Wattage claims on psu's are like wattage claims w/ audio amps, they mean nothing w/out "qualifiers"

OCGW

PEACE

Hey just to let you guys know i am having the same problem with my radeon 9800pro 128mb it will freeze for no apparent reason and loop the sound sometimes doing the vpr recover thing somtimes have to just power down and restart in the past i have always used nvidea cards with no problem thought id try a radeon this time think i'll go back too nvidea.. ..soyo mboard, AMD 2100+, 512 pc 3200, xp pro system, 400w pwr sup....just thought i'd throw in my 2cents.

I have been plagued with the following symptoms for months now in BF42, DAOC and a few other games

- screen freezes like you are looking at a screenshot for a moment
- the screen then displays all sorts of crazy random graphics
- the sound card starts to make a horrible repeating noise for about 5 seconds
- then the system reboots

this was a guaranteed ritual it was just a matter of when it would strike not if. every night I gamed I got this crap for 8 months and it was making me mental. when I swap in my old geforce3 in no problem runs good just laggy and not as pretty as my sapphire 9800 pro 128meg

I have read thru the whole post here! I have tried a lot of the suggestions mentioned on my own in the past, drivers, tweaks, reinstall xp etc and before I saw this post thought it was just a junk mobo or my vid card was fried

when I was reading I noticed that it was mentioned that the 9800's like 1.7v for the agp port. I was poised to get a new power supply but before I did I wanted to check the voltage out and sure enough it was set at the default for my soyo dragon board at 1.5v

using my acme brand 400 watt (replaced the bad 380w antec that came with my sonata case, 4th bad antec power supply in 2 years, Antec=junk, perhaps they used to make quality but they are relying on their established name at this point to provide business) ok, antec hating mini rant off!

so I noticed the default for the soyo dragon was set to 1.5v for the agp (documentation with my card never said jack about what voltage to set it at) I bumped it up to 1.7v to try that before buying a new power supply and have been running flawless for 2 days now. keep in mind every day I gamed it was when not if I would have the problem

so one last thing to check before getting a new PSU would be make sure that agp voltage is set if you can with your mobo. perhaps thats why in some cases replacing the mobo worked? perhaps the default agp was set at or closer to 1.7v?

however I do agree this could be a psu issue as obviously my problem did relate to power and if your agp voltage was set properly but you have power fluctuations that could cause the exact same symptoms I have had

I will report back in a few weeks and let you know if it seems to have perma-cured the problem or if it still pops up here and there.

thanks everyone for your input and good luck with your 9800's! they are a sweet card when they are running good.

I have an asus radeon 9800XT, and same problems. My PSU is an Chill Innovation CP-350A PSU. can that curse the problems? Regards Stefan

so far so good for me after bumping the bios agp voltage from 1.5(default) to 1.7 on my soyo dragon.

take a look thru the long post though and you may get some other good ideas to try before spending the money on a new power supply

well it's march 2nd and not one crash since I adjusted the voltage up to 1.7v from 1.5. It definitely is a power issue atleast if you had the same symptoms I did.

me too. PERFECT!!....atlast!

what was your fix? power related? did it wind up being the agp voltage setting or was it the actual power supply itself you replaced?

glad it's working for you as the syptoms we had are maddening to a gamer! and it always happens when your on a hot run hehe

since I switched the agp voltage to 1.7v I haven't had one crash yet

I raise my AGP voltage to 1,7, instead of "auto"! great! I have had my GFX card in one year, and now atlast it works!! never more ATI!! it must be something they should have written about for long time ago!! reguards Stefan

gah!

I just looked at mine and its at 1.5. Only problem is I have a AOpen ak79d-1394 which only allows me to goto 1.6v.

I would recommend replacing ATI's drivers with the more stable Omega driver. You can download from http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Note: make sure you uninstall the ATI drivers etc first.

Regarding BIOS setting for your pc, for best graphics performance, goto http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=8&var1=0&var2=138

Hope this helps. Should fix the problem (worked for me!).

Anthony.

I just wanted to post my instance with this problem.
I put in my 9800 pro (switched from geforce 5200) and tried to play Call of Duty. It locked up as mentioned before in this ungodly long thread. That one I fixed by running Driver Cleaner Pro and getting all the old driver crap off of my OS. I'm not exactly sure that that was the fix because I did a number of things at the time but that was what I seemed to remember as the fix. The real problem was when I installed KOTOR II. That game didn't last but 4 minutes and would blackscreen lockup (but no reboot). After reading this whole dang thread I ordered a new PS. (BTW, check out the ROSEWILL RV450 Item # 17-182-008 from NEWEGG... good stats and only $34) Then I went home (i was at work) and found out my generic (I thought) power supply was more than sufficient. So I took a look at my BIOS for AGP voltage. It only went up the 1.55v so I left that on auto. Then I remembered the CAS Latency settings issue someone mentioned. My Kingston ram is 3.0 so I switched from Auto to 3.0 and that fixed my problem. I played for about 3 hours that night and never had another problem. I would say everyone should at least give that fix a try if you have not already.

Rick

Chaintech M1689
Athlon 64 3000+ 939 (not oced)
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128
Kingston Value Ram 1GB (512 x2)
Some old 60GB Maxtor drive soon to be replaced
What seems to be a NONAME PSU 350W

Hi,

I have a broblem that i'm trying to solve a month already. I have bought GeGube RADEON 9800PRO when i instaled it worked for 3 month normaly, but after this time computer started to crash. I have changed almost every part, but it didn,t helped. I instaled MB monitoring program and recognized that 12Volt little by little geting up and when it reaches 13.3volt, conputer crashes.

Maybe there is somebody who knows whats is the problem and how to fix it?

ACK!!!! 13.3 V dear lord.... nothing over 12.5V please.. that itself is too much... 12.06V ideally.

change that PSU now.

+12.6V is the specified max limit for ATX power supplies.

Before you replace it check the voltage with a digital multimeter. The sensor on the motherboard may be miss-reading the +12V line.

You can measure between the yellow (+12V) and black (GND) wires on a free IDE power cable.

I have changed almost all parts in this computer. I have changed PSU (codegen 350W-->QTEC 400W), MB (Intel-->ASUS), CPU(Intel P4 1.4GHz --> Intel P4 3.0GHz HT), RAM(RIMM384MB --> DDR400 1024MB), VGA(GeCube R9800PRO 128MB --> GeXCube R9800PRO 128MB). The only parts i didn't changed is HDD (MAXTOR), FDD, and CD-RW. So i don't know what and where is the problem.

Does somebody knows how to fix that?

Hey everyone,


I have a very similar problem to this aswell(i have a Radeon 9800 XT 256mb)...except my comp doesent restart while playing games. Mibne restrts while you play movies, most frequently while in windows media player.

This only happens on SOME movies, and after it restarts then the movie plays fine, it also happens with quick-time (but 90% less)

Does anyone have ANY idea where to begin to fix this?

Thanks

Man, I'm having the exact same problem. I start playing HL 2 or Far Cry for about 4 to 5 minutes and then the system crashes. The sound begins to loop and the video sometimes turns black (most of the times) and sometimes it makes a very colorful mess in the screen, or even sometimes (very rare) Windows shows an error "the memory can't be read".

I don't know if there´s a memory conflict going on, or even a conflict with the MoBo. But I think that´s probably a heating problem. The thing is I bought a copper Vantec cooler, very nice, but the crashing still persists. I also have a system fan sucking the hot air from the case. Do you guys know any other solution for cooling the video card? I WANNA PLAY! WAAAAAHHH....

Oh, forgot to tell ya my system specs:

- AMD 64 3200+ 2.2Ghz
- 1 Gb RAM DDR 400
- MSI K8MM-ILSR MoBo
- Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb 128bits