Re: Jon Kull's post

in order to install ATi drivers, you must have DirectX 9.0 installed. i don't think i have any Directx 9.0 games - the most advance games i would have would probably be Unreal 2 & Unreal Tournament 2003, which both use Directx 8.0 if i remember correctly.

Sapphire support doesn't seem professional at all. This is the reply I recieved from them:

From : Sapphire <tech@sapphiretech.com>
Sent : Wednesday, 14 January 2004 6:50:05 PM
To : "Jason T" <xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>
Subject : Re: 9600 Pro Problems

Hi Jason,
Could you pls tell me the PN of your video card (on sticker)?
Did the system have any problem at Boot-up and POST screen?
Pls also try older version of video driver, eg, Cat 3.6,3.7,3.8,3.9.

regards
Tech Support

Hey everyone. I just bought a GeCube 9600XT Extreme which has 2.5ns ram, engine: 500 memory: 350 default. At first I was real happy with the card, was getting 4200 in 3dmark03 on default.
But after I ran any game for more than 10-20 mins it would freeze up and come up with a VPU error or whatever.
I just increased the AGP voltage from 1.5 to 1.7 and I have successfully run 3dmark03 on loop for 40mins.

Seems to be ok now, for some reason they seem to draw alot of power when they run for a while. Haven't needed to change any other AGP settings at all.

Barton 2500@3200(2.2gig) 220X10 FSB 1.7V
2X256mb Geil PC3200 in Dual Channel
Gigabyte N400Pro2 (nforce2)
Maxtor 80gig 8mb cache
Gecube 9600XT Extreme 128mb
Windows XP SP1
Catalyst 3.10

Hi
You don't have to have DX9 on your system to use ATI drivers. I used my Gigabyte 9600 Pro with Cat 3.4 and DX8.1 and ran unreal 2, and several mech games with no problems at all. But a few weeks back I had to use dx9 for freelancer and now a game called Chaser- then the old iffy mouse problem stared, but it seems for people with this problem- you should only use dx9 if your really must, otherwise stick to dx8.1 which gave good results in Unreal2 . I have heard of DX uninstallers, so maybe a reformat is not always needed to swap back to older dx versions
Regards
Twilight

actually, when i attempt to install my Powercolor 3.2 Catalysts, it prompts you to install Directx 9.0.

When i emailed sapphire about the problem that i had with age of empires: age of kings, they weren't very helpful, all they suggested were problems with other games and if there "solutions" didn't help then contact the company that made the game.

i gave sapphire a long assertive email about this problem and it has been a while and they still havent answered back. I dont think they will ever reply
?

directx IS NOT THE FRIGGIN PROBLEM!!!

good christ, Ive run Wolfenstein: ET for the same lockups and that game is OPENGL!!!. voltage check up to 1.8 volts = no good. underclocks to RAGE3d minimums no good. additional cooling no good. different screen resolutions/refresh rates no good. ALL drivers ATI and OMEGA no good. AGP bus frequency is ok...

However, just i turn off the AGP 8x and i can even overclock the card to 480/640 stably on 1.6 volts. In fact, AGP 8x would have to reason to draw more voltage than any other setting. Nor is it the voltage generators on the motherboards: ppl report other cards working in tip-top shape in 8x... A manufacturing defect in the cards? How can other rad9600pro cards work?

once again, I believe the problem lies somewhere in the chip bios/ramdac link itself b/c sometimes instead of a lockout i get my monitor signal turned off (monitor still on but power LED changes to yello) or crazy screens. since the analog signal is generated by the RAMDAC - the problem may well be in there or the card BIOS.

Well, I had about the same probs with my Sapphire 9600 non-pro video card that I just bought this week. When I would start Age of Mythology and moved the mouse, it would hang the system requiring a cold reset. If I didn't move the mouse nothing happened. The same thing with No One Lives Forever 2 but with this game I fixed the problem by disabling "hardware cursor" in the menus. I thought hardware cursor was unsupported by OLD graphics cards, wtf? Anyway, with AoM I solved the problem by installing the 3.10 Omega drivers. However I thing this solved the problem only because SMARTGART now defaults AGP Fast Writes to OFF. If I click "retest all" it switches it on but then after restart it's off again.

Another problem that I have with the board is artifacts. In Splinter Cell, some floors look weird; the lighting is all wrong. In Enter the Matrix, the characters seem to have holes in them (not from the shooting, I assure you! ) - some polygons are either missing or messed up.

To be honest with ya, enter the matrix is a buggy game. I played it and for some unknown reason i had square tires!!!!

AoM works for me, no problems using the cat3.10 drivers, but it doesn't beat age of empires conquerors!!!

*sigh* haven't got aoe working yet either

just install the cat 3.10.. which 7.63 Mb.. not the 22Mb.. everything will be fine...

Re: craxors mie

you need to read the whole post. i am sure EVERYONE here who posted in the forums would have done the most logical thing, which you listed. it's like answering someone with monitor problems "make sure it's plugged in".

with the people who upgraded from previous nVidia cards - did they have any problems?

It seems i have the same problem with games Freezing/hanging with in seconds of entering a level. I tried a few games, Tron 2.0, Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty, and they all have problems, the only game that works fine is Halo, but thats only if i host a multiplayer lan game. If i try single played i only get the best part of 3-4 seconds gameplay. I rang the place i got my card from and they said its most likely my el cheapo 330w psu. Im buying a new one tommorow, probably an antec truepower 330w, i will see if this fixes the problem.

My system specs are...
p4 2.4
256mb DDR 333mhz ram
HIS radeon 9600XT
Generic 330w PSU
80gig HDD

Everything worked fine with my geforce4 mx440.

ATi recommends a 300W PSU.

from the bottom of my heart i wish i never bought this s**tty card
Hercules ati radeon 9600 pro 128mb
im so fed up with the hang ups ffs ati get a grip fix this s**tty driver issue!
and yes ive tried everything you nice fellas tipīd!but with no luck!

Hereīs my spec
p4 2.8 hyper threading processor
1512mb Twinmos 400mhz ram
xp home edition

Hercules radeon 9600pro 128mb
with a built in VPU RECOVERY sponsored by s**tty ATI.

I did a clean install of my OS, installed DX8.1 then cos the dispalt was the usual 16 colours cos no display card driveer is installed, i used the update driver option to use CAT3.4, you might be using a set up CD that 'kindly ' wants to do things its own way. Try exploring this cd and see if you can install drivers with dx8.1.
And just to be pest I HAD NO PROBLESM WITH DX8.1, thats not to say its a DX problem just that dx9 and CAT drivers are not happy buddies- not sure why, but thats what i find.
Twilight

Heck, I wouldn't care if everything worked PERFECTLY in dx8.1. 9600 is a dx 9 card! If the Catalyst drivers have a problem with this then they just plain suck.

Well, can't argue with that. DX upgrades were so simple only a few years ago- anyone know if DX9 has any major alterations to it that might explain the problem- what features are added that could cause problems? Must have a look around the web and see, maybe there is a patch or something that allows dx9 and cat drivers to work together. Anyone tried these Omega drivers with DX8.1 and then DX9 to see what happens?

I'm putting off installing Win2K until I have a week off work, just in case the Radeon issue flares up again. Since neither I nor anyone else knows what causes the problem, I have to assume that changing my OS might cause the problem to re-occur (I'm one of the lucky people who had the issue fixed by using the Omega drivers based on Cat3.10). This Radeon thing is one of the worst issues I've seen with PC hardware. Or is it software? Or both? Just how many possible causes of the problem are there? Who knows?

For those people thinking about memory being an issue, I'm running my PC with 2 mismatched sticks of cheapo no-name memory. The last 60 pages show that doesn't necessarily rule out someone else having the problem caused by their memory, though.

My next graphics card is unlikely to be an ATi one, that's for sure. Maybe by that time S3 and/or XGI will be providing good alternatives to ATi and nVIDIA. Having said that, I have never had any trouble with my nVIDIA cards. I bought ATi this time purely on the grounds of price/performance ratio.

Same, my next card will be nvidia for sure, i cant wait to see what the NV50 will be like. From what ive seen so far XGI have been getting a bad rap, they preform great in some games, but really crappy in others. Toms Hardware have a good feature on the XGI cards, and they believe that its their drivers causing the problem.
Check it out here...

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031107/index.html

Im going out to get that Antec psu tonight, hopefully it will solve my problems.