Sapphire 128 9600 install hell

  • Thread starter Thread starter James R. Lunsford
  • Start date Start date
J

James R. Lunsford

Got this card yesterday, got a new case w/ 400w PS for it. I'm running XP
w/

Biostar m7viw
AMD XP 2000+ CPU
512 megs RAM
DX 9

Put the MoBo in the new case, formatted the HD, reinstalled XP from scratch
and it's been hell ever since. I installed some sort of ATI update from
Microsoft while I was updating XP w/ all the critical fixes, then installed
the 4.3 Catalyst drivers from the ATI website and the system went bonkers.
It would give me VPU errors, corrupt the screen and tell me that the video
card stopped responding, I was finally able to disable the VPU warnings,
then the system refused to boot. Or rather it would boot, show the logon
screen, then present a black screen fronm which I had no choice but to
reboot. I tried reinstalling the drivers in safe mode, I reinstalled XP
from scratch 2x times, and now I've got the card sort of 1/2 way limping
along, indentified as a 9600 series in System Properties, but no ATI drivers
are recognized. and truth be told, I'm almost afraid to try re-installing
the drivers for fear that the system will go bonkers again.

Any help/advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks.
 
and leave the MS update for it alone....disable fast writes in BIOS also

Half wrong....
ENABLE fast writes with that card. Radeon 9600 cards are the exception from
the rule. They only run reliably with fast writes ON. All others Radeons
need them off.
 
Dirk Dreidoppel said:
Half wrong....
ENABLE fast writes with that card. Radeon 9600 cards are the exception from
the rule. They only run reliably with fast writes ON. All others Radeons
need them off.
Click to expand...

All wrong ...

It's a function of the motherboard chipset and SMARTGART, not the card. Fast
writes are disabled by default on older VIA chipsets, even though many of us
were able to force them to work bypassing SMARTGART. On my current
Intel-chipset Abit IC7, fast writes are on by default and work without a
hitch with my 9500@9700 Pro. I could and did run with fast writes enabled
using a Radeon 8500 on a VIA KT133A a couple of years back.

Fast writes do almost nothing for performance, and can be a source of
instability, especially when overclocking the vid card or AGP bus. That's
why it's standard troubleshooting advice to disable them when there's a
problem.
 
Fast writes do almost nothing for performance, and can be a source of
instability, especially when overclocking the vid card or AGP bus. That's
why it's standard troubleshooting advice to disable them when there's a
problem.
Click to expand...

Quite right. However, my 9600 XT crashes (in NWN for example) after 10
seconds at best without fast writes enabled. With the enabled, the game runs
without a hitch for hours. And I have an old VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset
(the P3 equivalent to the KT133A). There's a reason why Omegadrive has
forced fast writes on on all 9600 cards and off on all others in his last
set. He didn't even leave an option to change that.
 
Such bad manners! Skid posted this:
Skid said:
Quite right. However, my 9600 XT crashes (in NWN for example) after 10
seconds at best without fast writes enabled. With the enabled, the game runs
without a hitch for hours. And I have an old VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset
(the P3 equivalent to the KT133A). There's a reason why Omegadrive has
forced fast writes on on all 9600 cards and off on all others in his last
set. He didn't even leave an option to change that.
Click to expand...
I was also surprised to find, after using cards that usually wouldn't even
let me enable fast writes, and reading all the stuff about switching fast
writes off anyway, that my Sapphire 9600 Pro VIVO definitely does run better
with them on. It does seem to be a characteristic of 9600 cards.

patrickp
 
Sorry to break the thread, but a note to Patrickp: I just got that same vivo
card and the board layout seems different (less large capcitors, etc.)--is
this an old or new design, if you happpen to know?
 
Tom Salvin said:
Sorry to break the thread, but a note to Patrickp: I just got that same vivo
card and the board layout seems different (less large capcitors, etc.)--is
this an old or new design, if you happpen to know?
Click to expand...


Don't know about the age of the design, but the card must have been old
stock, because it's no longer imported into the UK and I had a devil of a
time finding one. Was cheap, though - £92 inc VAT & p&p from RL Supplies.

The board layout is different to what - a regular 9600 Pro? I haven't
looked at one of those, I'm afraid, so I can't make the comparison.

patrickp
 
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