Video corruption & banding interference with ATI AIW Radeon 9800 pro

[yuki]

I finally upgraded my AIW Radeon 7200 to AIW Radeon 9800 pro.

It was a big disappointment to find out that the video quality is much much
worse than my old card.
The entire screen has a weird vertical banding effect. Also shows horizontal
dashed lines in certain places even in the TV overlay.

The worst is when I ran 3DMark2001. The display is corrupted in many places
leaving pixelated blotches.
At least it scored very well. Went from 1480 to ~15000, but I cannot accept
the video corruption no matter how fast it is.

The cause may be specific to my system. It is Athlon XP 2100+ overclocked to
2100MHz (210x10) on an old system.
I don't quite trust the DVI to VGA adapter either (AIW does not have a
15-pin VGA output)

I am RMAing this card back to Newegg despite the 15% restocking fee.
May be I would be better off with a regular Radeon (or Nvidia) card & a TV
tuner card like a TV Wonder.

Any insight?

 

[Shawk]

I finally upgraded my AIW Radeon 7200 to AIW Radeon 9800 pro.

It was a big disappointment to find out that the video quality is much much
worse than my old card.
The entire screen has a weird vertical banding effect. Also shows horizontal
dashed lines in certain places even in the TV overlay.

The worst is when I ran 3DMark2001. The display is corrupted in many places
leaving pixelated blotches.
At least it scored very well. Went from 1480 to ~15000, but I cannot accept
the video corruption no matter how fast it is.

The cause may be specific to my system. It is Athlon XP 2100+ overclocked to
2100MHz (210x10) on an old system.
I don't quite trust the DVI to VGA adapter either (AIW does not have a
15-pin VGA output)

I am RMAing this card back to Newegg despite the 15% restocking fee.
May be I would be better off with a regular Radeon (or Nvidia) card & a TV
tuner card like a TV Wonder.

Any insight?

Its rarely a video hardware problem when you get initial probs like this.
If you really want a fast card why dont you be in less of a rush to send it
back and give your full system specs etc - perhaps someone can help you.
For example what are your bios settings - are fast writes on or off (try
them off). What version drivers do you have? Have you reloaded them? Have
you run dxdiag? etc etc Shaun.

 

[yuki]

Its rarely a video hardware problem when you get initial probs like this.
If you really want a fast card why dont you be in less of a rush to send it
back and give your full system specs etc - perhaps someone can help you.
For example what are your bios settings - are fast writes on or off (try
them off). What version drivers do you have? Have you reloaded them? Have
you run dxdiag? etc etc Shaun.

I did not mentioned the tests I have done in my original post.
I have already tried all you have mentioned except for the dxdiag. Even
thought of trying the omega driver.
BTW, I am currently running with fast-writes off & Cat 4.4.

None of these tests made any difference, so it is my conclusion that the
corruption is my system/environment related than the card or the driver
problem. When I popped in my old AIW card, everything worked fine as before.

Here is some of the factors I think contributing to the problem:
o my power-supply is 300W (though it is Antec), my drive bays are maxed with
multiple CD/DVD drives & multiple hard drives
o the DVI-VGA output is fed into a KVM switch to share my 21 monitor running
in 1600x1200 resolution
o my CPU (Athlon XP 2100+) is overclocked (210x10) though not too severely,
cooling may not be adequate with the new video card

I think I will just keep my config as it is. I am planning to get a new P4
or AMD 64 system by the end of this year, so it makes more sense to spend
the effort & money on the new system.

 

[Conor]

Here is some of the factors I think contributing to the problem:
o my power-supply is 300W (though it is Antec), my drive bays are maxed with
multiple CD/DVD drives & multiple hard drives
o the DVI-VGA output is fed into a KVM switch to share my 21 monitor running
in 1600x1200 resolution
o my CPU (Athlon XP 2100+) is overclocked (210x10) though not too severely,
cooling may not be adequate with the new video card

Your PSU is well under-rated. I can't believe you have the balls to
send it back when the problem lies with an underspecced machine. As for
imagequality, KVM switchers ARE SHIT.

 

[J. Clarke]

I did not mentioned the tests I have done in my original post.
I have already tried all you have mentioned except for the dxdiag. Even
thought of trying the omega driver.
BTW, I am currently running with fast-writes off & Cat 4.4.

None of these tests made any difference, so it is my conclusion that the
corruption is my system/environment related than the card or the driver
problem. When I popped in my old AIW card, everything worked fine as
before.

Here is some of the factors I think contributing to the problem:
o my power-supply is 300W (though it is Antec), my drive bays are maxed
with multiple CD/DVD drives & multiple hard drives
o the DVI-VGA output is fed into a KVM switch to share my 21 monitor
running in 1600x1200 resolution
o my CPU (Athlon XP 2100+) is overclocked (210x10) though not too
severely, cooling may not be adequate with the new video card

I think I will just keep my config as it is. I am planning to get a new P4
or AMD 64 system by the end of this year, so it makes more sense to spend
the effort & money on the new system.

You've identified four possible problems already. Power is marginal, with
"drive bays maxed" it's almost certain to be inadequate. You say yourself
that cooling may not be adequate. You're running overclocked--anytime
you're overclocked and something doesn't work right first thing to do is go
back to the standard clocking and see if the problem goes away. You're
running through a KVM switch--while that should not be showing the symptoms
you describe it's an obvious thing to check.

Going to separate video and tuner will not gain you anything--you need to
find out what's causing the problem you're seeing and then you'll know what
to do about it.

 

[yuki]

yuki wrote:


You've identified four possible problems already. Power is marginal, with
"drive bays maxed" it's almost certain to be inadequate. You say yourself
that cooling may not be adequate. You're running overclocked--anytime
you're overclocked and something doesn't work right first thing to do is go
back to the standard clocking and see if the problem goes away. You're
running through a KVM switch--while that should not be showing the symptoms
you describe it's an obvious thing to check.

Going to separate video and tuner will not gain you anything--you need to
find out what's causing the problem you're seeing and then you'll know what
to do about it.

Yep, there are just too many possible problems in this system.
This is why I am giving up upgrading to a new video card in this old system.

I will go separate video & tuner combo in the new system (likely to be amd
64), sometime before the end of the year.

 

[yuki]

Good news & bad news.

Good:
o Ditched my Nvidia card & got a used Radeon 9600 (uses passive cooling
instead of a fan)
o Works great in my system, no video corruption, respectable performance
(3dmark 2001 9450)

Bad:
o My PCI AIW Radeon's TV tuner no longer works if I enable the Radeon 9600

I wish there is a mode to make the AIW Radeon work like a TV Wonder, but
does not seem to work that way.