Sapphire 9800 pro..video slow to redraw or erases other window

[mudz]

I asked once before and got no replies...so here goes again..

I have a 128 MB Sapphire 9800 pro installed in a P4 2.66 on an Asus P4PE MB,
1 GB of RAM.

When I open up two windows or program control panels...neither of which is
maximized...and then take one window and move it over top of the other
window...one of two things happens. Either the inactive window's contents
are temporarily erased...or the active window leaves a trail of itself on
top of the inactive window/control panel. My most recent example of this was
to open Ad Aware 6.0 and DVD X Copy Platinum. When I move Ad Aware over top
of X Copy all is well, but when I move X Copy over top of Ad Aware trails of
the X Copy control panel are left atop the Ad Aware control panel...for
about 1/2 to 1 second. This looks very similar to what occurs when cursor
trails are activated in mouse software.

I have tried catalyst 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6 drivers. I am currently using Omega
drivers version 2.5.51. I have de-selected fastwrite. I have tried it with
Direct 3D and OpenGL set to both highest performance and highest quality
settings. It is possible some drivers are a bit better than others but the
difference is so subtle I would not swear to it.

I did not have this problem with my old Matrox G400 dual head card...so it
certainly should NOT be happening with this card..

Any thoughts at all....I am starting to think it is a bad card...but I don't
know how I will convince my dealer or the manufacturer of that possibility.

M

 

[Augustus]

I asked once before and got no replies...so here goes again..

I have a 128 MB Sapphire 9800 pro installed in a P4 2.66 on an Asus P4PE MB,
1 GB of RAM.

When I open up two windows or program control panels...neither of which is
maximized...and then take one window and move it over top of the other
window...one of two things happens. Either the inactive window's contents
are temporarily erased...or the active window leaves a trail of itself on
top of the inactive window/control panel.

Have completely removed all traces of the previous drivers and done a
complete registry cleanup of the old driver entries?

 

[mudz]

Have completely removed all traces of the previous drivers and done a
complete registry cleanup of the old driver entries?

I have used the ATI Catalyst uninstaller...each and every time I changed the
ATI drivers...the Omega drivers are currently installed and have never been
removed/reinstalled.

M

 

[Augustus]

I have used the ATI Catalyst uninstaller...each and every time I changed
the

ATI drivers...the Omega drivers are currently installed and have never been
removed/reinstalled.

What was the previous card? An ATI or the Matrox you referred to. It would
be a good idea to clean out all traces of your previous Matrox drivers from
the HDD and the registry. I had a similar problem with slow screen draws
even on the login screen when I put in an 8500 128Mb after having a Geforce
installed. Even though I used the add/remove and then unisntalled the card
in device mgr it still happened. Very frustrating.

 

[John Hall]

It sounds like the ATI drivers have not initialized properly. Are you able
to run any 3D games? When you first install the drivers they test your
system before initializing just to make sure everything is ok. Before they
initialize there is no 2D video acceleration and everything is very slow.
It sounds like that is where your drivers are at. That happened to me once
when I didn't properly remove my ATI drivers before installing the Omega
drivers. The Omega Control Panel does not like the ATI control panel.
You're going to have to completely uninstall the drivers, and uninstall the
video card itself in Device Manager, before rebooting your system and
letting it redetect your card. When Windows redetects your card it will ask
you for the driver CD. Ignore that request, hit cancel, and continue to
reboot. Once your machine has finished booting install the latest standard
drivers from the ATI site by double clicking the executable. And oh yeah,
when you uninstall the drivers, use the Control Panel Add/Remove Software to
do it and make sure you remove the control panels and all the Omega stuff.
You don't want anything left.

JK

 

[mudz]

Thanks for your input gentlemen...this is what I have done since reading
your posts.

Went to add remove and uninstalled the omega drivers.
Went to device mgr and uninstalled the card..primary and secondary
Searched registry and removed a single reference to Matrox (yes...the matrox
G400 was in this computer prior to this 9800 pro)
Rebooted
Used RegCleaner and found a single old entry for ATI...deleted it
Booted into safe mode as per instructions with Omega drivers...then ran the
Omega driver cleaner, and the Omega uninstaller for their setup files.
While in safe mode also ran the ATI Catalyst uninstaller
Rebooted and started normally
At this point I was satisfied I had removed everything I could locate.
I then installed ATI Catalyst 4.6 drivers and control panel.
Tested for the problem...it is still there...dammit anyhow..

It was mentioned that my problem might be that the drivers are not
initializing properly...that they test the system before initializing. Is
this test something that is visible. Am I supposed to see it run tests...or
am I supposed to get a notification window telling me the test was
successful? If I am, then something is wrong in this area because I am
seeing nothing, and as far as I can tell it runs NO tests. If tests are
being run, then they run damn quickly...ie startup appears completely
'normal'

M

 

[patrickp]

Thanks for your input gentlemen...this is what I have done since reading
your posts.

Went to add remove and uninstalled the omega drivers.
Went to device mgr and uninstalled the card..primary and secondary
Searched registry and removed a single reference to Matrox (yes...the matrox
G400 was in this computer prior to this 9800 pro)
Rebooted
Used RegCleaner and found a single old entry for ATI...deleted it
Booted into safe mode as per instructions with Omega drivers...then ran the
Omega driver cleaner, and the Omega uninstaller for their setup files.
While in safe mode also ran the ATI Catalyst uninstaller
Rebooted and started normally
At this point I was satisfied I had removed everything I could locate.
I then installed ATI Catalyst 4.6 drivers and control panel.
Tested for the problem...it is still there...dammit anyhow..

It was mentioned that my problem might be that the drivers are not
initializing properly...that they test the system before initializing. Is
this test something that is visible. Am I supposed to see it run tests...or
am I supposed to get a notification window telling me the test was
successful? If I am, then something is wrong in this area because I am
seeing nothing, and as far as I can tell it runs NO tests. If tests are
being run, then they run damn quickly...ie startup appears completely
'normal'

M

mudz, try unticking <Show window contents while dragging> on the
Effects tab of Display Properties.

HTH

patrickp

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

 

[Phil]

Do you have the proper motherboard chipset drivers installed?

If not, here's the driver file for the i845PE chipset, from Intel:
ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/6934/eng/infinst_enu.exe

-phil

 

[mudz]

Do you have the proper motherboard chipset drivers installed?

I tried unchecking show window contents...makes no difference. The control
panel for DVD X Copy shows contents while dragging regardless of this
setting...and still leaves its 'trail' when moved over the ad aware window..

I did have a 'proper' chipset driver installed...but not the most recent
one. Remedied that situation (thanks) but it does not help my video
problem..

In addition I should state that all video related processes seem to work
perfectly. DVD movies are perfect...I only run a few
games...Riven..Siberia...and Siberia II, but I see no problems when they are
running. Also, 3D Mark 03 runs just fine, and I get a reasonable score for
my system (nothing overclocked...all video related settings at default)

The only problem is this window dragging thing, wherein it acts as if I had
just installed the card, for the first time, and have it running on the
default windows video drivers...(except it is smoother than when it actually
is using default win driver)

M

 

[DaveW]

If you haven't already read it in the computer news, The Sapphire 9800 Pro
128 MB card is a cheat. The card has only a 128 Mbit memory bus, unlike ALL
other 9800 Pro's by other companies which have the correct 256 Mbit memory
buses.
Sapphire has been sued over this fact and is offering to exchange boards
with unhappy consumers. Hurry up and get in line.

 

[mudz]

If you haven't already read it in the computer news, The Sapphire 9800 Pro
128 MB card is a cheat. The card has only a 128 Mbit memory bus, unlike ALL
other 9800 Pro's by other companies which have the correct 256 Mbit memory
buses.
Sapphire has been sued over this fact and is offering to exchange boards
with unhappy consumers. Hurry up and get in line.

When I check my system with Everest Home 1.1 it shows a Bus Width of 256
Bit...is this an erroneous reading...faked somehow...or were some of their
cards legit and some not so?

M

 

[Augustus]

When I check my system with Everest Home 1.1 it shows a Bus Width of 256
Bit...is this an erroneous reading...faked somehow...or were some of their
cards legit and some not so?

If Everest shows it as a 256bit card it really is 256bit.

 

[John Hall]

My system does the same thing occasionally, particularly after I have run
and shut down a very cpu/graphically intenseive program like photoshop.
Sometimes when your system is doing two things at once and the cpu is taxed,
screen redraws are a little slow. The other thing is that you may have
encountered a software glitch, in which case your system is not to blame. I
think you have done all the right things re: Video drivers and chipset
drivers. Just make sure that your bios settings are proper for your video
card. Primary video should be set to AGP, AGP aperture size should be set
to 128 (that works best on my system), turn off fast writes (apparently
recommended for ATI cards and makes do difference to performance.

JK