i sent ATI a long ass email to there customer services including the URL to this message board and basically begging them to read a few messages on this thread and look into this driver problem. Hopefully they will fix it in the catalyst 3.9 or 4.0 drivers... its worth a shot. =]

lol well keep hopeing

hey... ive sent them like 5 emails and theyve responded everytime and i gave this fake emotional email lol. I said that a lot of people are thinking of switching over to nvidia blah blah and that im a ghetto student with no money and im really trying to get my card to work blah blah and that if you care about customer satisfaction, you should read some of the posts to try and fix the driver issues for the catalyst 3.9 driver... I'm sure they will notify the catalyst crew.

Well, just when I thought everything was fine on my end (finally) I downloaded the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" demo (for my kids...really), and lo and behold, but a friggin' reboot mid game!!!

I'm still convinced that it's an AGP bus/chipset/memory issue, as every driver rev has had no effect on the problem for most people. The driver revs that do often cripple the AGP bus for you or disable features
automatically.

Some game patches have helped marginally, but for me it really was the chipset driver, and BIOS settings. I've been running with fastwrites on for some time with no issue, but my board is an AGP4X, so I can't comment on the 8X issues.

Most people seem to get results by underclocking thier systems. This is a strong indicator of memory/bus/chipset issues.
A bad driver would still cause problems regardless of clock speed. The fact the there is an improvement, when the bus speed is lowered signals that it's related to some physical attribute that the 9600 aggrivates within the AGP bus loop.

lets hope ATI reads my complaint.

Another option is to do an RMA

Any release date for 3.9 drivers?

late november supposedly

Hi Guys,

got same problem like all of us. My new ati radeon 9600 causes problems. Crash/freeze/reboot, whenever i´m trying to play a 3D-Game. mostly it reboot.
I´ve done all the problem solutions are listed in this forum. no affects.

My System is rather old:
AMD 1.34
MB: Shuttle AK12A Spacewalker
Via chipset 686
got Bios update on my MB, no affect
got newest catalyst driver, no affect
changed agp size/speed. no affect
got newest via driver, no affect
no heat problems

can anybody help? is a new mb necessary?

theres 25 pages of posts and still not all the problems are solved.

That's because there is obviously nothing we can do to fix it. Either it's a driver issue and they fix it (and I don't think it is a driver issue), or the cards are bad and we're screwed.

for most of us it is a driver issue obviously. Some of us can use the 3.5 drivers without problems but the newer drivers don't work, so obviously it is a driver issue for SOME of us.

Possibly, maybe it's not the same problem we're all having. Perhaps there are two separate issues, a hardware one and a software one. I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing a hardware problem, as are a few of the other people who posted with the exact same symptoms. In our cases, every revision of the driver does the exact same thing, and the only thing that will fix it is changing the bus speed, indicating that there are some timing issues going on there, that most likely can't even be fixed in the driver. I am so itching to go out and buy a new motherboard just to see what happens.

Well I think it's both hardware and software.

Hardware because I'm pretty convinced my problem is due to incompatibilities in the AGP bus protocols, whether it be due to voltage or power or whatever.

I mean the "infinite loop" problem is down to some communications signals going "missing" and the driver waiting indefinitely for them.

So I would say the driver is to blame for waiting indefinitely but the hardware is not generating the right signals, or at least it's powerful enough for the card to detect. (which may explain why the cards often respond of lowering of AGP speed or increasing AGP voltage).

I'm sure ATI can do something about it though, from a software level even though really it's a hardware issue. My reasoning for my card working ok in Cat 3.2 and not anyothers is that maybe the Cat 3.2's are not driving the system hard enough and those signals only go missing when more recent "optimisations" kick in.

Crazy

how about everyone complain to ATI like I did =]. I'm sure if they get enough complaints they will look into this and fix our problems with future drivers. Right now theyre probably not giving a s**t because they make a hellalot of money.

I already did...they "claimed" they hadn't even heard of a card working one driver but not in the others.

In the end, after a few suggestions they just said "stick with the cat 3.2's it's probably down to your powered by ATI card manufacturer". Problem is my card manfacturer is useless, no tech support, only one e-mail on the entire website and they don't respond to that one. So anyway, I'll play on this card as long as it works, next game that craps out on me I will get a much better card (XGI, please hurry up )

Crazy

WE R SKREWD :This place needs Smilies:

ATi= SKREWERS 'R US

AND GET THAT ATI 9600 XT AD OFF THIS SITE!!!!

i havnt had problems with any other ATI card. I still rather have an ATI card over a nvidia card. ATI gives better image quality and better bang for buck.

lol Jack you really are a positif person !
Well for my part since i didn't even get an answer to my mails i dont think ATI gives a s**t about this
They could have as well put in a lil word with the card saying : SMILE you just got layed wouldn't have made a difference anyways nothing much to do but keep hopeing !
As for me i personnaly dont have 300$ to throw by the window for a 3D card i uprgraded from a tnt2 to this and wasn't expecting to upgrade for the next 2-3 years and now i guess i'll have to.
This is the first and last ati card i'll ever be buying !

I am sorry for staring this post.