I've recently bought a new system:
Athlon 2600
512 MB DDR ram
9600 Pro (Saphire)

Having problems with Unreal 2 and Homeworld 2 - game crashes out after a few minutes. Also occasionally windows crashes on its own.

Tried various things - the changes to the Smartgart (turning AGP write off) appear to cure it (plaid for about 30 minutes with no problems). So can suggest this (sort of ...possibly - see below)

I know I'm going off subject here but... I though sensible to update drivers, so downloaded latest set, uninstalled orignial and installed new. All good and fine, but the system does not recoginse that new drivers are present (even tho device manager says they are), it is using "VGAsave" driver on "adapter unknown" - so now I'm stuck in VGA mode. Can anyone point to a way forward (apart from a good kicking) ? I'm going to try crazy#s download and see if this any better

Homeworld 2!!! I play that. I'm one of those crazy people in their forums. I play Homeworld 2 without any problems. Try the forums. [url]http://forums.relicnews.com/index.php?s=[url]

Rich: where'd you get your drivers?

Got the drivers from link provided by crazy t (page back or so on this thread).

Good news is that they installed and the PC recognise them - I'm back in business. Bad news is I've just been playing Unreal 2 (with AGP write off) and had a crash after 15 minutes or so. oh well, back to drawing board.

@Richard
Can you increase the VIO for AGP, PCI, etc. on your Motherboard? If so, try to increase it from 3.3 to 3.4 Volts, that sloved the most hang problems for me. Mafia always locks up after a few minutes. After increasing, I can play it for hours without crashing. What do you have for a MoBo? I've the same problems with new-drivers-vgasave-thing. Only interesst, because all work fine with Catalyst 3.2, so i've no need to update.


Sorry for my bad english

Howd you install them, I keep getting a kernel error message.

my fps isnt really that high though. I'm not getting THAT high fps but i get the same no matter what settings i have it at. does that have to do with my cpu? its an 1800 xp.

I have an athlonXP 2700+barton & would like to purchase another motherboard. I also have an 9600 pro (I'm sorry to say). Would anyone have any suggestions on a good motherboard. I also have a gig of PC2700, also a backup video card which has become my primary. Nvidia 5200fx.

crazy t,

I finally got around to trying those drivers. Did absolutely nothing, crashed my unreal loop after 2 mins. Running at 125MHz FSB has been rock solid for 3 days now, but upsetting that i have to run my system that slow.

I just bought a Radeon 9700 Pro and I had nothing but lockups. By the way I have an MSI K7N2G mobo (nforce 2). Cat. 3.8 or 3.7. When I ran a game in 8X it would lockup sometimes really soon sometimes 1 Hr.
So I changed to 4X and ran stable. So I assumed the problem to be
AGP and not drivers. I then went to MSI's website and found an update
for the BIOS that would update VGA to newer version. I flashed the BIOS
and WOW it worked! I mean really worked! The Radeon runs better that
before and in 8X with fastwrites or without.
May this will help someone else. I was about to give up now I'm glad
I stuck it out!

My system :
MSI K7N2G Mobo
Athlon XP 2400 Thoro.
512 MB PC 2700 DDR
Enermax 350 Power Supply
Radeon 9600 Pro. Built by ATI !

Hi,

Well I solved my heating problem (stupid me I cleaned my cpu of the old paste but smeared it all over the stupid cpu, well I cleaned it again better this time and now my heats are back down the way they should be). Man that dual ddr thingy makes my computer faster. It's awesome. But the real problem is to get my computer to work. Now my comp. is running at what should be normal. Well I'm taking my card to the shop today maybe they can test it and find out if the problem is in the card.

Anyway you guys I doupt that a new motherboard will solve the problem.
It's the card - If I get this to work I'll tell you how.

later
-Eldis

Michael: Thanks for trying those drivers, sorry it didn't work.

At Ieast have 1 set of drivers that I'm stable in. Even if they're old.

The funny thing is I've not really seen so many problems with the 9800 Pro, at least not like this. I mean every where I go I see threads like this one, maybe it's because more people own the 9800 pro, I don't know. Makes me wanna upgrade. Hell I would even upgrade to a better performing nvidia, except there isn't really a better performing nvidia, not at that price/performance ratio Maybe the next generatation of cards (in 6 months time, sigh!)

Crazy

Sorry meant that more people own the 9600 Pro.

Crazy

@Jack Black

What fps is it running at? Is it around 60-85? If so you may have vsync turned on, which will limit your fps to be in sync with the refresh rate of the monitor. I'm not sure how old that game is, but if you get some insane fps at 800 (like 100 or more) then go to 1024 there may still be an fps decrease, just not one you can notice because it's still above the 60-85fps threshold.

no, the fps in wolf ET never shows over 95 or so. the FPS reader thing in wolf ET isnt supposed to read over 95 or so. its not vsync, it is off default on the ATI drivers. In really big servers with a lot of action going on it drops to even the 30's, but no matter what settings I run it at, it runs exactly the same. I havn't tried any other games yet since I dont play any other games but i've never seen this before.

Ok folks

I have now finally achieved my goal. My system works. (well mostly).
Ok first I will tell what was the problem with A7N8X Deluxe (it didn't support my ram)

well I flashed my bios with the newest bios version from asus.
Clean install from xp pro. (with borrowed ram)
motherboard driver bundle (newest from asus)
Catalyst 3.8 install (after reboot)
XP SP1 (after reboot, of course)
DX9 (reboot)
(game)
play...

fastwrite off
in bios and elsewhere
also agp selected from bios as vga device and device size 128 MB

My first mobo didn't work cause it just didn't dunno why.
worked fine with Geforce 2 I still think my ddr ram that I bought might be faulty. Well I might still do memcheck on the ram but it takes damn long... puuh.

ati 9600 pro working. I downloaded the omega drivers and used the clocking tool. I underclocked my card. It seems to be working great. No lock-up yet. Fastwrite off, but I'm running in agp 8x. I have only played one game NFSHP2. First time I have ever completed a game since buying the card. Hope this keeps working & hope this helps.

Yeap I've tried unclocking my card....
went down to 350/180.(my original was 400/200).

It delayed the freezing to a point that I thought it was fixed. It did eventually freeze, maybe 1 hour later. But of course I'm not paying for a 400/200 only to run it at 350/180 or less.

Crazy

Incidentally, I've tried my card now on two completely seperate system:

a) Athlon XP 2400+, Abit AT7 Max motherboard, 768Mb Ram, Enermax 350W PSU, Win2k
b) Athlon 1.33Ghz, Asus A7M266 motherboard, 256Mb Ram, 300W PSU, WinXP.

Both have exactly the same results, namely stable in catalyst 3.2 and unstable in all other drivers. Moreover, they're unstable in exactly the same way (by which I mean, they crash at the same points in my benchmark runs).

Could be a co-incidence but I'm getting the feeling something fishy is going on in within this card.

Crazy