9800 Pro Started Crashing

[Spondy]

I've had a 9800 Pro for about a month and everything has worked very
well. Played the entire Far Cry Game and many hours of Battlefield
Vietnam/UT2004. Yesterday when loading a game (BFV) my monitor
suddenly went blank.

I thought well just a glitch...this game is know to have some
bugs...although it had been running perfectly for 2 weeks prior. I
rebooted and the game started and ran...for about 30 seconds then it
dropped me into a reboot of the system. I thought that the drivers
had been "blown out" which had happened to me years ago with a
different card. I reinstalled. Same problem crashed to desktop with
30 secs of play.

I then went to install the 4.4 catalyst drivers....still same problem.
I thought that perhaps the game was the problem.... so I tried
another....Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.... 30 secs in crashed to a
reboot. I am dreading a serious issue with the card.

Am I missing anything how else should I proceed to figure out what is
going on? I'd think it was heat, but when it initially happened the
system had been off all day. I don't think it can get that hot that
quick.. Maybe I'm wrong.

When XP reboots it reports that it has "recovered from a serious
problem" and dumps some undecipherable information into a "minidump"
folder. I've done some research and I'm really at a loss an how to
proceed.


Any and I mean Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks...

 

[Buffalo]

Make sure your vid card fan is clean and turning properly.
If your card is OC'd, try it at a slower speed than 'Stock'.
It does almost sound like a overheating problem or a ram problem'
Slow down the ram timing to see if it helps. (When I had my ram set too
fast, the game would freeze and I had to do a 'hard' shutdown)
Also, remove and then reseat the ram modules to ensure good contact.

 

[DaveW]

It sure sounds like the card has failed.

 

[Sleepy]

could be a overheating problem as buffalo suggests or a psu on
the way out - i think its unlikely to be ram.

 

[Wookie]

Take a look at your fans on your CPU and Video card and make sure they
aren't all goobered up with dust.

 

[gabe]

I've had a 9800 Pro for about a month and everything has worked very
well. Played the entire Far Cry Game and many hours of Battlefield
Vietnam/UT2004. Yesterday when loading a game (BFV) my monitor
suddenly went blank.

I thought well just a glitch...this game is know to have some
bugs...although it had been running perfectly for 2 weeks prior. I
rebooted and the game started and ran...for about 30 seconds then it
dropped me into a reboot of the system. I thought that the drivers
had been "blown out" which had happened to me years ago with a
different card. I reinstalled. Same problem crashed to desktop with
30 secs of play.

I then went to install the 4.4 catalyst drivers....still same problem.
I thought that perhaps the game was the problem.... so I tried
another....Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.... 30 secs in crashed to a
reboot. I am dreading a serious issue with the card.

Am I missing anything how else should I proceed to figure out what is
going on? I'd think it was heat, but when it initially happened the
system had been off all day. I don't think it can get that hot that
quick.. Maybe I'm wrong.

When XP reboots it reports that it has "recovered from a serious
problem" and dumps some undecipherable information into a "minidump"
folder. I've done some research and I'm really at a loss an how to
proceed.


Any and I mean Any help would be appreciated.

If anybody has a solution for this that doesn't involve an RMA from
Ati, I'd be surprised. And glad. I pretty much have the same problem.
Happened about a month into my Radeon 9800 Pro too.

Didn't even start with a 3d game either. I was playing a wmv clip in
media player when the screen went blank and my monitor reported 'Sync
out of range'. Thought nothing of it and rebooted, and next thing I
know, Farcry would not even run. As soon as I loaded a save point,
it'll crash to either the desktop, or else blue screen with
ati2dvg.dll often being the culprit.

UT2004 (demo) lasts about 5 seconds before locking up; a little bit
longer if the system had been left to cool down overnight. Even the
original UT can't complete the opening flyby without crashing. Ambient
temperature inside the case as reported by MBM 5 reads around 33-35C
pretty much all the time. Left case open (room temp is around 20C), no
go. Heat sink on video card does feel really warm, even after only a
few minutes of any kind of 3d. Fan is still working as far as I can
see.

Just to rule out any heat related issues, used the omega drivers and
underclocked both the core and memory to something really ridiculously
low (I think I went all the way down to under 300Mhz), and it still
crashed or locked up after a few seconds. What's worse is that while
normal 2d stuff works fine, I started noticing some artifacts when
viewing movie clips or watching tv through the pci tv wonder card.

About my only hope is that it's my power supply that's not able to
supply enough juice. It's only a 300W Antec, and there's a goodly
amount of stuff hooked up to it -- 4 ide hdd's, 1 optical drive, amd
xp1800+, 2 sticks of pc133 sdram (yes, I still have an old Asus A7V133
mb), aforementioned tv wonder, sb live, usb wireless nic and 5 sets of
fans blowing everywhere. Still doesn't explain why things worked
perfectly fine for a good month though.

Have pretty much gone through the entire software solution route, but
I really doubt if it's s/w related. Pretty sure the other components
in my pc, although aged, are still working. Plunked my old Geforce4
MX440 in, and no crashes whatsoever.

Just for kicks, I put the Radeon in another test machine, this one a
P4 1.6 with a 250W PS, but totally barebones with only one ide hdd
attached and nothing else. 3dmark 2001 lasted, oh, up to the end of
the first test, and machine locked up.

Haven't had time to try the card out in another pc, this one a
barebone p4 2.8 with 300W sparkle PSU, but I don't have much
confidence. Good chance the card is toast.

Good luck.

 

[Spondy]

Thank you all for your input. I have since contacted ATI and the tech
person believed that my Via Chipset Drivers had somehow failed. I
subsequently reinstalled them in safe mode and no change was noticed.
I did get a VPU error message and alot of "serious problem" recovery
messages.

Of additional note the card fan appears to be spinning freely without
clogging etc. but the the card feels a little hot. Granted I had not
touched the card prior to having a problem with it but it certainly
feels much hotter than any other component in the rig.

Also I remember when the problem happened initially, I totally lost
all signal to the monitor and the monitor self powered down to a sleep
state with the "no signal" warning. This sort of makes me think that
its not a software issue but a hardware issue. I haven't installed my
old card into the system yet, but I believe this is the next step.



etc..

 

[patrickp]

Thank you all for your input. I have since contacted ATI and the tech
person believed that my Via Chipset Drivers had somehow failed. I
subsequently reinstalled them in safe mode and no change was noticed.
I did get a VPU error message and alot of "serious problem" recovery
messages.

Of additional note the card fan appears to be spinning freely without
clogging etc. but the the card feels a little hot. Granted I had not
touched the card prior to having a problem with it but it certainly
feels much hotter than any other component in the rig.

Also I remember when the problem happened initially, I totally lost
all signal to the monitor and the monitor self powered down to a sleep
state with the "no signal" warning. This sort of makes me think that
its not a software issue but a hardware issue. I haven't installed my
old card into the system yet, but I believe this is the next step.

If you think you're having problems with your 4in1 drivers, Spondy,
try uninstalling them before you reinstall: the installer gives you
this option.

But it does sound like you've got a naff card and RMA is the answer.
If the card is getting hot, you may have a badly fitted heatsink. You
could try refitting it, but bear in mind that this will probably
invalidate your warranty, and that, if it is overheating, this may
have damaged your GPU by now, anyway.

etc..

patrickp

(e-mail address removed) - take five to email me

 

[Spondy]

If you think you're having problems with your 4in1 drivers, Spondy,
try uninstalling them before you reinstall: the installer gives you
this option.

But it does sound like you've got a naff card and RMA is the answer.
If the card is getting hot, you may have a badly fitted heatsink. You
could try refitting it, but bear in mind that this will probably
invalidate your warranty, and that, if it is overheating, this may
have damaged your GPU by now, anyway.



patrickp

(e-mail address removed) - take five to email me

Thanks for the info....I installed the old 7200 video card and it has
worked flawlessly. No drops reboots etc.

Im in the the process of RMAing ATI

Anyone had any previous experience with ATI RMA?

 

[MacGyver]

I've been having the same problem with my 9700 Pro. What are your system
specs? Probably a hardware compatibility issue.

 

[MacGyver]

Oh, forgot to write, I uninstalled the ATI drivers, ATI control panel thing,
and Hydravision and I have not had one problem since. Only thing is games
won't play because I don't have drivers installed. Driver issue seems to be
the problem, but I have tried every new release for the past 6 months, at
least and still a no go.

Try removing drivers and running without any for a while Spondy.

 

[Jim Davis]

I've had a 9800 Pro for about a month and everything has worked very
well. Played the entire Far Cry Game and many hours of Battlefield
Vietnam/UT2004. Yesterday when loading a game (BFV) my monitor
suddenly went blank.

Interesting, I play the same games and have the same problem. My
computer does not reboot though, I have to reset and reboot once or
twice to bring the display back. And it can happen in windows on my
system too.

I have lots of cooling in the case, and even a slot cooler beside the
card. Card is default clocking etc. I'm really suspecting a bad bunch
of cards, I've read about this type of problem here more than once...

Just hoping there is a cure, going to try underclocking...

 

[Spondy]

The card works fine in 2d...and doesn't explain everything working
fine up until recently and suddendly start crashing with no other
changes to the system. I mentioned an RMA to ATI and have sent the
card off for a replacement. I think at this time I'm going to upgrade
the whole shebang. New mobo, new ram, sata hard drive, quiet case.

Hopefully avoid conflicts with hardware...although I really think this
card has simply failed and a replacement is necessary.