This will probably be no news to most people, but I thought it worth mentioning as it might help someone. I've been haveing problems with my new PC with a Radeon 9600 pro - as described eslewhere.

After much effort and chasing the PC vendor - I ran Memcheck and found several thousand errors in my memory chip. I've now exchanged this for a repalcement chip and and been able to play unreal 2 for several hours without a problem. So if you've not checked your memory it might be worth trying.

Hope you all get things solved.

Richard

Where did you get memcheck from?

I was thinking of getting this card, but after all these complaints fuhgetaboutit.
Gonna save my money for next year and hopefully I'll get a better ATI at a good price.

Jay

Where to get memcheck??

I'm download Sisoft Sandra - thats 7MB and thru my slow dial-up will take some time. Where can i get memcheck? And how big is it??

I too suspected a mem. chip problem a long time ago - but was unable to get my hands on any VRAM check software.

VIA 4-in-1 drivers has solved my hang/freeze problem - but sometimes i get a very slow video framerate. I seriously suspect a mem. fault.

... and Return to castle wolfenstein hasn't been a problem for me at all. It hasn't crashed/froze a single time with new/old drivers of ati or via.

WEll having read the whole of this thread and tried every suggestion the only thing i can think of to do with me 9800SE is to ship it back and get a nV**** card instead. I have a friend who bought an MSI 256 5900 ultra for stupid money and his worked on his ASUS board first time.
I bought a new board, chip and memory for this dumb card only to find out it doesnt like 8xAGP when its designed to? last time i test the water with ATI...

By the way you can add Dark Age Of Camelot to the loooong list of games that have this prob.

my system:
Soltek KT600-RL - latest bios and VIA chipset drivers (Board only came out in august anyway!)
AMD XP 2800+ retail kit
2x512mb PC3200 DDR memory
Windows XP Pro
Radeon 9800SE (tried every driver they ever brought out for this thing including the catalysts)
10Gig (OS drive) and 40 Gig drive (Games and all the rest)
52xCDROM

Damian,

Have also got the tyan tachyon. I upped my graphics aperture to 256 but it didnt work for me. Thanks anyway.

Has anyone encountered problems with newer directx 9 games???? I would guess everyones answer is no!

This is where the problem lies!!!!!!

Seriously considering returning this card now and getting a 9600XT, but then i guess there is no guarantee that i wont have the same problems with that card is there?

Its a no win situation. I thought the mouse trails thing had fixed my problem with Age of Mythology, but after playing for about 40 minutes it decides to lock up instead of at the menu screen.

I never had any problem with Age of Mythology until i updated my ATI radeon 9000 drivers on my old graphics card. i think i might stick that card back in, Far less hassle.

Phil - re Tachyon 9600 Pro; I have logged a Returns Request with Ebuyer.co.uk, and am waiting to see if they get the 9600XT's in. They have the 9800XT's but £410 is a bit too much to pay ATM!

My system seems to be a lttle more stable now.....but it shouldn't have happened in the first instance. Alot of angry people out there.

Got myself a new 128MB HIS Excalibur Radeon 9600 (non-pro model) last month and currently enjoying it. I chosed it over G4 TI 4200 'coz I want DirectX 9 support than 8.1. Games with this card are working great specially Splinter Cell at highest graphics and resolutions even though I have a low-end system working with this card. There are some games that doesn't work right for me namely Generals and Neverwinter Nights. I just discovered a way to fix it by lowering the hardware performance a notch lower by reading this forum.Thanks! Currently downloading Catalyst 3.9

Do the Catylists 3.9 allow you to overclock anything that is not an XT?

Damian,

I have also put in a request to ebuyer for a return. I am looking at getting the ASUS 9600XT, mainly because i have an asus mobo, plus i have seen it for around £150, plus you get the voucher for half life 2, so all in all it works out cheaper anyway.

Bonus

Have put my radeon 9000 back in for now, might not be as fast but at least it works.

Richard Chacksfield, Hi, in one of your posts regarding the 9600pro you mentioned checking your memory with "memcheck"

i did a google search to find memcheck and was only able to find "MemCheck Pro Version 3.0" however i ran the program and it doesn't have any features that scan the memory and give you a report, it will only tell me how much memory is free and optimize what's there..

perhaps you were thinking of another program, if you can think of the program you used to scan your memory please let me know so i can also find out if my memory is the problem (and hopefully return the faulty card before my warranties gone)
or if anyone else reading this knows of a program that will test my memory for defects (and is free!) please let me know where to find it, thanks

This may be a silly question, but it just popped into my mind......

What kind of mouse are people here using.
I remember a while ago that my "iFeel" mouse from Logitech was causing all kinds of havoc with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.

It may be something, and it may be nothing, but I've had nothing but crashes and lockups with Generals ever since I tried 3.9, and reverted to 3.8.
I disabled the Logitech mouse software, and unloaded the TouchSense software and played it without a hiccup.

Maybe a connection is there, or maybe I was just lucky. But it's always worth investigating.

Also......
One thing I did notice with the 3.9's is that it identified my card by it's exact brand and model.
Most just say "Radeon 9600 series", but after I loaded the 3,9's it stated "FIC a96p 9600 Pro".

This may be a benefit, but as I stated before, the 3.9's were freezing literally every 2 minutes, the VPU recovery program would kick in and reset the CPU, but then the mail client would bump generals down to the task bar.....which it doesn't do gracefull.

i dont really remember but when i had the 3.9 drivers installed i think mine still said 9600 Series, that shouldnt matter at all though.

By Gigabyte BIOS i meant the bios of my video card - mine is a Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro.

Anyway, the card is finally stabilized - no freezes for the past 4 days. Tested heavily with ut2003, aom, tomb raider angel of darkness, test drive 5, need for speed porsche 2000, return to castle wolfenstein, cricket 2002.

I'm still running at 4x AGP with via chipset 4-in-1 drivers. Still haven't tried 8x and still haven't tested the VRAM using Sisoft Sandra - (does it really test VRAM or just main memory?).

Running catalyst 3.8 here - no probs absolutely. Cat 3.4 was awful (this shipped with the card and crashed cricket 2002 on startup each time). My agp aperture size is set to 64 MB. Seems fine. Fast Write off.

And where can i get that Memcheck software??

Seen ,been in it!
New cards all are put on market too early ,ati & nvidia should have optimize cards before massproduction..
Ati expecially! maybe all DX9 games work wit radeon9600 BUT ofcourse old dx8 games should also work?
everygame works wit me but not with speed card should give... and my radeons coolin system is so small i think wit agp8x fastwrites & all accleration overheats the card ,it have only 1 ridiculous small fan & it doesnt even have heatsink what can be seen wit eye?
Dunno? P*****G off this scheit! STAR STAR STAR STAR!
ill install a processor Heatsink "LARGE" and 70mm fan to my card lets see what it says after that?

Ok people - really easy solution if you haven't yet tried - if you have catalyst drivers newer than 3.7 (i.e 3.8/9) - uninstall these and then install 3.7 drivers. Was skeptical something as simple as this would solve the problems, but it did. Worked first time for me, no problems with anything now.

ATi - how bout some new drivers that don't F%*& up everything else? Still not happy...

3.6-3.9 dont work for me... i have to use 3.5. I dont remember if i posted this but, id rather use the 3.5 drivers that i dont have to disable anything to reduce performance then use newer drivers that i have to disable stuff to get to work. If ATI doesn't fix these problems in 4.0, i dont think theyre ever going to fix it and im going to be stuck with 3.5 the rest of the time i have this card.

this goes with the above post. ATI's customer service is just terrible... seems like they don't give a s**t after a dozen complaints.