help me plz!!

[filodore]

can someone please help me?

i have a powercolor radeon 9600xt bravo 128mb vid card but when i run 3d
games or sometimes anything else, my computer will lockup, crash, or my
monitor will stop working.

when i use some 3d benchmark programs such as 3dmark2001se, i'll get an
abnormal program termination error. if im playing nfs: underground, my
screen will become garbled and lockup. if im just using my computer, after
about an hour possibly (just a guess), my monitor might turn off and i wont
be able to turn it back on unless i restart or i will get a no signal error
on the monitor or something similar.

i thought it was my powersupply because i used to have 300W and it used to
crash to desktop in the games, but now, with my new 500W powersupply, these
things above happen, but not only for those particular apps, but also other
games, etc.

i have p4 2.4ghz, 512mb ram, 500W psu, cd burner, dvd rom, hercules
fortissimo 3 soundcard, 2 hdds, winxp pro.

please help me!! btw, i also have the latest omega ati drivers. i have tried
different combinations of turning off fast write, vpu recover and any other
things that people have mentioned but still to no avail.

please ask me if you require more information...im at my wits end!!

 

[Bill Crocker]

It sounds like a heat problem. Check, and make sure all your fans are clean
of dust, and working.

Bill Crocker

 

[johns]

I've never seen anything like these ATI cards for just
exactly that. I've used Matrox cards in my CAD labs
for many years, and I've never seen the video screwups
like I am seeing now with several ATIs that I'm
trying out. I have 3 of them Radeon 9000 Pro, 9200
Pro, and 9700, and all 3 of them more or less are
showing goofy behavior that I simply cannot explain.
I'm a pro myself. I know my way around these computers
better than nearly anybody, and if I can't get a fix on
these problems, nobody can !!!! The best these cards
run is on a P4 system .. newly installed by someone like
me ( and I'm not kidding there !!!!!! ) ... all mboard
drivers from the cd that comes with the mboard. If it is
a DELL, a complete wipe of the hard drive, and start
over. All patches and service packs. And then install
the latest drivers for the OS / video card before anything
else is installed ... including cdr software, Quicktime or
any other video-software, any CAD ware. Then begin
testing the video card with 3DMark2001 and possibly
a game that uses the QuakeIII Engine .. to track OpenGL
behavior. That way, you see the problem ... if any ..
when it is first created. I've found that the worst offenders
are programs like Quicktime, WinAmp, WinMediaPlayer
which dink around with the video, or even try to replace
components of the video drivers. Install those at a
very very minimum level of performance. The worst one
of those is the ATI DVD player. DO NOT install that.
Use PowerDVD. If you get that far with no great problems, then start on the
games. RTCW will be dark
as the blazes ... that is the video driver, and there is no
fix coming out of ATI. You have to know how to up
the video from the QuakeIII console by typing in the
proper commands. Next MOHAA, will be kind of dark,
but you can adjust the video inside the game. On the
ATI cards, you will probably have to do that every time
you start a 3D game ... and again, there is no fix coming
out of ATI. They will just tell you that you have a
misconfigured system. They are LYING of course. They
simply write bad video drivers, and are not about to
fix them. If you go kluging around trying to change things,
you will wind up with an unstable system like you have
now. Finally, the worst performance I've seen from the
ATI cards is on any of the VIA chipsets / AMD
processors. The AMDs run extremely hot right up to
the border of crashing at all times. There is no fix for
that. No amount of fan power will help there because
the ceramic package around the cpu is too thick. It holds
heat. The VIA chipset is a disaster. It is slowly improving, but I simply
will not use it in my computer labs anymore.
I have just had it with the lockups and god-awful
performance of pheripherals like the Iomega drives
and cdrs. I also think the VIA chipset is causing more
problems with the ATI cards than normal, and it is
coming from the Mboard drivers. I've noticed that WinXP, seems blind to that
hardware, and the Mboard
drivers are the only way that XP can see the hardware.
XP seems at home on the Intel P4 Mboards. Another
thing ... lots of Mboards are now showing up with blown
electrolytic capacitors ... the Asian screwup from 2 years
ago. I think that is the real problem that looks like a
Power supply problem. The electrolytics have lost their
capacitor rating, and are becoming dead shorts on the
Mboard pulling the Psupply down. I've seen all of them
blown on ASUS and Gigabyte mboards.

johns

 

[filodore]

i formatted my hdd, and installed xp pro again w/ sp1, updated with windows
update, and still im getting video card failures (comp will lock up for
about a minute and then will go 2 crappy resolution and say a device has
failed)....can sum1 plz help me? i cant afford or b bothered 2 go 2 a
technician.

 

[johns]

failed)....can sum1 plz help me? i cant afford or b bothered 2 go 2 a
technician.

I AM a technician .. with a world of experience doing this
sort of thing. Read my later post. If you think that card
is the problem, I would recommend buying an earlier
ATI like the Radeon 9200, or even the 9000. They
can be found cheap for about $70. That would prove
it. Otherwise, you are stuck with hauling your system
to a fly-by-night at $65 an hour, and I'm telling you,
those guys are just going to swap out parts until they
bill you $300 easy ... and you are still going to have
problems that will come up later. I'm maintaining
computers for more than 1200 users, and I fix this
stuff every day. You need to narrow the problem
down, and then get a reasonably priced fix. If it is
the ATI card ... check your warantee and call the
vendor .. or call ATI. Generally most parts have a
manufacturers warantee of several years, and their
tech support will work with you. I do it all the time
.... esp with Maxtor, Iomega, Plextor, Gigabyte,
Mwave, HP, .... great guys, and they are there to
help you. Pick up the phone.

johns

 

[Bandit]

Have you tried older drivers ??? the 4.2 made my system crash all the
time i went back to the cat 3.10 from ATi and all is fine now