3.10 fixed the problem.....sorta. It no longer freezes at the beginning of games like Age of Mythology, Neverwinter Nights, etc. Now, it waits until I've spent about 30 minutes playing the game, and then...it very unexpectedly goes into a sound loop. (if that makes sense...) At that point the keys & mouse go dead and you hear the same sound over and over again. I checked my interrupts and this may sound dumb but my sound card SB Audigy and ATI 9600 are sharing the same IRQ, 11. So,...I've tried separating them. But they're like Siamese Twins, if I do a hard assign of IRQ 3 to my sound card...(and this is weird). The ATI card adopts the same IRQ, 3!! I think I'm going to replace the Mobo. I could probably stand to upgrade the processor as well. My brother's running an old Intel P2-350, I guess I could let him have my weird P3-1Ghz for Christmas. However, the bottom line is,...3.10 is an improvement!!

I'm another person having trouble...

I wish I'd looked into the problems before I bought a Connect3D Radeon 9600 PRO. I just assumed that it would work as easily as all the other graphics cards I've fitted in the last 14 years. Not a good introduction to ATi for me.

I have a Connect3D Radeon 9600 PRO. I'm sure you all know the problems by now. I've been through a complete reformat and reinstall, my hardware is almost all new. After changing the AGP voltage from the 1.55V my board set it to down to 1.50V, I can now play one or two games. Oooh.

Poking around, I noticed that the BIOS on my graphics card is revision 0.2063. This seems very odd - that's a version number you'd associate with a half-written early alpha version. Is this normal?

I had considered fitting a couple of case fans, though I'm sure overheating isn't the problem (I have my PC in a chilly room and nothing goes over 40C), but then I saw a post in which someone found that it was their case fans that were causing the problem!

I've had enough of this card, I really have. I've tried three different graphics card drivers and three different sets of motherboard drivers. I've used Driver Cleaner. I've used a registry cleaner afterwards, just in case. I've reformatted and reinstalled. I've turned Fast Writes off and AGP down to 4x. I've underclocked the card. I've looked for IRQ conflicts. I've disabled my onboard LAN, sound, SATA and RAID. Nothing works. I am half-heartedly looking for the motivation to wipe my current drivers and install Cat3.10, then do another reformat and reinstall when that doesn't help. Only the odd BIOS version number has piqued my jaded interest in getting this card to work.

I still have an old TNT2 Ultra card around. Maybe I'll go back to that. At least it works.

Jack Black - I have managed to get my PC able to run 3DMark2001 (that was after the first reformat and reinstall). I have an AthlonXP2400, which runs at 2GHz. Mine actually runs at 2037MHz, due to the slightly higher FSB (135MHz as default). With a Radeon 9600 PRO running at 398.25/297 (default speeds on my card), I get 10122 3DMarks in 1024x768x32 with vsync, aniso and AA off. I have 384MB of memory running as PC2100, which seems to be enough to avoid hitting the HDD in the benchmark. I haven't tried tweaking BIOS settings for higher performance, since I'm still unable to play games anyway. I'm currently using the latest Omega drivers for Win98 (third set I've tried in an attempt to get a working graphics card).

i just overclocked my 9600 pro a little from the default 398/297 to 430/315 and i went from 11160 to 11750.

P4 2.6 at 800 HT
1 GB memory at 400 duall chanell
mainboard MSI 875P bios 1.6
1 HD maxtor 30 gb PATA
1 HD Western digital 120 gb SATA


I solved the crash problems of my Sapphire 9600pro when i set agp volt to 1.8.For 3 weeks now my system never crash again with anyone game

Hey guys,
Well i guess some of my problems are gone, though i dont know how i feel about it..
both agp read and agp write have been locked to off in smartgart... if i change them and reboot they just go back to off..

most games seem to run now without mouse lockup (though not all, i was still able to get star wars knights of the old republic to lock up on mouse movement with hardware mouse enabled and there are several other games i havnt had a chance to test yet)

Incase anyone else runs into this problem my agp speed was somehow set to off as well.. i only noticed this when i went to play battlefield 1942 and noticed the game was running horrably, i was at least able to set the agp speed back to 4X and that fixed my framerate..

i wonder what im missing by having agp read and write disabled... i mean if agp read and agp write are disabled but pci read and write are enabled doesnt that mean my card might as well be pci not agp? i dont know, if anyone really does let me know please...

Well....tentatively, it looks as though my problems have been solved.

I've bought a GeForceFX

Only joking! I installed the new version of the Omega drivers (http://www.omegacorner.com)
and I can now play one game I couldn't play before. It's 06:30 now, so I don't
feel like more extensive testing. I got a minor increase in performance on 3DMark2001, too.

This is with the usual culprits on - AGP8x, Fast Writes enabled, etc. BTW, it appears that
you must have fast writes enabled with Radeon 9600 PRO cards. That's from the
writer of the Omega drivers, who is in close contact with the ATi driver writers.

Now I just need to get a couple of case fans. My nice new CPU cooler is pulling a great
deal of heat from the CPU, but airflow inside my case is crap the heat from the CPU isn't
going anywhere fast. No doubt the GPU is adding a fair bit, too.

Re: Peter Howardson

Re: ATI 9600 pro problems hang freeze
"Well....tentatively, it looks as though my problems have been solved."
" I've bought a GeForceFX "

i say HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Re: Bill Fisk

Bill - If I remember right, then on some motherboards the AGP slot is (from an IRQ point of view) the same as one (or two) of the PCI slots. Therefore if you hard assign the PCI slot it's paired with to a different IRQ, unsurprisingly, the AGP slot will "follow". Suggestion: shift the Soundblaster card to a different slot, and then try.

Re: Brent Red

Brent - if you're still having problems despite 3.10, then I suggest adjusting your system "timings". All my probs were fixed with underclocking my fsb a little. So with a 2800+XP went from 166 x 12.5 CPU @ 5/6 (thus 2075MHz = 2800+ and 400MHz DDR) to 178 x 11.5 @ 5/5. Note that this hasn't underclocked my CPU much = 2047MHz, just slower memory access at 320MHz. This, plus upping the AGP voltage from 1.6 to 1.8v, solved everything. Now have 8x AGP, FastWrite on, WriteCombining on etc. etc. etc.

As regards AGP / PCI, what you're effectively doing is not making your AGP card a PCI card, but stopping your card from accessing system memory. In ye olden days, when 32Mb cards were the max, the texture info and so forth for rendering the game frequently used more memory than just 32Mb, hence the card would have to use a slug of system memory. This is what the FastWrite, AGP Write etc. is all about. Basically you're now telling it to use just the card memory. Almost all these problems largely seem to centre around this issue of the access of the card to the system memory. That's why the solution is almost always something like tweaking the fsb, switching off FastWrite, switching off AGP write etc.

Hope that helps.

Sam

Or maybe problem was solved because you increased FSB???
I increased FSB & OC'd my card from @400/300 to 423/315.. After that it has worked with everything!?
Over 2 weeks now! 100% problemfree!
FSB increase increases AGP&PCI speeds also, so it might be that little increase on AGP FSB helps?
People with problems try to increase FSB from BIOS, if yer CPU handles that?
I cant increase AGP vpltage because new mobo doesnt allow it.. But i think FSB increase did it because it icreases AGP speed also?

You increased FSB if 166x12.5 TO 178x11.5
Now your FSB is 356! not 320..

Sounds like these cards have several problems. What works to fix one person's card may not fix another person's. So far in this thread I've read almost a dozen different fixes that worked for one and not another. For me it was to isolate the card on it's own IRQ. Played a bunch of different games throughout the weekend, and not one single freeze up. Looks like you just have to keep messing with it until you find the answer to your individual card.

However, I have to say I'm not all that impressed with the cards performance. In Homeworld 2 and Unreal 2003, the card really seems to labor. Play gets very choppy in areas of the game that are "high traffic". Has anyone else (that has gotten the d@mn thing to work) noticed this? I'm only running at AGP 4X because that's all my mb will support, but all of my fast writes and other performance settings are enabled. I'm thinking I should have stayed with my Geforce 2 card or even purchased a newer Geforce card. I swear that my Geforce 2 actually played Unreal 2003 BETTER than the 9600 XT.

I guess I'm supposed to just be happy that the piece of crap works without locking my computer up!

I think you have some other problem with your PC. A Radeon 9600 PRO should comfortably beat
a GeForce2 in anything. A Geforce4 Titanium will beat it in stuff up to DirectX8, if you
don't have AA or AF on, but not a GeForce2.

I'm content with the performance of mine. Mind you, I upgraded from a TNT2 Ultra
card, so the new card is an enormous increase for me.

I'm not content with the amount of work required to get the card to work, especially since
it cannot be made to work with the drivers that shipped with it. I had to wait four driver
releases before getting one that worked for my PC. One or two people, well that's
expected. If you look online, you can easily find a thousand people posting about
problems. I'm sure there are many more who gave it up and returned the card. The
average PC user would be completely out of luck trying to get this temperamental
card to work properly.

It's my first ATi card. Before I buy another one, I will look long and hard for threads
such as this one about it. I will not simply expect ATi kit to work without an
unusual amount of trouble.

I agree that it should be much better than my Geforce 2 card. Without a doubt! My system isn't top of the line everything, but it's at least respectable. I ran 3DMark03 the other day for the first time and scored a 3626. That is without any settings being tinkered with. Just default and go. I'm not sure if that score is on par for my system, but when looking at the comparable systems listed by 3DMark, it seems in line. If anyone can tell me different, please do. Here is my set up:

Windows XP Pro
Athlon XP 2000+ (Not overclocked)
512 mb Kingston PC2700
Asus A7V333-X mb (4X AGP)
ATi 9600 XT
Soundblaster Live X-Gamer
WD 120 gb (7200 rpm)
Lite-on 52x24x52 CDRW
Lite-on 52x CDROM
3.10 ATi patch
Direct X 9.0b
Latest Asus mb bios
Latest Via 4 in 1 drivers

Is 3626 3DMark03 score ok? I guess if no one can tell me, I'll run the trusty Geforce 2 card through the test and see what the score difference is.

hey guys!

Geforce FX 5200 vs Geforce 2 MX 400

Who will win? Just need some comfirmation here! Thanks!

Congratulations to DoomGaze for spotting the deliberate mistake *blush*

However - the timing tinkering does seem to do the trick. Anyone out there who *really* knows why?

Sam

GeforceFX 5200 vs Geforce 2 MX400...the FX5200. It's crap, but it's not that crap.

One thing to watch out for with the standard FX5200s (i.e. non-Ultra) is that
there isn't a fixed memory bandwidth. On different cards, it varies from a fraction
under 3GB/s to almost 6.4GB/s. They're all bad, but some are worse than others.
Memory speeds are 166MHz DDR to 200MHz DDR and the memory interface
can be 64-bit or 128-bit.

Yes! Let's make a DX9 compliant card that isn't anywhere near powerful enough
to make use of DX9!

It's marchitechure.

ya thats a good score kevin. when i had my 9600 pro at 315/430 and my xp2500 @ 1985ghz i was getting 3500. the 9600xt is at 300/500 which is why you got a hihger score.

Thanks Jack. Now if I can only get the d@mn thing to play games like it's not a Voodoo 3 2000, I'll be a happy man!!

3.10 didnt solve your problems? that sux.
Well its kinda wierd ATI went from 3.9 to 3.10... i heard that they went to 3.10 because its only the 3.9 cat driver with a few fixes. I also heard the next drivers gonna be 4.0 and its gonna include a temperature reading included with the driver if your videocard supports it.

Would someone who really knows their stuff be kind enough to put together a consolidation posting?

This thread has become huge, with a wide variety of fixes. If someone would create a list of fixes that have worked, and triage them in order of most likely to work, it would save future folks with these problems (and there seems to be plenty) a lot of time. (I'm asking for it to be done as opposed to doing it myself simply due to illiteracy of these sorts of issues.)

Ed