i lowered my speed from 166 to 133 which solved the problem. my 2.8xp is running at 2.2 but at least i can play games. i can't install any catalyst drivers tho. doesn't detect video card after installation

Yeah I've been having the same infinite loop problem mentioned throughout this thread. I've tried all the solutions and only two things I know: reducing bus speeds, AGP to 1x and my FSB only delays the envitable not prevents it. Also, that the system is damn stable using Catalyst 3.2.

So I would like those with trouble using Cats 3.4-3.8, but haven't tried the "modified" Cats 3.2 (with R9600 Pro support since the ones on the ATI website site don't support the 9600/9800) to try them and post what they get.

Some guy on ATI's support team said he never heard of a system that works in Cat 3.2 but fails in all other Cat's. I've just about eliminated all options now (apart from AGP voltage increase which I can't do on my mobo). So can some people can post their success/failure with Cat 3.2s please?

Crazy

Crazy t, using Cat 3.2 is not a viable solution even if it does seem to make things more stable. As you mentioned, they didn't originally support the 9600, so that probably means they aren't even DX9 compatible .. what good is that? we want to be able to use ALL the features of our cards and not have to use a year old driver.

They are DX9 compatible since Cat 3.2's fully support the Radeon 9500 and 9700 series cards.

Crazy

ok, if you point me to where i can get these modified drivers, I will give it a try tonight.

I should have mentioned that they're not a year old, they're like 6 months old. The modified version has a 9600 Pro code path that takes advantage of ALL 9600 Pro features such as Smartshader 2.1 and Smoothvision 2.1.

So I believe it is a viable solution for me. Besides, I can't believe that I'm the only one that can use them and find perfect stability.

My only issue is that I know my system is stable, so no hardware conflicts. Only thing I can think of is that there is some software bug that ATI introduced after the 3.2 drivers. ATI doesn't even want to acknowledge it because as far as they're concerned nothing is wrong with their most recent drivers.

Crazy

Ah I see. I've only used Pentium before this and have never seen it mentioned that the BIOS fsb is really half the operating fsb, then again I've never gotten into overclocking much . It seems I have all the system requirements to jump up to 400fsb except that my processor is built to run at 333mhz, and probably can't handle relaying information faster than that (which is probably why my system crashes when I try).

As for my card, I've done some more tests with more options enabled and whatnot and have found a few... interesting problems. For example, if I leave all options at Application Preference, when running EVE-online polys will just suddenly connect to another random poly somewhere in the environment, leaving a huge poly stretching right across the screen that stays that way until you leave the environment or restart the game. If I set all DX settings to max (6x AA, 16x Anisotropic) this doesn't happen nearly as much, and sometimes not at all. This was also very noticable in the 3Dmark03 program, especially during the Procyon and Ragtroll tests. In fact, in Ragtroll every troll had at least 4 or 5 polys coming out of him connecting to some place in the environment, eventually the whole thing was covered with polys at random angles.

Dispite these glitches my card is running almost perfectly now with the 3.8 drivers, haven't had any crashing problems in EVE, Planetside or Morrowind.

Seems to be like golddust to find at the moment

So I uploaded to a friend's internet account...I hope it's ok to do this.

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.patel1/driver/mod_cat32/2kxp.zip

Try installing that. I hope this works because I've tried searching around and my own card manufacturer's site is down (Gigacube) and I can't seem to access this driver from any other Powered by ATI site.

Crazy

Hi,

Yeah thanks for all the suggestions. I started of with the 3.6 drivers that came with the box. Well they worked kinda but caused a lot of havoc in my windows. Anyway I give up. I will throw money at the problem now. Buying a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe tomorrow. Problem solved. ( I hope.)

Well I've talked to several ppl in computer shops now and they just say that when the card came out there was hardly any mobos that supported it. So he told me that this would be one way and I decided to do it. Since my current Epox doesn't even support 8x....

Well I'll let you know what happened. In the mean time don't give up. It's just that I have hardly any spare time and I get stressed out when I come home and I know my computer doesn't work.


-Eldis

I wish it were a case of throwing money the problem, I mean the amount of time I've spent trying to solve the problem (hell the amount of time we've ALL spent) it would have been easier to buy a new motherboard.

Problem is...even people with the latest AGP 8x supported motherboards have the same issues. (Some are mentioned in this thread)

I hope you solve your problem, I really do, if you do it may make me want to go and do the same thing.

Crazy

Crazy t: How do you install the drivers you posted. They just get extracted to a folder, but they don't do anything. There is no install all.

Sorry, I thought you could just use the ATI drivers and replace the 2kxp_inf with those files. Aparently you need all the files....ok can you please download again? Sorry for bother.

Also, I'm upping the equivalent control panel as well:

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.patel1/driver/mod_cat32/cpanel.zip

Crazy

Ok, So does someone here have a ASUS A7N8X Deluxe or something with the Nforce chipset and similiar problems to what we all are having here. I was reading a bit. And atleast some germans seemed to be having this problem with a Nforce chipset card of that model.

-Eldis

A Peter..... two things.
1. Completely reformat the system, and install the latest nForce drivers from nVidia's site before you install the video driver.

2. Let me know how you make out. I'm thinking about getting that same board. It's funny that the board is running an nVidia chipset, with an ATI graphics card. You'd think nVidia wouldn't be very willing to have the competitions stuff running too well on their boards.

And don't forget you need 2 sticks of RAM to get the most out of it's dual channel setup.

Eldis, I do have a Nforce2 chipset board (Epox 8RDA+, quite new). Athlon XP 2500+, FSB 166 and DDR-RAM. The system is stable: with an Geforce4 graphics card everything runs perfectly (Agp 8X that is).

However with the Ati Radeon 9600 Pro I've to set Agp to 4X _and_ use the Catalyst 3.6 because with newer Catalyst drivers 3d-apps/games freeze (Cata 3.7) or don't work (Cata 3.8), ie show flashes, smear the picture, etc.

Either the Ati Radeon 9600-pro card _or_ the drivers are bad: I think the drivers are. I remember that many problems have been reported during the last years on Ati and incomplete OpenGL implementation. So I think Ati's driver developers have some user-unfriendly focus (probably focusing on getting the most silly Benmark points out of DX9 or 10 or 11 or whatever.)

I read that ATI made it's first 13um part the 9600 because they needed a guinnea pig, and they didn't want their flagship part to be at risk.

This site has a reveiw of the 9600XT, and they slag it for not being an big enough improvement over the 9600Pro.
But I'm wondering if it's more of a bug fix than a real performance improvement.

Hey and again thanks for all the suggestions. Well how should I put this...
I have problems... Well I formated my C drive (boot drive, system drive). And re-installed windows. No problems but once I windows was about to start for the first time it get rebooting and rebooting. Well I went to bios and made it 4x and fastwrite off and so on and I noticed that my cpu temp is 70 - 78 degrees now that can't be normal. It used to be way way lower with my epox mobo. Well anyway I'm stuck again. I tried using a older radeon card dunno even what it is but same rebooting problem. Anyway now I think I have a problem with cpu temp. Dunno what could cause that. I have a good enough heat sink and fan on top of it. Even cleaned the old silver paste and put some new. Seriously in trouble again.

-Eldis

hmm... when I run wolfenstein enemy territory at the HIGHEST settings and at 1024x768 i get the EXACT same FPS as when I run wolf ET at the LOWEST settings at 800x600... WTF. Does anyone else get the same fps running at highest and lowest settings?

Hey

I'm back in windows. Starting to do tests after I have installed all required drivers and software. I'll tell you more tomorrow. (EET time)

laters.

I hope you're changing the OpenGL settings and not DirectX.

Besides, it's not infeasible that 1024x768 runs the same FPS as 800x600 since that shows that the game is either CPU limited, or your graphics card is good enough to handle 1024 without any performance degradations.

I know many games that run approximately the same at 1024 as they do at 800 on a 9600 pro. Mostly, Q3 based games.

Crazy