for you new posters here, plz read some of the posts before posting. Stop posting the same problem everyones having, its just making the thread longer. We all basically have the same problem so just post helpful things.
That PSU calculater is way outdated. It only has pc2100 for the best ram on there lol and it doesnt even have the 9600 pro. BTW i posted this before if you guys would have read, the 3.9 drivers didnt fix anything, wait for 4.0.

Uhh ... Jack, I feel your pain, but I think it's a little late for that. The thread is already too huge to be useful, very few people will sit there and read every single page. There has been small trickles of useful information, but overall, the problem is unsolved. Since most people will jump directly to the end of thread, we might as well sum up what we know. All we know for certain is that it's a compatibility issue with certain chipsets that can *sometimes* be solved by one or more of the following:

1) upping AGP voltage
2) reducing FSB speed
3) Switching to AGP 4x (or lower) with fast writes off
4) and in some occasions by using an old driver (3.4 and 3.2 seem to be popular)

However, this is not a driver issue as Jasper, I and several others have proved. If it were, lowering my bus speed to 125MHz would still exhibit the same problems and the fact that it's working in my new motherboard with AGP 8X and fast writes on with the SAME drivers surely disproves that it's a driver issue and in fact a hardware one.

what i meant was, i dont want to read the exact same thing over and over again. I'm sure everyone here just wants to hear helpful information.

Hi all

i got P4 3ghz @ 3,6Ghz @ 800FSB @ 35°
AsusP4C-800 Deluxe @ 30°
2x512 RAM
Radeon 9800XT @ Catalyst 3.9 @ 8x AGP-> 4x solves the problem for me, but id like 8x working, or may it be the games?

all new drivers etc, we know the story, and i got freezes....


solution...??

Oliver, can you not read???

Just wondered if anyone has had trouble with SIS chipsets, as everyone seems to be talking about VIA. Mine is either SIS 648FX or 963L, not sure which one is north or south bridge. On an ASUS P4S800.

Phil, yep i have the same problem and my mobo's a p45a/dx+ and its chipset is a SIS645dx / SIS962L

I've downloaded updated AGP drivers for my chipset and i think people have said installing those might fix the problem, but i'm a little reluctant to install them, for all i know they could just make things worse, and i don't know if i would be able to uninstall them... i probably wont try until something i really want to use crashes and cant be fixed by lowering hardware acceleration by 1 notch..
btw im one of the people who get the mouse movement related crashes not the system reboots that happen after playing for 5-45 min
If you want to see if updated drivers will help you can find em here :

http://download.sis.com/index_step1.php

let me know if it worked


Also id like so say a little something about the arguments over whether this is a driver or hardware issue, first let me say i'm not here to fight, i want answers as much as the rest of you, and if i'm wrong i'm willing to admit it, that said i find it hard to believe that ati's newer drivers cant be made to work properly with older chipsets.. if the 3.4 drivers will work the 4.0 drivers can be made to work, if only by detecting older chipsets and adjusting the supported features accordingly...
Also its unfair to tell people that they shouldn't be upgrading to the latest catalyst drivers, then telling them to stop "complaining" about having to use old drivers.
There are many games that simply wont run without the latest drivers, many more have graphical glitches until they are addressed in a driver update.. every single new game is just one more chance for your outdated drivers to fail, frankly I cant imagine anyone without an internet connection trying to make a game run out of the box.... if you want i could list all of the games specifically addressed since 3.4 but that could take all day, so why not look it up for yourself if you don't believe me

Anyway i hope we can all figure this out so no ones left cursing ati, or sis, or via or whoevers responsible

see what i mean? i swear ive read the exact same thing over. Post, "hi i a 9x00 card and my computer freezes when gaming". Reply, "Hi (name) i also have the same problem". READ THE POSTS BEFORE POSTING.

VIA CHIPSET PROBLEM??

I have installed the Via chipset drivers. I tried ut2k3 for a few times now, not sure if the problem is completely solved. But i definitely see an improvement in the framerate - even tomb raider angel of darkness seems to be smoother now.

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=300

All those who have via chipset based motherboards (i think both northbridge and southbridge - like my motherboard), can try the Hyperion 4 in 1 drivers. I have not yet flashed the bios of my motherboard. But this was the first step.

One component of this pack is an AGP driver - it actually interfaces with your existing drivers and provides some AGP Service Routines and provides faster graphics. When i read this i really didn't take much notice of "provides faster graphics" but i was surprised to see a "minor" but noticeable improvment in the speed.

Anyway, no crashes/freezes so far in ut2k3. But i can't say for sure.

i dont get it... i have an msi kt4v via chipset MOBO and i got the via chipset 4in1 drivers from the MSI site... are those the same as the ones on the link your posting? or are they different ones for all chipset MOBO's?

also would these hyperion 4in1 drivers better? or should i stick with my MSI ones?

Hyperion VIA 4-in-1 Drivers...

I don't know what is the requirements for these drivers. But since i had BOTH northbridge & southbridge via chipsets I downloaded it confidently...

These drivers are absolutely great!! I don't know if they solved the hang/freeze problem but so far no crashes (still testing) and the graphical speed has improved noticeably... I've tried CTF-Face3 4 times, (no hangs yet) but some jerking is still there, and i've tried other maps like DM-Inferno, etc. No hangs. Tomb Raider - Angel of Darkness never ran better before No hangs in that either

The driver description says it provides "AGP Service routines" and enhances the graphical acess time (or something similar)... These drivers are great.

Also - I found a few extra items in my hardware profile - namely VIA AGP to CPU connection etc.
All in all if you know your motherboard meets the driver requirements you can try.

I think i would recommend getting the drivers from your mobo manufacturer's site. In your case MSI.

But I have no idea if the Hyperion drivers are different from MSI. Though my mobo manufacturer is Asus, I tried these drivers and they work. Basically if you have via chipsets, you can try these.

Read the instructions on the site for more info... It worked for me really well, don't know if it will for you.

Have been following this forum for the past few days, and don't worry, I'm not about to garble out system specs that need you to scroll for half a minute.

I tried the 4 in 1 drivers, nice idea, this was one of the only areas of my comp I didn't have latest drivers for, but unfortunately God Radeon has decided no good games until He (2 man driver team getting high at Ati) can be bothered to release proper drivers.

I bought this card (PowerColor, 256, Pro) on Sunday and got it Tuesday morning, and since then there has been nothing but problems. My old GeForce 2 performed better than this does! I changed from nVidia precisely because I thought ATi had better value for money, generally better technology, and supported hardware that doesn't crash when your 10 seconds into a game (Call of Duty at least has a demo so now I know that I can't buy that game... sob). I bought this card to run games like these a bit better on my aging machine, not do the opposite! £120 wasted! Unless Ati gets some new drivers going to fix this crap within the next few weeks (i.e. one month), I am never buying an Ati product again and will be returning this glorified piece of sand back to the hell that spawned it!

I propose a mass petition of Ati to respond to their customers, and to solve the problems all of you before me have identified by way of a driver that works the device in the ways intended.

Sometimes I wonder if WE are the ones who are working for Ati in terms of finding and fixing problems they should be addressing, a ridiculous situation having paid £120. Trust me, my entire system has been (relatively) stable, even under the chaotic grip of ME, and the only possible solution is a driver update for the card.

A summary to anyone who works for Ati and is reading this: How to lose a market - the lessons of the 9600 Pro.

4 in 1 drivers seems to be the thing for me I think.. So far no hangs I ran ut2003 (which used to hang regularly in some maps) several times.

I still get some random "jerking" in the game.
But after installing the 4-in-1 via drivers - Unreal Tournament 1 (not 2003) quits to windows desktop on startup saying "Critical error : D3d-blt function" or something...

I had to switch to "Software rendering" mode to run the game.

But apart from this - all seems fine now. I'm still worried about the occasional jerking in ut2k3 - will setting "Wait for vertical sync" to "always on" in ATI Control Panel fix this issue? If so - will it mean slowing down of speed of the game?

Ramshankar, if UT 1 still quits to the desktop, you still have a problem ... you should try some other games and see what happens. You may also have the problem in UT2k3 as the quitting to the desktop is completely random .. sometimes happens after 2 mins, sometimes after an hour, sometimes not at all. That's what's so frustrating about it.

As far as your question goes, the random jerkiness is usually due to a lack of RAM .. how much do you have? Occasionally, the game needs to load large amounts of data into RAM and if you don't have enough, it uses your swap file which is very slow. Also, vertical sync will not slow down the game, at least not perceptibly. It will sync your frames with your monitors vertical refresh rate (minimum 60 FPS if your computer can even sustain those kinds of speeds), all it does is reduce the "tearing" you sometimes see on the screen. For example sometimes it looks like the bottom half and top half of the image have been torn and misalligned. Enabling vertical sync gets rid of this.

Brent

i installed new AGP drivers for the motherboard and updated the bios, unfortunately didnt make any difference. i thought i would give the catalyst 3.9 a go.

and guess what?

They made the problem WORSE. whereas before i was using 3.4's and no freezing in UT2003, now with 3.9's it freezes.

The guy from Tyan in china told me to change it to the 4x AGP mode but that didnt work either

Getting pretty damn annoyed now, as is everyone else i can see.

well i think its for all via chipsets. Im wondering if its the same as the MSI ones i got though because theyre both 'version 4.49'. So if i want to use these, how do i uninstall the old 4in1 drivers? its not in the list of installed programs.

well it turns out that the msi does have the hyperion 4in1 drivers.

Im not sure whether or not this has been mentioned yet or not,

but could it possibly be something to do with directx 9.0?

i am using directx 9.0b and now having plowed through some more of my games find that i am having problems with Age of Mythlogy, UT2003, C&C Generals, Delta Force BHD (all ive tried so far.) However, Mace Griffin Bounty Hounter works FINE. I may be wrong but i am sure that i first installed directx 9 with that game on my older non directx9 compatible ATI Radeon 9000.

Could just be a coincidence, but gives us another possible avenue to explore!
Im no genius, so i dont even know how to remove directx9 and revert back to 8.1 or whatever it was before to see if the card works

someone let me know how to do it and ill give it a go