The link to the driver there is just a modified 3.9 CAT with inf files that a AIW card can recognise. Other than that I dont think theres any change from the normal 3.9s except that its 31mb vs 25mb because it includes the Win9x drivers inside.

Kristen: sounds like we have similar problems. I'm gonna experiment with removing my Creative soundcard because there might be conflicts.

I've really had it with this stupid card.
Call of Duty returns to a blinding white windows after a few seconds of play.
Drivers above 3.4 wont even work proper.
Generals has to be played with a stupid flikkering pointer.
and who knowswhat next

Were having a Lan party soon. My friends have cards like a 9000/9200 pro and they play everything no problem. And here I am with my lots more expensive stupid hercules 3d prophet 9600 pro looking like an ass whilest there playing cod. This is the worst hardware that I have ever bought!You hear that ATI!
Gone buy myself a fx5600, its slower but it will probely be far less trouble.

Surfboy.
I too have a creative sound card- Audigy. more of a coincidence?? I also read on the system requirements on ythe COD box it states you need the latest graphic and sound card drivers. I know I have not up dated my sound card drivers for some time so I will do that tonight to se what happens.
I saw a post from someone else saying that they adjusted the sound option to the EAX and not the default cant remember what it is called(which is what I have left it at).

i have a creative soundcard as well but its only a soundblaster live 5.1. It could possibly be a sound issue because in my case anyway, when my computer freezes in games, i get sound loops then my computer either restarts on its own or i have to hit the reset button.

geez... it seems like were a big company trying to get a graphics card to work while the actual company is doing s**t all. But i agree with no clue, i dont want to bad mouth ATI since i still like there stuff but this ONE ATI card is p**sing me off.

I would like to share my ATI Story, After months of reading and watching the forum and waiting for ATI's help.

My System Specs. (2 systems like this in fact)
ECS K7S5A Pro +
AMD 2400+
512 DDR Ram (333)
ATI 9600 PRO (P.O.S.)

Money spent for card (2 actually) $ 350 CDN ea.

Biggest offending game - Generals (EA GAMES)

Bought my cards back in June, special order, from a company I used to work for. They don't do a lot of peripherals but as I have some connections they saved me a few bucks over retail.

Upon installation I had nothing but trouble, crashes, lock ups and corruptions. My previous Geoforce 2's worked great, but the new drivers corrupted the system and had to reload everything. So 2 weeks later I had everything reloaded but my games still won't run properly. I go back to my supplier and they enquire with Ingram if they can be returned. (Ingram will not accept them back if they have been opened.)

ATI CANADA, as my only support choice have offered me no help. I have talked with support engineers and help desk flunkies since June. If any of those idiots ask me what version of direct X I'm running again I will explode. I have been dealing with the Support manger for the last month. Still to no avail.

In fact I have had to press these guys to respond to me every step of the way and apparently I don't even deserve the consideration of a return phone call. They have stated that my problem has been duplicated and that the driver revision will be forth coming in the future..... but they can't say when, it's up to engineering. Maybe they should have thought of that before they released these cards to the public.

I have never seen support as poor as ATI offers. They may make a good card? This is not evident to me. Pardon my english but F**K them. Now I miss my old Geoforce 2's they ran pretty good in comparison, I should never have sold em.

Anyone else dealing with ATI Canada?

im canadian too but i just emailed my support. I guess i didnt try phoning since i dont want to pay any L.D.

To the guy with the K7S5A Pro...

I went back to the Cat 3.4's and Generals runs decently now, no hangups. Of course I still have a corrupted mouse cursor from turning down acceleration one notch.

One other thing I noted is that the onboard sound on the K7S5A, while ok, doesn't do very well on hardware acceleration. I had turned it down to 1 notch to get rid of the occasional pause in sound ingame. Well, I bought a SB Live last night and I think the sound is much better. It's clearer all around - drivers aren't WDM anymore - and hardware acceleration works great, and I got EAX as well. <shrug>

I have a friend with a K7S5A - he said that fastwrites on or off is not an option in any BIOS he's seen. However, if you go with a CheepoBios (available from OCWorkbench.com) you can download the bios both with fast writes on and with it off. I haven't tried it yet as Generals has been running just fine with the Cat 3.4's and mouse acceleration turned down one notch.

Update!

After A LOT of messing around, I finally managed to get the card working though I'm not sure how. I'm gonna have to turn things on one by one and see if they made a difference.

The one big thing I did though was not just disable the SoundBlaster Live, but remove it completely and switch to the onboard SoundMax chipset. I also removed all Creative drivers.

Before that I'd moved the hardware acceleration down one notch but it still crashed, although on reboot after removing the soundcard, powerstrip again said 8x AGP and Fast Writes on, and so did the registry which was rather frustrating because I had set them off only 2 reboots previously. So thats why I'm unsure if it was the soundcard or the hardware acceleration.

Its still stuttering a bit but this could be because I dumped my quake3 settings and let it generate some new ones. I'll give the CoD demo a go now and see how it can handle it. It seems to be a good test for the card judging by the number of people with problems here!

I had a feeling it might be the sound card, as I remember the problems I had with it in my old KT133 motherboard!

Anyway, I'll leave you with something that I had to keep using because the values kept getting reset (probably by Powerstrip - no longer running by the way). Its a registry file to set Fast Writes OFF and AGP to 4x. Just copy and paste into a .reg file and double click it when youve saved it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ATI Technologies\CDS\0000\0\PCI Config]
"AGP Transfer Rate"="AGP 4X (0x00000004)"
"Fast Write"="No (0x00000000)"

Surf......
I didn't scan every post in depth, but did you happen to be running a VIA chipset with that creative card.
You are likely not far off with your assessment.
I read that the SB live caused conflicts with the KT333 and KT400 chipsets.
I'm running my onboard sound now as well.

i ran my soundblaster live 5.1 card fine with my kt400 when i had my ti200.

According to another forum I have been using, if you are using a third party card ie like my Tyan Tachyon 9600 Pro, the only drivers that are more likely to be stable are the ones from their own site.

The reason for this is that they have been tweaked to run for that specific GFX card - aapparently.

So - going home tonight to try this out and see if Star Wars Galaxies dont crash/lock up on me.


Still not happy and ATi and have been pricing up the 5700 Ultra!

HEY, EVERYBODY listen..
i've found the solution to one of the problems.
for those who's computer freezes or hangs up if u move your mouse in a game you must do this
Go to Start >>> Control Panel >>> Mouse >>>
And activate the mouse trail and move the trail lenght to the minimum (short).
I do this and i don't have any more problems with mouse hangs/freezes
Hope this info is usefull.

I too have a Creative SB card - SB Live! 1024 Value, K7 motherbaord (think it's KT 133)....

This sound card has been crap from the day I've had this computer (Feb 2001), with drivers fugging up everything ("Gameport" driver conflicts, modem conflicts), so this may be the prob....

M Payne 2 and Republic are the only two games I have right now (reformatted recently), both work fine. COD demo worked fine when I went back to 3.5 before I refo'd. Plan on getting COD (if it works), Halo, Worms 3D, Homeworld 2 ordered and coming...

My solution: dish out £500+ on new Mobo, CPU, RAM, Soundcard, and XP (running ME - sounds like a biological syndromme), new case, the works....

See, this card was supposed to be an upgrade, found out that other hardware was crap and bottle-nekcing the new card, time for upgrade. I would have spent 60-80 quid on a new card, not £120....

Meanwhile, will mess around with Creative stuff, bearing in mind I have already disabled most (all i think) of its programs

you guys are dumb... why would you spend an extra 100-500 dollars on basically a new system when you can buy like a 9800 Pro for that money and you can stop whining about the 9600 Pro. I'm trying to get this card to work because i have no money so i have no other option then to try to fix my card. You guys are recommending new MOBO's, CPU's and s**t when you dont know if that will solve the problem. Why buy a new system when you can just buy a new card? Now stop posting nonsense like that so the people who actually want to solve the problem can help eachother rather then reading stuff about buying new MOBO's etc.

Hi Guys
I was planninng to buy a Gigabyte 9600 Pro (128Mb Vers') but after skimming over the past 40 pages of terrible problems and what seems like people pouring gaad money down adrain, I have decided to drop buy the card and check out if the older 9700 pro had any problems of the scale found here. And just for the record, I have spent a few weeks going over web pages for reviews of Geforce or ATI cards. My conclusion is this. ATI wanted to knock Nvidia off the top of the ladder, they did this because they were in the past just another also ran in the graphics card market, and seeing the demise of the likes of 3DFX and the newer Kyro based cards, ATI felt they had to do something. Hence the excellent 9700Pro , knocked off the Geforce 4TI cards and grabbed the market. Now that Geforce FX are not quite what people expected, ATI are pushing their luck with re worked and sometimes slower cards. Example is the 9600 Pro replacing the 9500 Pro. If the problems found on these pages carry on across the whole ATI range, with bad driver support, games that people want to and should be able to play not working, then maybe Nvidia will bounce back.
For the record my system is Athlon 2100+ 512 Mem, Win 98SE (Cos it works fine for me, so why change) Sound blaster live and wait for it a Kyro I card by Hercules. This card is now under powered and a bit of a joke, but it did not once screw up on the scale of these ATI cards. I know I will have to switch brands, my choices are ATI or Nvidia-- Hum... now which will I choose?
For sure I will not be buying that 9600 Pro card tomorrow now.

yeah nvidia choked in dx9 games... they were supposed to be the best cards for dx9 games but then ATI showed that even the 9600 Pro performed better then the fx5900 ultra in HL2 tests. Nvidia tried to make a driver that fixed all of this but it failed also, thats why im still an ATI fan because they have the best bang for buck cards. They are still struggling in the driver department but they still make good cards its their drivers that are hurting them right now. Most ATI cards are fine with the catalyst drivers but the 9600 Pro isnt as you can see.

thats why i think people are dumb for going out and buying basically new systems rather then buying a different card.

Hey Jack,

You make a good point, we are trying to get to the bottom of this issue and spending scads of extra money isn't the answer for most of us. But try to remember that while most of use here are having troubles with this POS card,if anyone that wants to spend extra money foolishly, do so especially if they are going to share with us what does work..... I appreciate any insight that may help narrow what the issue is. (unfortuneatly it looks like ATI screwed us all and we can run off and rub some salve on our tender parts after the F**king we got...)

And Twilight Guy.... ! Good decision. If I had known then what I know now, I too would have either spent more money on the better cards, bought older more compliant or just plain old gone Nvidia until there was more information, I would rather play and lose a little quality than stare a microsofts 2d games until I get a resolution.

Hi
True, Okay rebuild your system if its old and slow, but to do so only because the graphics card is iffy is crazy. There is no way that you can be sure that a new mobo, mem, OS CPU will improve matters. If the card is crap, then it will still be crap. I only change my Mobo when the old rig is past reasonable upgrade. I would not consider doing that cos of a graphic card, unless there was a real need. The arrival of PCI Express might mean that AGP cards will disappear, then you might have to upgrade. But to do so cos a card is playing up is daft. Besides you could end up with a iffy Mobo too with driver conflicts and so on. If all the problems are are to do with getting Halo to run on a PC then perhaps a Xbox migtht be the better option-certainly cheaper and more sure fire I think.
I do have the chance of getting a Hercules 9700 Pro, its going to cost me £70 more than the 9600 Pro, but I want the least amount of trouble possible. I will have to do web search for 9700 Pro problems, but the general out look on this card is its good, but will It run under Win 98SE and Athlon 2100+?
Its a shame Kyro cards died out really.