No artifact problems at all for me. My case is very cool, so heat is not an issue. This is precisely the problem I have:

- Every single game I play will shoot back into windows at any random time (sometimes after 2 mins, sometimes after an hour).
- The game usually gives an error msg upon exiting, usually stating some rendering error.
- Windows responds and is completely usable after these crashes.
- Lowering my FSB to 125MHz (from 133) makes the card 100% stable.

My RAM is Crucial RAM spec'ed at CAS 3@143MHz and my system worked perfectly at 133MHz before I put this card in.

stfu u f**kin geek... some of us either don't have the money or we just dont care and dont want to spend that much money on a card to get THE HIGHEST FPS.

sam, that was not nice at all. Do you think I wouldn't love to throw as much money as possible into my system? Of course I would ... but I have to restrict myself to things I can afford and give me the best bang for the buck, and spending $200 on a video card is not exactly cheap to me, considering you can get vid cards for under $50. So please, if you're rich and can afford to just throw out things and buy new ones, keep it to yourself.

sam jones,
your comments do not help anyone on this forum. if you can't contribute something that helps others you should post elsewhere, or better yet keep your rude comments to yourself. didn't your parents teach you any manners in england?

good... his post was removed.

TO All People Try a Different PSU also, thats another option to try, ever SInce AGP 8X was Released it has been Hecktic to get it to run stable with any of the AGP 8X vid cards, some people have gotten real lucky on this issue.

Seems Like there is a greater Amound Of AGP 8X Compatable Hardware that doesnt function right, One Thing Blame it on the Damn Economy of the US lol

Thank you Vitaliy and Sander Sasse <ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com> for keeping hardwareanalysis.com a polite and friendly atmosphere !!

Hi guys,

I dont think it is an AGP 8X problem cos my mb can only support 4X and even at that setting, Im still getting the same crash problems that you are getting. I think it is a hardware compatibility prob that requires a serious driver update from both mb and vid card manufacturers, but until these manufacturers acknowledge that a problem does exist, they wont bother lifting a finger to help. I only recently bought my ati 9500pro and I am really regretting the purchase. Unlike some of you who can get theres exchanged or what not, Im pretty much stuck with mine and I can only go back to the supplier and tell them I having these problems with my card. They probably look at it and say that it works fine on their machines or something like that, cos thats the strange thing about this problem, the card does work fine on some mbs but I do not have the luxury or do not think it wise to buy a new mb just cos some vid card decided it didnt like my mb. My mb works fine with my geforce 2 mx so why should it not work with this damn ATI product sighhhhh. If ATI are noticing these posts they better do something about it, cos it generates negative publicity. I for one will probably never buy another ATI card.

regards

Hoongming

Jack,

I got the freeze/crash problem. When I tried other drivers freeze/crash was gone but the generals and battlefield looked awfull, flikkering buildings etc. Maybe trying an older driver would help you with atleast one of your problems.

Hey guys, new to the forum.
Bought an AIW 9600 about a week ago and must say, DAMN is this a sweet card...when it works!
My system configuration..
AIW 9600
Abit IS7-using Onboard sound currently
dual Maxtor 120GB SATA drives in RAID-0
512MB DDR..spec'd to much higher than i currently run it
2.4 Ghz P4-B

Initially, with XP installed, all the latest drivers, DX, BIOS, yadda yadda, I would get spontaneous system reboots, with no discernable correlation to any action.
I tried installing Win2K and curiously, I didnt experience any reboots, but system freezing.
Trying some of the suggestions listed here I turned off fastwrites and used SmartGart to bring my card down to AGP 4X. This greatly helped my system stability but I still have experienced the occasional reboot in XP and have problems with games. Before you think it, I'll let you know that I have tried different memory AND picked up an Antec 450W PSU, so power should not be an issue. The only game I have even bothered to install yet has been Raven Shield, and I get kicked out of the game with an error message after a random period of time. What is really strange, however, is that in XP, no matter what I change the in-game resolution to, it displays in 640x480, even though when I look at the game options it says its running in whatever resolution I set it to. Win2K does not have this same bug.
Just sharing my experiences. I would hate to have to return this card and am willing to stick it out, but I must say I'm quite dissapointed so far. The good thing at least is that I am now fairly certain the video card is the source of my woes.
One other thing I noticed...when I set my CMOS to run AGP at 4X, and my card was still set to run at 8X (in smartgart), i still had the bad reboot issues. Just a word of advice to people who are attempting that solution..make sure that if you turn your AGP down in your Bios you do so in smartgart as well.

Regards

sorry, left out a tidbit of info...
the Abit IS7 is an Intel 865PE

well im currently using catalyst 3.5 without problems and my games look fine but i always want to use the best drivers that will give me the best performance but its really hard to see if the drivers work without freezing. I played about an hour without my cpu freezing with the 3.8 drivers, i dont want to sit there playing for another hour to see if it wont freeze. So if anyone fixes this, tell me! ive went through enough greef trying to get my card to work.

Brandon, it's not the PSU, at least not in my case. I had a cheapo 300W in there before, so I got myself a sweet ass 380W Antec TruePower and it still happens. 380W is plenty for me as I have an old Athlon and nothing which drains too much power (only 1 Hard Drive and 1 DVD-ROM)

Off topic ,had to put it here anyway look at this!
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDc0LDE=

I have posted a couple of times about my 9600 pro problems but to the person above who was thinking of gettting a powercolor card, don't - I'd neglected to state that is the brand I have, and it is just as prone to freezing as the others. Worse, it won't overclock at all, whereas I believe some of the other 9600 pros are *very* oc'able. If 3.9 cats don't fix these issues I'm selling this card to buy a 5700 Ultra.

hey guys, i recently purchaed the good ole radeon 9600 pro and guess waht i had the same problems, so i read through this whole thread and i had overclocked my computer, so i put it back to its original settings, this helped slightly but i still wasnt getting it completley sorted so i tried installing the old 3.5 catalyst drivers and now it works fine, just lucky i guess,

system specs:
win xp sp1
amd xp 2500+ barton
512 333mhz ddr
96000 pro
100 GB (7200)
santa cruz sound card

Several people have found older drivers work for them. I am one of them. That's not a good solution unfortunately because in the long run how can I be sure that a game I purchase is going to be able to run on my computer without driver updates? It's already happened to me once with Halo (crashes out on my before it renders a frame).

Crazy

Listen to this i must be lucky:
I have 2500+ BARTON
512Mt 333mhz samsungmem
Maxtor 80gt ata 133
Connect 3d radeon 9600pro 128mt
Epox KT600 KRA2+ mobo
XP pro wit sp1&2 all criticals
via 4in1 latest ,cataclyst 3.8
Card works perfectly AGP4x Fastwrite on ,read & write on
Every game works: Chrome ,Ufo aftermath ,Zerohour ,shadow magic etc..

Pcmark 2002 :
Cpu=5883
Mem=4300
HDD=1067

3dmark 03 :
3300 marks wit 4xAnisotropicFiltering

3Dmark2001 SE :
10600 marks wit 4xanisotropicFiltering

i agree with you crazy, i dont want to use these old drivers forever... i want to use the newer drivers. I've been email spamming the ATI catalyst crew and support about driver issues and lots of others getting the same problem so hopefully they will look into this. As for the person getting a 5700 ultra, i would recommend getting the upcoming 9600 XT unless your sick of ATI since the 9600 Pro problems. All the fx cards have poor dx9 performance and the 9600 XT also comes with Half life 2 for the same price as the 5700 ultra. Hopefully they fixed these problems with the 9600 Pro.