if the drivers you installed just came out recently, then I'd blame the drivers. ATI has always done a poor job with their drivers...at least at testing them before release.
When I was running an ATI card, one set of drivers would run great, but I'd upgrade to the latest when they came out, and sometimes my card would become unstable. A week or two later, they'd upgrade the drivers again because of the instablity issues.

Basically what I'm saying is, go to their archive area and get the previous version

ThE_BirD

My best guess'd be the drivers too... I was having the same problem with my 9800 and switched to the 5.7 drivers. Things've been smooth ever since:)

skankerzero

My 9800 pro started displaying error messages everytime I ran Doom3 ro Vampire the Masquerade. This came out of the blue, so I installed the newest drivers, (6.14), and they went away.

ElysiumGX

Did you uninstall the previous drivers and all programs associated with them before installing the new ones? Did you install the Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.53 (Catalyst 5.7)?

If you installed CATALYST 5.8, shame on you. Go with what has been proven to work properly.

KDR_11k

And people call me a troll when I say "Ati's drivers are awful"...

CheapAlert

well nvidia's are awful too, anything newer than nov 2004 removes refresh rate override controls from the config, and screw up direct3d support royally on a geforce2

Jes

[ QUOTE ]
well nvidia's are awful too, anything newer than nov 2004 removes refresh rate override controls from the config, and screw up direct3d support royally on a geforce2

[/ QUOTE ]Coolbits2?

Everything above the 73.**'s make games BSOD on exit for me!
And the ones I use make NF stall my pc at random.

Michael Knubben

i'm about ready to take a shit on my ati, regardless of wether it's because of the drivers or hardware. So many games just run fine for a while, and then crap out on me. Yesterday it was the starship troopers demo, and i'll admit it was sort of a relief to stop playing, but the ungraceful exit and reboot was sort of a bitch.

Weiser_Cain

I was using catalyst 5.8, I went back to 5.7 and got the same thing when running halflife 2. I'm going to go through all the 5 drivers tonight and see if I can find a stable one. If I can't I'm going to get a new card.

Joshua Stubbles

Exactly, Pea. I use an ATI card at work, and it's got a plethora of issues. My Nvidia card at home though? Not a single problem. Ever. Hell, I ever put a new cooling fan & heat sinks on it, and it never had a problem with it. ATI cards tend to have slightly better DirectX shader performance, but that's the only real advantage.

notman

completely remove them (delete the hardware I and do add/remove). After the reboot, try the latest drivers again (or version 5.7).

ElysiumGX

This thread reminded me i needed to update.
So i unstilled my previous drivers completely, CC and all, and picked up the Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.53 from www.OmegaDrivers.net .
Played some HL2. Played some CS:S. Played 6 rounds of BF2. No problem.

KDR_11k

Why did you update? Did something not work?

Weiser_Cain

I had to reinstall because my PSU died and I replaced it and the damaged motherboard.

Weiser_Cain

That was interesting...
I tried those Omega drivers just now and was actually able to play halflife for a few mins where before it almost always crashed when the 3D title screen came up. So it's is much more stable and noticiably faster than the standard drivers but when it did crash it seemed to crash a bit harder than the standard Ati drivers which do take crashes in stride if nothing else.
I'm going to say it's the card and I'll probably get some version of the newer cards from nvidia, thanks for the help.

Faucet

I know what you mean, Cheap.

NVidia usually has super nice drivers IMHO... unfortunately as cards get older and older, the driver revisions pay less and less attention to those cards. Anything over version 57 or something like that would ruin dual displays on my Ti4200. A friend of mine experienced some other difficulties with his GeForce 3 with newer drivers. Then just recently I updated my drivers to 78 or whatever and my 6600GT started crashing Maya when doing "High quality" rendering in the view port.


Granted the fix is easy... just stick with the drivers that work best. I'm running 77.77 with my 6600GT and haven't had a single problem.

notman

Weiser: I wonder if your video got hit along with the PSU and motherboard. The 9600 has a power tap off the PSU doesn't it?

bearkub

Out of curiosity, if you are running Win2k or XP, have you checked your Application Event logs or System Event logs for any errors? They sometimes provide info (normally a bit vague..) towards your problem.

sledgy

Bah Kub, why find the source of the problem when we can just take a brute force approach! ARRRRR!

Weiser_Cain

If I remember correctly yes it does jack directly into the power supply, that kind of clears up why it fell victim and my soundcard is fine.
Nah, kub. I usually just scrap what doesn't work.
Program error? Complete Reinstall!
Trouble with hardware? The hardware in question gets a shotgun shell and I get a new part!
Normally I don't understand much in those little reports anyway. I did a clean install so there are likely no software gremlins in the system and I'd rather not tip toe around unreliable, dated hardware in my main system.