MAN! You got an GF 5600FX Ultra. Congrats! Dont you even think of getting your ATI back!!! I wish I could return ALL the stupid ATI's and get GF's for that... I only have done that for 2 computers (the other 18 have ATI) and Im VERY satisfied with the GF 5600FX ultra... NO hangups, no incompatibilities no stupid smartguards, ati's control panels and stuff. Just plain detonator drivers and all my problems desappeared just like that. Why worry about?? The 5600Ultra outperforms the 9600Pro so enjoy your card my friend and NEVER, NEVER return to ATI again!
ATI must be teached a lesson for letting this defective model being STILL on the marked.

Well I was worried that it won't tun HL2 very well because I was looking at some of the benchmarks and that game seems to favor the ATI games (obviously because of their partnership). Anyways then only problem I ran into was that I forgot to hookup the extra power supply cord. I've never had to do this before, so whe I get home tonight I'll have to give it a go. I have a SONY VAIO, so if you can help me out that would be great!

It's funny because the store that I bought the card from tried everyone of their Radeon 9600 Pro's and none of them worked. I watched them as they pulled out card after card. Then they finally said okay we'll give you the 5600 Ultra for straight exchange. I guess it's their loss then!

Oh yeah and I was doing some more research and it seemd that the GeForce 5600 Ultra is pretty much on par with the Radeon 9600 Pro.

Quick question what kind of PSU are you using? (Power is what I want to know)

I use a 350 watt psu.

Been problem free with the 9600 pro for a full week now and I'm happy about it considering that all i had to do was turn off agp fastwrite. The cheapest 5600 ultra I found was 180 bucks. So im keeping this card which i got for 150.

I guess you all have read this http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030912/half-life-03.html

I had decided to try to swap my 9600pro for a gf5600, but got second thoughts when reading the article. I dunno how much the driver discussion referred to earlier in the article is to blame, but anyway...

My only (detected) problem is now that Bf1942 (road to rome more specifically) crashes randomly with a blue screen (either to windows or reboot). I guess everyones conclusion is that the problems are mostly related to EA games, and of course that sucks. I guess we could all hope that cat 3.8 will solve the problems (yaaaa!), when it is released October 8th (yaaaa!).


KI

You know, considering the fact that a person has to drop down anywhere from $150~$200 for this card...and the 5600 ultra can be bought for the same price now (price wars n'all)...I want the one that lives up to the name of plug and play. If i'm spending my hard earned money for somthing like this, I Expect it to work for 98% of the things a graphics card does. A game glitch here and there can be forgiven....
But the point of paying all that money for a new mid-line AGP card is to make games run faster...so if the only way to get ati's card to work is to turn off fastwrite and tone DOWN the hardware acceleration....whats the point?

I think the key to the whole thing is compatability with your main boards. Especially with the fsb. Several of us have turned the fsb down to 266mhz and achieved stability. I even have gone so far as to turn fastwrites on, and all graphics acceleration to the max. ROCK SOLID!! The only thing at this point since i'm running a amd 2700, my cpu speed is 1.7 gig instead of 2.1 'cause of the fsb. Hopefully the new driver will fix that. With that said, I've used a geforce 4 mx 440 and had similar problems with different boards with different chipsets. Go figure.

I have a similar problem with you all. I cant use the catalyst 3.6 or 3.7 drivers, I haveta use the 3.5 drivers or my computer will freeze after 15-20 mins of gaming. I also get artifacts without my card being overclocked and its not even hot.
The 9600 pro kills the 5600 in dx9 games for those of you who got it. But i can understand if you dont want the 9600 pro after all these problems.

Hi!

After a few hours of testing, i've found a solution that fix the c&c generals hang problem for me (With Catalyst 3.2, the 3.7 doesn't detect my card. Windows always start with vgasafe. In Device Manager is all okay, don't know what that is).

My AGP Config:
1. AGP Fastwrite deactivated in BIOS
2. AGP 2x (This is a VIA KX133 Chipset issue. I know, I need new hardware )
3. AGP Aperture Size: 64MB

OS:
Windows XP Prof.

Now I've run the SmartGard from ATI in "C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI Control Panel" and switched off "AGP Read" and "AGP Write" (Don't know how they call it exactly in english, cause I'm german), reboot, Generals run without lockups.

damn, bought a ati 9600 pro (sapphire) yesterday,
also the same problems, after 5 minutes the pc hangs
When I lower my agp to 4X everything works but my question is:

I have a MSI 875p NEO2 that can go to 8X agp, will
the games go a lot slower now? or should I ask my money back
and buy another card?

I'm not a tweaker, I just want to play games on my computer like
splinter cell,... and don't hang after 5 minutes.

maybe Nvidia 4600 ? (but I like Counterstrike :s)

Plz let me know, only 7 days return and money back

THX

Same problem here, all 3d games crash with AGP x8 and FSB @ 133

If i lower the FSB i can get it to run or set it to AGP x4.
But that is not acceptable IMHO.
I bought the card with SPECS that are supposed to run with those settings and it doesn't

Motherboard is a new MSI KT6 Delta and a Sapphire 9600 pro.

They might come up with driver fixes, but why wait for that, the card said that it's able to run with AGP x8 now so they should replace without the consumer starting to argue for an replacement.
And give us money for all the time spendt figuring out what is wrong ;-)

Sad indeed, since the card is imo the best bargain out there right now.

does 4X slow down a lot?

otherwise i'll buy another card, I really can't wait until ATI
finds a sollution

Since ATI doesn't seem to be doing anything about this problem, I suggest everyone who is experiencing this problem to write Maximum PC about it. Maximum PC is one of the best computer magazines around and they are VERY good at looking into customer problems like this and getting something done about it. Be sure to include all the important details like:

CPU type and speed
Memory type and speed
Motherboard brand and model
Video card brand and model
Game you experiencing the problem in
Describe the problem in detail (game freezes after moving mouse, etc.)

Maybe THEY can get ATI to do something about it.

Sorry, forgot the address:

watchdog@maximumpc.com

I'm a very regular reader.....I will if every one else does.
It'd be cool to see our little slice of the net in print....and maybe get more definitive answers.
I got a reply back from Jon Phillips once, but it was just a silly email about something trival.
I'm still having sporadic issues with Generals Zero Hour, but running everything else great.

I've got similar problems with my ATI 9600 Pro. When running EVE-Online my computer will hardlock every time the game tries to generate a .dds file (the icons in the game). I'm running an Asus A7N8X-X mobo with the latest chipset drivers, DirectX9.0b, Cat 3.7 and a fully updated Windows XP Pro and still the same problem.

I've tried the GART solution about disabling AGP Read and Write but that doesn't work at all. I'll set both AGP Read and Write to off, then restart, but when Windows loads again and brings up the GART box once more Write is set to on again. If I set it to off I'll have to restart again and it just does the same thing. Fastwrite is off in BIOS. AGP 8X also runs very unstable for me, and after about 10 seconds of running 8X after a fresh reboot the Smartgart thing will automatically switch it back to 4X.

I'm now trying to lower my fsb to 133 to see if that helps. Full specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Asus A7N8X (Deluxe)
1gb PC3200 DDR ram
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

Hey Mikk.

My hardware is close to yours; running KT6delta, Sapphire 9600 proBS, 512 ram, 2600+ (running at 166/332). Initially I had hangups or gfx-dysfunction in both 2d and 3d games. After installing latest Omega-drivers and VIA 4.49 (and latest updates from the MSI smart-update), my only problem is bluescreen and reboots in all BF1942 versions that I've tried. All other games run smoothly, at full FSB, at 8x, fastwrite on/off, pretty much regardless of other tweaks.

My BF-problem is still a pain in the butt, as it is a great game, but just currently 1unplayable on my hardware.

thanks chuck D,

i'll give it a spin

Although it might work it's just not good enough when you have to install 3.part not officially supported drivers ( as i suppose the omega are ? )

The omega-drivers are unofficial, but generally described as superior to ati's own. I agree totally that the offical drivers should be sufficient - imo the damn card should work out of the box with all games, no tweaking required.

Although the problems described in this thread are suprising, I guess the general view is that ati sucks on drivers/compatability and support - which is even more apparent in this case. I hope we all soon can hail the catalyst 3.8 as the saviour...

Chuck

I'm having severe crash problems as well. ATI sent me a - slightly outdated - FAQ with several suggestions; mainly common sense stuff. If this exact one is on their website, then I've missed it. Most relevant is a list of BIOS settings they recommend, which I'll attach to the end of this message. They also suggest disabling ACPI. (Email them for the full FAQ, it's a bit longish.)

However, this has not improved the stability of games for me, but at least Windows itself now runs nominal. I think disabling "write combining" in the advanced settings for the graphics card made the biggest difference. Another issue I have is that while games look a little nicer (as far as I could judge before they all died a horrible death) performance is actually lower than with my Geforce1 card. Yes, my system is pretty much outdated overall, but I'd still expect the card to be able to make a little bit more difference.

That said, I do have an AMD based system. My suspicion is that the entire problem can be blamed on a combination of the buggy hardware that VIA generally produces, and less than optimal ATI drivers.

Also note that I have a "newer" 9600 Pro, without an external power connection. According to my local hardware shop - which is usually relatively competetnt - this type of 9600pro is newer; the earlier cards had power connectors. This may indicate either changes to the hardware that are incompatible with the Catalyst drivers; or a manufacturing or design fault in the new gpu cube. It'd be interesting to hear whether people with the problem have 9600 pro's with or withour external power connections?

Side note: If anybody wants to contact me directly, say to test stuff out together or whatnot, my homepage is at http://nils.jeppe.de - use the feedback form and I'll get in touch via mail, icq or something similar.

Finally, here are the BIOS settings from the FAQ. Maybe it helps someone.

BIOS update/settings:

You may consider using these settings in your BIOS to help troubleshoot your issue. If you are changing any of the options in your BIOS, please be
sure to note what you are changing and what it was set to initially.

NOTE: These options may vary depending on the type/version of your system. You may or may not have all these options. Please consider changing the
settings that correspond to those listed below.

- Video BIOS Shadow and Video BIOS Cacheable - DISABLED
- C8000-CBFFFF Shadow and CC000-CFFFF - DISABLED
- AGP Aperture size - 64 MB
- AGP Turbo - DISABLED
- VGA Frame Buffer and Primary Frame Buffer - DISABLED
- PnP OS installed - YES
- Assign IRQ for VGA - ENABLED
- Resource Control - AUTO
- AGP Bus Mastering - ENABLED
- VGA Palette Snooping - DISABLED
- Disable any UCSW or Write Combine options in the CMOS
- Disable any manual configuration of PCI by setting these options to AUTO
- System Bios Cacheable - DISABLED
- Video BIOS Mode Cache - UC
- Try lowering the AGP support (i.e. from AGP 8X/4X to AGP 2X).

If this resolves the issue, you may consider contacting the motherboard/chipset vendor for more information regarding the GART support available on
the motherboard/chipset.