Hi everyone, I was having the same freezing problem.
Ati Radeon 9600 xt amd 2600+ 512 mb ram and an ASUS mobo.
I tried all of that stuff like switching drivers, removing dx9...all that stuff
I just put my card in my MSI mobo and never had another problem
apparently there's a compatibility issue with ASUS mobo's and ati cards.

Hope this helps someone

still, i had the reboots with my geforce2 mx400, too
i'm still uncertain wheter i should try a new psu or a new mobo

uups...later back in this topic, I writed that with my new 500 watt PSU solved my problem. But i didnt solv it completely, it just give me a little more time to play games, cause my old PSU couldnt give me the power i needed - so it wasnt lost money. But now ive got a new mobo and I mean that have solved my crash problem. My old mobo was an ASRock GE Pro HT, and my is an ASUS P4P800 SE/GD

I have been reading most of the posts related to these various crash problems. I have a 9800xt and am having the same issues. I have done everything suggested in the forums and some that were not. I reinstalled everything in the right order, turned on and off stuff, uped voltage, decreased speeds, tested my memory, put in new memory, switched video cards, bought a new power supply, bought a new motherboard and I have narrowed it down to my new cpu. Its a 3200xp and i have been monitering it and when I play some really graphic intensive games it will heat up to around 75c and then the system crashes as a fail safe. With the side of the comp off and a household fan blowing straight into the case I can play for a bit longer, so i'm sure its a heat problem with my cpu and not the video card since it happened with both my ati card and my nvidia card. I have ordered a new heatsink and fan (it will be here tomorrow) so I will post my results. I think I just got a bad heatsink and fan (i'm using the stock one that comes with the retail processor) because it just doesn't seem to be doing its job. I'm not o/c at all and the crashes go away when i drop the processor down to what is equal to a 2800xp (syncing the memory freq of course). So for those of you that are having crash problems with various different cards or mobo, maybe its a heat issue with your cpu... i got a new case and cpu (this is when all the problems started) and i think that it is bad and pushing air through it. It is one of those acrylic all clear cases, very cool looking but a pain to work in and it seems to trap the heat pretty well, the fans are placed over small slits in the case where it is supposed to draw air in and I don't think its getting enough air, I think I'll cut out complete circles and place the fan grill over it. Anyway hope this helps, if anybody wants to know all the exact things I did or questions let me know and I'll post.

nate

the rig
abit AN7 (before the crash was A7N8X Deluxe 2.0)
AMD 3200xp (stock speed)
1 gig xms corsair 3200pt2 ram (running dual channel)
ati 9800xt 256 mb
ata 80gig WD
audigy 2 zs
logitech thx 5.1 dolby digital

I'm Just wondering, i am having this problem with my SIS655 chipset which is a very crap motherboard!!!

What sort of motherboard chipset is everybody using because im thinking of buying a ABIT IC7G-Max 3 Which is based arouf the 875 Chipset. I had this board before but blew it up and my p4 3.0c Chipset which i was a little bit PI**** off about!

I don't thing its a power problem or a heat problem its just bad design and compatibility problems.

I just wanted to post my reasons why I think it's an overheat problem with my cpu. My rig prior to this was an A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 with the 9800xt card and an Athlon 2800xp chip. I recently purchased a new cpu (3200xp), new memory and a new case. After putting everything together and reinstalling XP and all the new drivers, this is when I started having problems. So logically it would have to be one of the three things I replaced that is giving me the problems. Well I tested the memory and it is fine, the new case while it may be a suspect in killing my air flow its not going to be an issue with compatabilty, I guess unless its shorting out the mobo, but since its an all clear plastic case I can pretty much rule that out. So that leaves me with the cpu. I replaced the mobo to rule out any chance that it got damaged in the move. So my overheating theory is based on that... I'll admit I'm not electronics wiz so there may be something i'm overlooking but all logic points to that and logic is all I have to go on right now. My new cpu heatsink and fan arrive today and after installing it I'll post my results here, if that doesn't fix it then I'm lost. One thing that I just thought of that I havn't done yet is putting my 2800xp back in the machine and see if that works. Maybe I'll try o/c it to 400 fsb and to a 3200xp it should give me the same speed right? I won't do this of course until I'm satisfied that my crashing problem is fixed.

thanks for everybody's diligence

nate

I had the same problem as James's friend. My cpu was crashing all the time. I used SSISoft Sandra, saw my cas latency was 2, set it to 2 in my bios, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Auto is not a good choice with some mb & memory combos.

Thanks James!

-Sean

P.S.

I'm running:
Asus K8V Deluxe
Athlon 3400+
Radeon 9800 XT
Audigy 2zs Platinum
Kingston 3200 DDR 1GB

I agree.

I have had a solution now for 2 weeks so i thought i would post my solution.

I swapped my MOBO from sis655fx chipset to MSI 875p NEO board. This still didn't sort out my problem but then i realised i always crashed when i was running duel memory.

I changed all my dram memory timings to what Kingston ram suggested 3-3-3 and dely cycle to 8 and am now running everything at max duel ram and its fab. Hope this helps.

3d mark 2003 score 6651

For the 100th time hopefully this will get around. Turning off FASTWRITES and VPURECOVERY they make the card alot less stable.

no they don't.. it just makes the card not run as fast and it doesn't benchmark as high.. most systems can't support fastwrite expecially old 4x only motherboards.. and vpu recovery isn't even a fully assurable option.. hell ati said them selves its just theoretical if it works right. I turn it off because since i put in a wealthy ass psu and turned off all windows error reporting and all vpu i never get a crash so it shouldn't need vpu.. because vpu is only for card crashes... dude maybe you shouldn't talk cuz you have no idea what you just said. What does cause a card to become unstable is the Smartgart's agp read/write option... but since my psu upgrade i haven't had that problem either.

The only real problem with this card is it needs about 1.7-1.8 volts... or its just the ram cas latency. And if people are really overclocking systems it gets lost in the speeds... its just a setting, i've fixed quite a few computers with this card now and thats about all it was.
------------------------
Tyan S2462 Dual Athlon Mp 2400's
Radeon 9800xt 256mb
Audigy 2 Platinum Pro
Ibm 120gb
Maxtor 160gb
Rocketraid 133 Card running at ATA133 not ATA100 (nice)
2 Gigs of Kingston 2100 DDR (512x4)
A+GBP 550 Watt PSU (12v-20a)(5.5v-55a)(3.3v-36a)
-----------------------
3dmark03 Score (5891)
-----------------------

i replaced my a7n8x with a msi kt6 delta and had no crashes since

turn off VPU recovery actually, leave fastwrites on.

There is a problem with the new nForce 2, 4.24 Drivers. They automatically disable 8x and fast write on ATI vid cards. Dam NVIDIA, they can't get it right.

So I’m back with the 3.13 drivers and everything is great. Now I’m getting way better performance with my 9700 Pro. @ least an extra 1500 points with 3D Mark 03.

I know what Im talking about I've fixed countless machines that had crashing by turning these off made all the ATi cards I;ve worked on completly stable ATi has said FASTWRITES can cause crashes and VPU RECOVERY is just unstable its worked countless times if you want to be stuck up and not even atempt something fine. But dont strut around on your high horse insulting people.

now listen.. u don't know what your talking about and you can ask ati on this. VPU recover is a program that allows a grpahics card if it crashes, which it shouldn't to crash back into windows without having to restart.. it absolutely does not need to be on. And fast writes isn't supported by most, turning it on most times causes more problems then leaving it off.. mine is on and works fine.. but most can't have it. With the new ati cards though a program called SMARTGART enable or disable agp read/write like some new bios can. Those on the other hand do and will cause probles on most system because there not compatible with it. And alot of system that do a full mobo replacment is that the new 9800 pro cards and 9600 cards take up too much power.. and the only way to really fix it is buy a new motherboard or an overbearing powersupply.

I do a bit more in depth troublshooting then prolly most people here.. right down to electrically modifying or moving wires on a main board or psu to get things to work.. So yes i do know what i am talking about too.

And how the hell did anyone get 3.13 drives to work with an ati 9800 xt card? it didn't even have drivers back that far.

Umm, the 3.13 Drivers are NVIDIA's nForce drivers, NOT ATI's. When I use these drivers for my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo, everything is turned on and running fine, but when I instal the new 4.24 drivers (nForce drivers), then the 8x and fast writes are disabled.

AND there is a big performance difference when having the 8x and fast writes enabled.

well if they are nforce drivers.. why you posting information about a nvidia card on a radeon post?

james 3.13 is Nforce driver set for NForce 2 based motherboards.