ATI 9700 pro screen goes blank randomly

[Tonerhead]

I do not play games but the ATI vidcard is driving me nuts.

The PC will stay up for up to 5 days and then the screen will
go blank (used to VPR failure until I "upgraded" to the driver
released last dec.)

Anyway, I am very disappointed in ATI.

The hardwares:

Motherboard asus p4p800 deluxe (yup, I got the proper ATI 9700 pro
endorsed by asus).
Antec truepower 550 watts
1 gig crucial DDR pc2700
HT enabled 3.06 P4, no overclocking
DVI samsung syncmaster 181T
OS - XP with all the latest patches.

Overheating definitely is not an issue.

I have tried diabling fastwrite, using 4X etc.

The irony is hardware stability is my goal ;-(

 

[GothicPL]

I do not play games but the ATI vidcard is driving me nuts.

The PC will stay up for up to 5 days and then the screen will
go blank (used to VPR failure until I "upgraded" to the driver
released last dec.)

Anyway, I am very disappointed in ATI.

The hardwares:

Motherboard asus p4p800 deluxe (yup, I got the proper ATI 9700 pro
endorsed by asus).
Antec truepower 550 watts
1 gig crucial DDR pc2700
HT enabled 3.06 P4, no overclocking
DVI samsung syncmaster 181T
OS - XP with all the latest patches.

Overheating definitely is not an issue.

I have tried diabling fastwrite, using 4X etc.

The irony is hardware stability is my goal ;-(

Hi,
I have exactly this mobo/video card combination and am experiencing
the same problem.

Originally I had PowerColor Radeon 9700Pro (PN-xxxx-00 rev. number)
and that didn't boot properly at all (motherboard speaker diagnostics
complained there was no VGA connection).

Then I replaced it by ATI Radeon 9700Pro (PN-xxxx-30 rev. number) and
that boots fine, but occasionally loses video signal.

I wonder whether this is ASUS or ATI issue, as ASUS works fine with an
old nVidia TNT2 card, and Radeon works fine on other motherboards.

I also hope that it's fixable by a BIOS or driver upgrade, so that I
don't have to get another mobo or video card.

Please let me know if you find a fix for this.

 

[doug.drodskie]

Not just an Asus problem, I am experiencing this regularly with a Gigabyte
8INXP mobo. Haven't solved it yet after about a year. I am still thinking
'heat problem' because I went right through winter without any occurrences
and when spring came the problem started up again. The warmer the weather,
the more often it happens.

 

[Tonerhead]

Hi, Doug, GothicPL, thank you for the responses.

I have no answer at the moment, I have flashed the latest
asus bios and that did not help and then I went into the bios
and change the RAM settings. I played a ATI 3D demo overnight and
it crashed (window is alive, but keyboard and mouse are
comatose and left a "retained image" on the LCD screen,
another horror story casued by the ATI crashes, sigh!!

I have dropped to AGP 4X again and then played the 3D demo for 12 hours
and had no problem. But 3Dmark refused to execute last night and reported
several VPR. The ATI board is more than warm but not excessively hot.

The motherboard is grounded properly. The sad thing is
I do like the ATI cards (bad drivers and all) this is my 3rd one,
I need stability more than anything else and seriously considering
an nvidia ultra FX instead. I do not like to hit
the reset button when the ATI card crashes. I may get a bus cooler
and see whether that helps. Other than that, I plan to reinstall XP
and may try the 8500DV from another computer.

BTW, sometimes, XP can catch the ati2mtag infinite loop problem,
and at least I can reboot XP w/o losing any works.

 

[doug.drodskie]

Yup, sounds like the same problem, even though we have different mobos.
Happens in 2 scenarios:

1) While playing a game, graphics freeze for a few seconds then screen goes
black. No way out, PC is dead and must be hard rebooted. On return, WindowXP
will either:
- start normally.
- do a discscan (finding nothing) and then start normally.
- start normally but give message "windows has recovered from a serious
error" and when clicking for more info, will state something to the effect
that the "graphics device" or the "ATI driver" has "failed to complete a
drawing operation". Often associated with a "Bc xxxxxxxxx code.
2) On the internet, screen freezes, mouse only moves (but is not
operational) in a small, graphically scrambled square at top left of screen.
After about 10 seconds, screen goes black for a few seconds and returns in
corrupted 16 colour low res (VGA). You have the option here to shut down
normally or if downloading, letting the download finish. On restart
everything is back to normal and seldom any error messages.

This has continued despite all driver updates to graphics/sound cards,
windows SP1 update etc., etc., etc. If anyone has experienced this and
solved it, please tell us how.

 

[@ndrew]

Yup, sounds like the same problem, even though we have different
mobos. Happens in 2 scenarios:

1) While playing a game, graphics freeze for a few seconds then
screen goes black. No way out, PC is dead and must be hard rebooted.
On return, WindowXP will either:
- start normally.
- do a discscan (finding nothing) and then start normally.
- start normally but give message "windows has recovered from a
serious error" and when clicking for more info, will state something
to the effect that the "graphics device" or the "ATI driver" has
"failed to complete a drawing operation". Often associated with a "Bc
xxxxxxxxx code. 2) On the internet, screen freezes, mouse only moves
(but is not operational) in a small, graphically scrambled square at
top left of screen. After about 10 seconds, screen goes black for a
few seconds and returns in corrupted 16 colour low res (VGA). You
have the option here to shut down normally or if downloading, letting
the download finish. On restart everything is back to normal and
seldom any error messages.

This has continued despite all driver updates to graphics/sound cards,
windows SP1 update etc., etc., etc. If anyone has experienced this and
solved it, please tell us how.

Yu are using substandard ram .. on this motherboard .. for greatest
stability you will need at least PC3200 DDR preferably matched .. I do
not believe you have a graphics card problem look at your ram .. If
your mate here has a similar system same advice applies .. Do not bits
and pieces stuff .. if you buy a good quality board buy good components
to go with it do not rely on old ram from anopther system which does
not suit.

regards

@ndrew

 

[Tonerhead]

Yu are using substandard ram .. on this motherboard .. for greatest
stability you will need at least PC3200 DDR preferably matched .. I do
not believe you have a graphics card problem look at your ram .. If
your mate here has a similar system same advice applies .. Do not bits
and pieces stuff .. if you buy a good quality board buy good components
to go with it do not rely on old ram from anopther system which does
not suit.

regards

@ndrew

Andrew, thank you for the post.

But DDR3200 is *not* mandatory for this asus board.

The crucial ram may be slow (2.5 cas) but are very well built.
All the components are quality brand names and
are above average. Besides, I ran prime95 for over 24 hours
without an error or a crash. If you are familiar with ATI
cards, the dreaded ati2mtag crashes are well known. Hence I do not
think it is the ram. BTW, the crucial ram is a matched pair and
nothing is overclocked.

Since the freezes and crashes occur on others' machines with
different boards, I do not think the p4p800 deluxe is the culprit.

The power suppy is a 550W antec; that is plenty of juice and
the rails are stable as far as I can tell.

Some people over at abxzone were talking about the same problem.
One poor guy in Europe actually bought 2 different ATI cards,
and they both freezed. ;-(

 

[GothicPL]

I think I found at least a partial solution.
Make sure you disable Spread Spectrum and Memory Acceleration Mode in the BIOS.
Let me know if it fixes some of the problems for you.

 

[GothicPL]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

Yu are using substandard ram .. on this motherboard .. for greatest
stability you will need at least PC3200 DDR preferably matched .. I do
not believe you have a graphics card problem look at your ram .. If
your mate here has a similar system same advice applies .. Do not bits
and pieces stuff .. if you buy a good quality board buy good components
to go with it do not rely on old ram from anopther system which does
not suit.

regards

@ndrew

I have 2 brand new sticks of Kingston Value Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR
PC-3200 (Model#: KVR400X64C25/512) running in Dual mode.
Do you think this RAM is substandard?

 

[Tonerhead]

I think I found at least a partial solution.
Make sure you disable Spread Spectrum and Memory Acceleration Mode in the BIOS.
Let me know if it fixes some of the problems for you.

GothicPL, thanks!!!

I was going to mod the spread spectrum , but MAM was already off
when the problem occurred.

I have fiddled with my system a bit and so far the crashes
have not come back for 3 days. But I really do not know whether
I got lucky or not. Here are the changes since reflashing the bios:

1. remove divx (not directly related with the crashes)

2. Gone back to AGP 4x and lossen the card retaining screw
that is connected to the case, cleaned the card some more.

3. set ram timings manually to 2.5, 3, 3, 7
(NOTE - I have Crucial DDR-2700 with a 3.06 P4)

4. Set AGP voltage to 1.6 and DDR voltage to 2.75
And enable MAM!!! I have no justification for
enabling MAM though ;-)

I was able to play ATI's pipedream demo for over 8 hours twice
without crashing, prime95 never crashed once since day 1.
I will stick with this setup until it crashes.

According to PC probe, cpu temp is 33 deg C when idle and
47 deg C under load. MB temperature is about 33 - 34 deg C.
3.3 and 5 volts are almost on target. 12 V is around 11.80
vcore is running at default @1.568 (asus over-volt).

VGA cooler:
I am considering Zalman ZM80C-HP with the optional fan
or the vantec Spectrum Fan Card.

Please post back if you have any other clues.

 

[@ndrew]

I have 2 brand new sticks of Kingston Value Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR
PC-3200 (Model#: KVR400X64C25/512) running in Dual mode.
Do you think this RAM is substandard?

Yes .. if you are overclocking.

regards

@ndrew

 

[@ndrew]

Andrew, thank you for the post.

But DDR3200 is not mandatory for this asus board.

The crucial ram may be slow (2.5 cas) but are very well built.
All the components are quality brand names and
are above average. Besides, I ran prime95 for over 24 hours
without an error or a crash. If you are familiar with ATI
cards, the dreaded ati2mtag crashes are well known. Hence I do not
think it is the ram. BTW, the crucial ram is a matched pair and
nothing is overclocked.

Since the freezes and crashes occur on others' machines with
different boards, I do not think the p4p800 deluxe is the culprit.

The power suppy is a 550W antec; that is plenty of juice and
the rails are stable as far as I can tell.

Some people over at abxzone were talking about the same problem.
One poor guy in Europe actually bought 2 different ATI cards,
and they both freezed. ;-(

I understand what you are saying ... documentation that comes with
computer parts (in particular motherboards) is a many splendoured
thing. If you do a search about problems with PC2700 ram on PC 800
boards you will see a myriad of problems highlighted.

I did a quick one and came up with this post:
http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/66/lev3/68/pid/602/qid/7485
35

There are a lot more.

The simple fact is yes you can run PC 2700 ram with a lot of
limitations on the board .. the effect of the sub-standard ram also has
an effect in other sub-sytems such as video (note the Post in there
from someone having problems with their Radeon 9200).

If you want your system to work properly in all aspects run with a
normal conifiguration for the board (Matched pair of 3200 DDR or
better) then let's see what the problem is with the video card.

regards

@ndrew

 

[GothicPL]

Yes .. if you are overclocking.

regards

@ndrew

And if I'm not it should be pretty stable, right?

 

[GothicPL]

GothicPL, thanks!!!

I was going to mod the spread spectrum , but MAM was already off
when the problem occurred.

I have fiddled with my system a bit and so far the crashes
have not come back for 3 days. But I really do not know whether
I got lucky or not. Here are the changes since reflashing the bios:

1. remove divx (not directly related with the crashes)

2. Gone back to AGP 4x and lossen the card retaining screw
that is connected to the case, cleaned the card some more.

3. set ram timings manually to 2.5, 3, 3, 7
(NOTE - I have Crucial DDR-2700 with a 3.06 P4)

4. Set AGP voltage to 1.6 and DDR voltage to 2.75
And enable MAM!!! I have no justification for
enabling MAM though ;-)

I was able to play ATI's pipedream demo for over 8 hours twice
without crashing, prime95 never crashed once since day 1.
I will stick with this setup until it crashes.

According to PC probe, cpu temp is 33 deg C when idle and
47 deg C under load. MB temperature is about 33 - 34 deg C.
3.3 and 5 volts are almost on target. 12 V is around 11.80
vcore is running at default @1.568 (asus over-volt).

VGA cooler:
I am considering Zalman ZM80C-HP with the optional fan
or the vantec Spectrum Fan Card.

Please post back if you have any other clues.

It's not clear from your reply whether you changed the Spread Spectrum
settings.

It definitely made a difference for me. When playing an old DX7 game
it used to cause an infinite loop in ATI driver every 5 minutes.
Interestingly enough, the loop is caught by the latest official ATI
drivers and the game was able to restart, however it was extremely
annoying. After diabling Spread Spectrum the problem has never
reappeared, and I was able to switch back to AGP 8x and fast writes
enabled. Reading buyer reviews for P4P800 Deluxe at newegg.com, I
found this:

Voicelessfaces,1/9/2004 8:29:47 AM

Very nice board, Asus made it easy for a first-timer builder. Good
spped, good utilities, and the inclusion of Intervideo DVD4 was a huge
plus for me (my DVD-ROM did not include a decoder, and Media Player
sucks for surround sound).

The only problem I had was with my ATI 9700 PRO lasting more than 5
minutes in Raven Shield w/o freezing the unit. I disabled some mobo
settings (spread spectrum anyone?) and it's good now. I blame ATI, but
it was mobo tweaking that fixed it.

Also, NewEgg shipping was great. Purchased on Monday, arrived Thursday
morning. Also, this was Christmas week! Thanks again, NewEgg, you'll
see me again.

 

[@ndrew]

GothicPL wrote:

And if I'm not it should be pretty stable, right?

Should be ... try memtest on the ram, if you want, to ensure it is ok.

regards

@ndrew

 

[@ndrew]

(e-mail address removed) (Tonerhead) wrote in message


It's not clear from your reply whether you changed the Spread Spectrum
settings.

It definitely made a difference for me. When playing an old DX7 game
it used to cause an infinite loop in ATI driver every 5 minutes.
Interestingly enough, the loop is caught by the latest official ATI
drivers and the game was able to restart, however it was extremely
annoying. After diabling Spread Spectrum the problem has never
reappeared, and I was able to switch back to AGP 8x and fast-writes.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20010725/bios_tuning-17.html

BTW I disable fast writes too.

regards

@ndrew

 

[Tonerhead]

@ndrew does have a good point about the ram, however,
my system components were all brand new. Cheap or
incompatible ram does have an effect on a system's stability.
Since the 856 and 875 chipsets are sensitive to ram, running
memtests and prime95 are good ideas. Other than that,
I cannot agree with @ndrew's opinions on PC2700 ram.
BTW, I actually work as a firmware engineer and have some rudimentary
knowledge and experiences on hardware, display list and DSP.
I actually think that it is an ATI defect. I know that ATI blames
PC2700 ram but that is too easy or convenient. GothicPL and many others
have PC-3200 ram still encounter the same problems. One poor soul
actually have a Dell 8300 with an ATI 9700 pro installed and could not play
a single game. Insolated instances? Maybe!!
If the ATI 9700 pro does not work well with DDR PC2700, ATI should
put a sticker on its hardware or retail box.

GothicPL, I don't think that Kingston is substandard
but I have decided to boycott Kingston years ago when
they sold me some totally incompatible expensive rams for a thinkpad
(the ram cannot be even installed 'cause of the slot key) and
they did not even bother to answer my email ....
On the other hand, crucial ram though slower than the cutting
edge have been giving me very good results and asus tested
the crucial DDR2700 for the p4p800.

www.rage3d.com's forum has some very interesting posts
concerning the ATI graphic cards.
It seems like VIA chipset MB fare much worse than the asus
p4p800. Many of those people have expensive rams like corsair.

In the meantime, I ran pipedream for another 8 hours and
there was no crash. It is still too early to proclaim a fix.
BTW, GothicPL, I have followed your suggestion to disable
spread spectrum yesterday after my last post. The problem is
very elusive, sometimes it is caught in infinite loop
(ati2mtag and its evil twins), sometimes blank screen with a comatose system
and to some other people bsod. I don't think it is an AGP 8X
problem - that is a myth, ATI does have problem running AGP 8X
on granite 7205 boards.

 

[Dark Avenger]

And if I'm not it should be pretty stable, right?

PC3200 run at PC3200..is fine. And Kingston is King of
quality...unless you wish to overclock. But for non-overclockers is
Kingston King!

I use it myself to! 2x 256Mb ValueRam and 1x 512Mb ValueRam on a
motherboard that can't do Dual Channel anyway. And perfect

 

[Tonerhead]

(e-mail address removed) (GothicPL) wrote in message

It's not clear from your reply whether you changed the Spread Spectrum
settings.

It definitely made a difference for me. When playing an old DX7 game
it used to cause an infinite loop in ATI driver every 5 minutes.
Interestingly enough, the loop is caught by the latest official ATI
drivers and the game was able to restart, however it was extremely
annoying. After diabling Spread Spectrum the problem has never
reappeared, and I was able to switch back to AGP 8x and fast writes
enabled. Reading buyer reviews for P4P800 Deluxe at newegg.com, I
found this:

Voicelessfaces,1/9/2004 8:29:47 AM

Very nice board, Asus made it easy for a first-timer builder. ...........

The only problem I had was with my ATI 9700 PRO lasting more than 5
minutes in Raven Shield w/o freezing the unit. I disabled some mobo
settings (spread spectrum anyone?) and it's good now. I blame ATI, but
it was mobo tweaking that fixed it.

I have disabled spread spectrum and pipedream executed twice
for a total of 16 hours successfully. After that, 3DMark03 just froze with
garbled graphics and on reboot XP reported the dreaded ati2mtag
infinite loop. Sigh ;-(

Now I have spread spectrum disabled and MAM disabled, plugged the card
into a different molex and no crash so far after a total of 16 hours
pf pipedream, a few aquamark3 runs and some 3dmark03.
Using the ATI card is like sitting on a death row. It is going to crash
but I just don't when.

 

[doug.drodskie]

As mentioned, I have the same ATI 9700 Pro problems on a Gigabyite 8INXP
mobo with Granite Bay 7205 chipset. I am interested that you mentioned this
chipset. Is there a fix and where can I get more info on this specific
combo?

Are the bios settings: MAM & Spread Spectum only for Asus boards?

ATI does have problem running AGP 8X on granite 7205 boards.