Apprently the problem occurs with our crappy 9600 series. My friend has a 9800SE card and everything works. I don't anyone with a 9800xt cause they can't afored one but it seems there is something minor with 9600!!! There was also a similar problem with the g4 5700 from nvidia.

I wish i had saved up to get the 9800 instead of a 9600...all the reviews i saw did NOT mention any problems....what type of reviewing is that?


BTW is sent a email again to ATI and still waiting for a reply.....a month ago

Hi
Your right, there too many possible causes of problems - its so unreal. Well it could be
Memory - one stick or two
DX 9
CAT Drivers
Motherboard Chipset VIA is it the worst to use (was in my case till I upgraded to DX9)
Power supply- or type of power supply, is it 300W, 400w Or 500W?
Is it a IRQ problem?
Is it a USB conflict for users of USB devices?
Is it AGP Voltage?
Is it some weird timing latency (not sure what that is yet, but sounds iffy anyway)?
Is it your OS ?
Is it that particular game (lame one that, but plausible)
Is it the brand of card (Sapphire seem to be the worst- unless you know better)?
The memory used on the card - speed and so on
Is it a conlict with Soundblaster cards?
Ths list could go on, but like some of you said, my next card will need a re think. For the record I have never had a NVidia one, I used 3DFX then the badly underrated Kyro type cards- which given the only had 32 mb or if you found one 64 mb of memory and avery slow speed, they did a bloody good job and worked well- even with fairly new games- but the fram rates were getting in the bench mark apps- so the end was close- still I 'm keeping that card all the same. So for me upgrade was a choice of either the , according to the mags,a not very good Geforce FX or the great ATI cards. Bad call I guess. Still I expect like in the past both NVidia and ATI will fade away and in their place will be some new players - but believe me- I will do a very detailed search of any card I consider buying- even if things like PC Format say 'this is a great card' crap.
But to be fair, the card , if it worked properly would be great, the graphics are good, but its all this stupid stuff that lets it and ATI down.
So if your reading this ATI, do please sort it out, cos future sales of any ATI card will be affected by this- you had a bad rep in the past with regards to drivers- now it looks like your 9700 Pro glory days are over with too.
Still, lets keep plugging away till we all either, break the thing , find a bettter card or the problem gets fixed.
This thread will reach 100 pages for sure.
Regards Twilight

So heres the low down, i went out and got myself a brand spanking new Antec 300w smartpower PSU, stuck it in and hey presto! all my games work fine now. I made sure i gave it a good workout by running photoshop, windows media player, and Call of Duty at the same time... and so far so good, i also tested a few other games Tron 2.0 and Halo, and they all work fine too. So maybe ATi arent that bad after all?

Re: Matt's post

if ATi continues to deny they have problems with the 9600, refuses to answer emails from their customers which put trust in them, refuses to release any hotfixes, or even acknowedge that they have a problem with their cards, they are not a good company.

by the way, don't think it's only Sapphire which has problems. i have a Power-Color (someone above mentioned they have a Hercules) card running on a 400W PSU with 2Gbs of PC3200 RAM and it still has problems.

i'm going to switch to a 5600 Ultra. even though the 9600 kills it in benchmarking, what's the point of having a powerful card if you can't even play games for longer than 5 minutes? atleast it's stable.

You maybe right, i actually sent an e-mail to ATi before i bought the card and still havent received a reply. I still think you need to try a new psu, if you find a nice store like i did they might let you return the psu if it dosent help.

i'm afraid you'll likely get a reply from ATi. i sent them 2 emails months ago, they seem to refuse answering.

Hey
I got the Sapphire Radeon 9600

Just to get something straight, the problem is not related to DX8/9,
I run Linux and have the exact same freeze problems, and they only occurs when using OpenGL, if i disable the gl rendering the card runs fine. (sloooow)
Well atleast the card preforms well the few seconds before the freeze
And it is not just game related it happens on anything using GL rendering.

I fairly doubt the problems is related to psu too, since i got an 431w Enermax, and got an DigitalDoc to monitor the voltages, and everything seems fine. (checked with an 360w chiefech too, same results)

I also have checked the temp of the board (using an ir temp, and the digital doc) and i must say if the card cant handle 35-40degrees celsius, then ATI got a problem!

I have also checed my ram (if it can stand an 48hr of compilation it can handle a game) BTW its a Corsair chip, checked with an TwinMos(256mb) and a Infineon(256 and a 512) Chip too, the card still freezes.

I have also checked the card on a friends computer, same results.

Rest of the system
xp1800
512DDR
A7V8X (kt400, at first i heard roumours that the 9x00 card had issues with this mobo, but same results on an nforce 2 based card too, so it has to be related to the card)

It's too bad i cant return the card and to sell this card to somebody else would be plain cruel.

Well anyway, hope i helped some.

not to be ignorant or anything, but i have to say that in the UK i think the lowest price for this card is around £100 (incl P&P). i however went for the GeForce FX5600 256DDR which runs at 500Mhz. this card cost me £120 and has been a dream ever since i got it at Christmas. the CD is good as the drivers that come with it are up to scratch and the newest are easily obtained in about 5 minutes from Nvidia's server (which BTW install without hassle too). overall, this card from my point of view and from reading page after page of moans about the same damn ATI card, is that it was worth the extra £20.

The Radeon 9600PRO or XT will beat the 5600 Ultra quite convincingly. IMO it is worth the extra £20, if you can get it to work.

As for the THG article on the XGI cards, I read it the day it was released. I check a few hardware sites daily and THG is one of them. Given the variability of the results and the fact that the drivers were noted as not being complete, let alone optimised and tested, it certainly does seem like a driver issue is causing the mediocre performance in some software. I think the XGI cards will put up a good show in the budget and midrange when they are released with finished drivers. The S3 Deltachrome cards also seem worth watching. Hopefully XGI and S3 will make enough money from them to continue development and step up to match nVIDIA and ATi.

BTW, my card is from Club3D and had the usual 9600 problems. I'm sure the problem doesn't stem from the card manufacturers.

Check reviews...no problems. Check forums...thousands of problems. That's odd in itself.

Problem solved! ( for me anyway ).

My Gexcube 9600 pro locked up often, only on COD though. I tried most things in this forum, nothing worked. I noticed SOLTEK put out a new bios for my SL-75FRN2-L. I flashed it with new version, and have played LOTS of COD since, not one crash. I must say I was blaming ATI for the problem, but, all is forgiven now : - )

I just built a new system 2.0 gigs, biostart M7VITpro, 512 DDR 400mhz, 40g, ATI Radeon 9600 128mb... and when I go to play Halo or Deus EX Invisible War it crashes... Oh Btw I have XP pro loaded

lo guys.
i think i finally solved my problem. i hope the most of you can use my solution so let me introduce

i had (and have) new sapphire radeon 9600 pro. i thought its very good card until i booted my windoze
my other hw was: asus a7v600-x, one 256MB ddr400 (one same piece is on way), 350W PSU, old sb live, 3com net. athlon xp 2000+ with good new artic cooler and 1 disk and cdrw, dvd.

after i installed the lastest catalyst 3.10 and other drivers like via 4in1 4.51 every graphics aplications were very unstable. 3dmark03, aquamark or THE_BEST_OF (OpenGL) Quake2 timedemo1 crusher&massive demo loop.

... ye Quake2 rulez!

so next week i experimented almost all of the tips in forums. only one for me unavailable was agp voltage because my motherboard didnt featured this.

i tried few bioses for my mobo included some beta from deutche ftp, few bioses for graphic card, about 5 versions of catalyst drivers include the latest omega and dma(?) drivers etc.

i underclocked graphic card and my other hw (cpu, memory, ...) too.

i also tried new instalation of windows xp to other disk (on my disk i have w2k but i am switching to linux).

i set values like agp 1x-8x, fast writes, aperture size etc etc., NOTHING gived me a solution, my computer was very unstable. sometimes tests like aquamark or 3dmark finished and i thought i found it but after some minutes its freezed again. u know it, monitor is black with message 'out of sync/refresh/blabla'.

i was mad, i REALLY dont have time for this experiments with hw problems. after about week, i solved this.

it was very easy

so gimme some money and i will give u solution...


ok j/k

...

i believed that problem is somewhere in mb bios or mb/gcard compatibility. i went to shop and switch my 10 days old mobo to another. i wanted asus with nforce2 chipset but they had only one mobo with nf2 - MSI k7N2 Delta.

i went home, 20mins tooks me some hw work. i booted windoze and... hm, BSOD! i like it!!!

on my working notebook (IBM R40 with Debian GNU/Linux [i am using sid branch - Still In Development aka 'unstable' and it is VERY stable] i found some pages like this:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/problems.htm

so i solved 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE' BSOD with second stage repair from w2k installation cd.
i booted, uninstall all of crappy via drivers, all of ati drivers too. rebooted and installed sp4 for w2k, directx 9.0b, nforce2 drivers from cd (i have slow internet connection - DAMNED CZECH TELECOM &^@%$(!@), latest omega drivers based on catalyst 3.10 and voila! everythink working very well!!! i tuned my computer, i have all timing on highest values, agp 8x and fast writes on of course etc.

so my suggestion - CHANGE YOUR VIA KT(600 only?) mobos to some with nForce2...

im quite suprised, ATI graphic card on AMD platform NEEDS nVidia chipset... LOL!

so i hope my few sentences will helps u. good luck.

p.s. actually i have original mobo&graphic card bios from manufacturers

I have probs with my Hercules 9600...in particular I play UT2K3, get to play for between 30mins and hour and then bam, hangs...really annoying.

And yup I have msi KT400 mobo, had nVidia card before no probs, now the game freaking hangs every time, even on lowest settings. Dont know whether it is gonna get fixed, but £100 down the drain...(knew I should have stuck with nvidia...). If anyone has same mobo and probs, any solutions? Been through the ENTIRE thread, but no luck

While I would love to change my mobo, I'm just not made of money. As far as I'm concerned this companys products should come with a health warning. I am NEVER buying one of their second rate products again.

I wouldn't go changing your motherboard on the assumption that the problem is with VIA KT600-based motherboards. I have one and my Club3D Radeon 9600 PRO now works perfectly reinstalling Windows and everything else, uninstalling and reinstalling the motherboard drivers and then installing the Omega drivers based on Cat3.10.

But...will it work after I reformat my HDD and install Win2K? That's the question I shall find the answer to soon. I've imaged my HDD, so at least I can restore that if it all goes pear-shaped with Win2K.

i just bought a new copper fan (generic), blowing 5.3CFM of air and spinning at 5300RPM. last night, i managed to play Vice City for 40 minutes with pretty good graphics. but today, after 11 minutes, it froze again.

Hi people

I've been following this thread for a while now since I had the freeze/reboot problem as everyone else. It seems that I tried _everything_ possible, untill I rolled back my VIA chipset drivers to 4.43... all my problems are gone! No freezes... no hangs... no sudden reboots.

My system:

Antec TruePower 430 Watt
Asus A7V8X-X KT400 (VIA)
Barton 2500+
Noname pc-2700 RAM (agressively clocked)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro (With Cat 3.10)
Microsoft IntelliPoint Optical (some people had problems with using a Microsoft mouse)

I hope this may help others with the same problem.

Andreas, Denmark

Havent tried the VIA4.43...will give it a try...report back later

Also having Club3D ATI Radeon 9600 256 and it keeps crashing in 3D applications such as games. My card has bios ver. BK-ATI VER008.015.028.000. It seems that this particular bios version is problematic. Can someone confirm that replacing this bios with some other one from http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/bios.php (especially with Sapphire 9600 Non-Pro 256MB 2003/07/04 02:14 325 / 190 Elixir 5.0) solved the initial problem?

My system:
ABIT NF7, Athlon XP 2500+, 512MB PQI, 80GB WD, win2000 sp4, directX 9.0

Tried agp 4x, fastwrite on/off, various catalysts (3.2; 3.7; 3.9 etc.) and Omega drivers...

my r9600pro has same bios - VER008.015.028.000
i tried about 6 other bioses (include some older) but it didnt solved my prob
read my story on prev page

BTW, my BIOS is BK-AMI VER008.011.001.002