hey guys i got my 9800xt yesterday and i have been having similar problems.

after reading this whole thread i decided to try a few things.
now my psu is 400W so i figured thats good enough.
i threw in 2 extra fans and took the side off to cool it down, no effect.

i initially installed the drivers off the ati website (catalyst drivers or whatever) and the system would crash when i had too many windows opened or tried to play any game. (go black and restart pc)

now i uninstalled these drivers and installed the drivers on the supplied ati cd. some success. i could now use windows without it crashing, and i could play games like CS, opposing force, nfs underground and gta3 all on low resolution. but as soon as i try to play a game with higher resolution (ie black hawk down) or i turn it up on the other games it will restart.

now i give up. i have no idea what that irq thing is and how you'd go about changing it? can anyone explain?

after viewing system info i get this:

IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 10 MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device OK
IRQ 11 NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management OK
IRQ 11 Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 NVIDIA NForce 2(tm) SPP/IGP ATA Controller OK
IRQ 15 NVIDIA NForce 2(tm) SPP/IGP ATA Controller OK
IRQ 16 Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC OK
IRQ 16 Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 19 RADEON 9800 XT OK
IRQ 20 Realtek AC'97 Audio OK
IRQ 21 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller OK
IRQ 22 Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller OK

is that all good?
irq 11 and 16 are being shared... ?

About Power Supplies, I didn't mention it requiring a minimum power capacity. I mentioned it had to be STABLE POWER. Unfortunately, you can only do this by trying out a different power supply. Which power supllies are stable and which aren't, is unknown. It sucks, I know, I guess i got lucky with my chieftech power supply, which for the record, is only 360W, and my radeon hasn't crashed one single time with it.
I am pleased with the performance of my 9800Pro, But I for one will never ever recommend this card to a user who doesn't have technical knowlegde.
I agree NVidia doesnt hold op to their word when it comes to specs, but rest assured their cards don't have these kind of problem as much as with ATi cards, not by a long shot. And who can tell the difference between 50 and 60 FPS...
My conclusion: ATi = faster, NVidia = better (can handle system inconsistencies better)

ATi = faster, better & more options. NVIDIA = O.K. lacks resolution quality, but can handle system inconsistencies better.

EnerMax makes very good solid power supplies. Also, Antec's Pure Power 550W is nice, and not expensive. You can also control where you want power, and how much you want there.

ATI has no problem with there cards. It's the game company’s software which is having problems. ATI cards are brilliantly designed. These dam gaming companies should have got it right by now. But I know it could get frustrated at times.

So many of my friends have ATI cards, with no problems at all. The company I work for have been using them for 5 years or so, with no problems at all. I don’t know anymore. s**t, I’m loosing it. Just like Howard Stern.

Falco,

IRQ definition here:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci214042,00.html

If you read my posts, I found on re-installing windows that my IRQ's were all changed to be unique, which made things a lot more stable - no unexpected crashes. The <i>expected</i> crash still happened though - every time I after installed the new catalyst (which fixes a lot of bugs with the games and worth installing). The problem is that on reboot after installing, it tests itself with SmartGART to find the pc's display limits, and my system goes down (nice).

I've posted up my solution to this on this thread before, so check it out and see if it helps. Summary below:

You have to make sure that you re-install the graphics driver after uninstalling it and before rebooting, turn off smartgart and set agp to 4x. Sometimes, in order to get windows to stay on for long enough to change these settings, you may need to change your voltage in Bios to 1.7v. Once fixed and settings corrected manually, reboot and bring back to 1.6v or your normal settings.

I've never had a crash in a game and my PSU is 350W, running 2x HDD, 2x DVD drives, FDD, Connect 3D Radeon XT, Athlon 3200+, so I'm a little suspiscious about this power consumption theory unless your overclocking your cards/cpu's a lot. :p

Hope this helps!

Nick

ATI SUCKS man
try a GeForce
OR a Volari

Nick...

okay so after i do that i leave the agp set to 4x and smart gart off? indefinatly?
mine doesnt crash upon booting up, only during games and not every game everytime.
for example i played jedi academy jsut eofre for about 2 hours with no effect. then played for an hour and it crashed. rebooted, played for 10 minutes and it crashed.

Blood Brother, you obviously have issues which need addressing. Explain why GeForce cards give you dark image video quality while playing games and such.

ATI has clear, crystal imaging. Basically, you can't compare the two when you consider image quality and speed. ATI stands the winner hands down.

Here is a helpful page with aany ATI issues anybody has.
http://www.ati.com/support/faq/index.html

Just face it SuperXP - you're an ATi spy sent here to reassure us that their cards are fine and its OUR PSU's that are to blame.

BTW - I've just spent £60 on an Antec 480W PSU. According to your recent post(s) this will solve my problem...

We'll wait and see shall we... Mr ATi....

Just as I thought. You must be of an adolescent age right?

http://forums.windrivers.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=58
http://forums.devhardware.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20
http://forums.amdmb.com/forumdisplay.php?s=395950a79a51385e523...forumid=51
http://forums.bit-tech.net/forumdisplay.php?f=32
http://forums.sudhian.com/categories.cfm?catid=74&forumid=1
http://forums.designtechnica.com/forumdisplay.php?s=710b66fb53...;forumid=6
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/forumdisplay.php?s=959d522a0b55...forumid=59
http://www.tbreak.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17
http://forums.vnunet.com/thread.jsp?forum=8&thread=21067
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1276889




U think ATI has problems? Think again.
http://forums.amdmb.com/forumdisplay.php?s=395950a79a51385e523...forumid=50

Now, enough of the calling me an ATI agent or something. You make me laugh.
I use the nForce2 chipset. Though, I would like to pick up the new VIA 800 series for the Athlons.

This topic is living proof on why I will NEVER buy an ATI product. That company makes the most p**s poor drivers/software and their support sucks my ass. I have had nothing but bad luck with ATI stuff. NVidia all the way, never had an issue with them or their products. Their drivers and interfaces are excellent. I would say you have a 50% chance of your machine not functioning at all once you put some sort of ATI product in it. I have known so many people besides myself that have had nothing but continous problems with ATI.

Update Report:

I change my system with a Antech 480W True Power PSU and I can now run UT4003 for ~1.5 hrs without crash. Still can't run SW:NOTOR though... : (

Mike Armstrong, do you have an NVIDIA card? If not hurry and get one.
Then we can all say "I told you so" when you go into the store to trade it with an ATI.

Hey i WAS a radeon fan my bro bought a 9200 , 9600 and a 9800 they all crashed in many differant games. After that much of spending we only had about 50 dollars so we decided to buy a card for temporary.GeForce 4 MX 440 . It didn't crash, no glitches, it is not bad as guys say just wait until nVidia puts the next card on the table i WILL NEVER BUY ATI

What ever makes you happy. I do agree with you on the GeForce 4 MX 440 though, it is quite a solid stable card. My friend had one, but traded it for an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Full stability and no problems.

SuperXP, you sure like to swing from ATI's nuts... Yes I own a Geforce FX5900 ULTRA. Plays my games flawlessly, with no system instabilities. You do not see me posting anything on this site about lockups or bluescreens.... Unlike the 100 other ppl that have with ATI cards. ATI blows, you wont ever be seeing me buying one of those. I dont know about everyone else, but I like to be 100% POSITIVE that my game isnt going to crash on my ass when I have been playing for a while....

Not to mention every person I know that games started with ATI and now run GFX's... they saw the light n00b

Like I said before, what ever makes you happy? ATI will always be on top with quality & performance. I bet your GeForce FX 5900 Ultra doesn’t have amazing picture quality as it should. Why, well, a store here in Toronto had the game Far Cry Demo by two identical computers. One with the ATI 9800 Pro 128mb DDR and the other with the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb DDR. The demo looked good on both systems. The GFFX though, looked like there was a dark layer on the gaming screen of some sort. I think this is to hide there true bad video quality or something. I even notice this on my GeForce 4 Ti4200. Hell, anybody I know which had a GF card had a similar problem. The problem isn't that bad to not go and get a GF card, but I need the best image quality. ATI is the only card which can do this with amazing speed. I do realize that many of you are having problems though. Well, I will soon find out if my card gives me problems.

Hi guys

I came across this forum whilst researching problems with my pc. I had a GigaByte 8KNXP Ultra v1.0 which kept resetting on me or games would just crash. I initially blamed my Hercules Radeon 9800 Pro but it was not the case. After 8 months of persistent problems that i didnt know how to fix, the motherboard finally stopped booting. Now i have a v2.0 of the motherboard as a replacement and was getting the same problems but this time it was only resetting, not just games crashing. After alot of research and testing, it turns out that it was my Corsair ram which was to blame. It would work just fine in single channel mode but dual channel was causing all the problems. I ended up changing the CAS Latency setting in the bios from 2.5 to 2, and it went back to games crashing to me the most common, instead of resetting alot.This led me to believe that tweaking the settings would solve my problems and i finally ended up having the timings all changed from 2.5-3-2-6 to 2-4-3-7 and now my system is running like a charm. I just wish i had known about all this when i bought the system coz ive never had to deal with ram timings before.

Anyways, although software (drivers) can be largely to blame i just thought id let u guys know incase some of u have dual channel ram enabled and are having reset/crash problems

EDIT: the best way to determine if its the ram timings is to go back to single channel mode and see if any problems continue

how do u change ur ram timings?
im running dual ddr.
did u jsut keep using random timings until it worked?