Radeon 9800 Pro Flashing Screen

[Dave/Saxton]

Hello. I have been having a terrible time playing games on the Radeon
9800 Pro at 1600x1200. The two games I play the most are UT2003 and
Dark Age of Camelot. On both of these games the screen has "snow" in
random spots like a TV with poor reception, and every few seconds the
screen goes black. I have the latest Catalyst 4.2 drivers, but it has
been doing it as far back as 3.8. This happens on both the analog and
digital connectors.

Has anyone else had this problem before? Any ideas on what to try?

CPU P4, 3.06, 1GB DDR RAM, 80GB HDD (58GB free), Gigabyte 8INXP system
board.

TIA!
Dave

 

[Ben Pope]

Hello. I have been having a terrible time playing games on the Radeon
9800 Pro at 1600x1200. The two games I play the most are UT2003 and
Dark Age of Camelot. On both of these games the screen has "snow" in
random spots like a TV with poor reception, and every few seconds the
screen goes black. I have the latest Catalyst 4.2 drivers, but it has
been doing it as far back as 3.8. This happens on both the analog and
digital connectors.

Has anyone else had this problem before? Any ideas on what to try?

Yeah.

But only when I overclock the nuts off it.

Ben

 

[Thomas]

On both of these games the screen has "snow" in
random spots like a TV with poor reception, and every few seconds the
screen goes black.

Has anyone else had this problem before? Any ideas on what to try?

Looks like what i experience with overclocking too far. Did you overclock
it? If so, back down a little...

If not, how is your heat management? And the power supply unit, is that a
good one? (at least a branded 350, or an unbranded 400) Hmm last thing i can
think of is the mainboard drivers...

If all this fails, i think you have a faulty card, and need to return it :-(

Thomas.

 

[Mike P]

LOL, I was just thinking that. I haven't pushed things that far since my
celeron333/TNT system. Pushing the memory too far caused the visual
anomolies described here, and pushing the core too far caused lockups
requiring a reboot.

Mike

 

[DaveW]

Do you have a high quality power supply with adequate wattage output?
(Cheap power supplies do NOT put out their rated power into real world
loads.)

 

[Vedran Parac]

checkerboard pattern?

it sounds too me like a core over-overclocked or a softmodded 9800SE or a
bad pipeline.

check your cooling... open you case to provide adequate airflow... try
lowering the core clock... if nothing changes, my bet's that you have a
faulty card. I say 'bet' because I can't be sure what kind of artefacts you
are having, it might be GPU, video-RAM, or a software issue.

 

[Dave/Saxton]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I guess I should've posted a few more
things:

I am not and have not overclocked the card. My power supply is a
Kingwin 450w. My case is also a Kingwin. It's got 5 case fans and
stays pretty cool inside. The CPU is monitored it is always within its
lower limits.
I think I may get in touch with ATI tech support and get an RMA for
it...

Thanks again,
Dave

 

[Thomas Andrén]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I guess I should've posted a few more
things:

I am not and have not overclocked the card. My power supply is a
Kingwin 450w. My case is also a Kingwin. It's got 5 case fans and
stays pretty cool inside. The CPU is monitored it is always within its
lower limits.
I think I may get in touch with ATI tech support and get an RMA for
it...

Thanks again,
Dave

I had a TNT2 Ultra that did the same thing, it was faulty memmory on the
card.

/Thomas A/