Maybe alittle OT but Directx 9b is out maybe worth a download.

dx9b was out for a long time.

How does DX9b affect things. I know the cards are supposed to be aimed at that, but these problems are greater than that. Some people are having problems simply running games that were DX8. I feel sorry for everyone that is still suffering from a very bad experience. Maybe the answer for those that can do it is to return the card and say, quite truthfully that it simply does not work - properly. I know someone said that the point of this site is to solve the problems, but the makers have a duty to see that their customers are not left high and dry- that is if they want you to buy another card in the future- Nvidia don't shut up shop just yet lads.

god now that i posted so i could have a responce sent to my email when some one responded thats all i get in my inbox is there anyway to shut it off?

If you'd read only two pages back you'll seet that I actually run a Intel 865 chipset with P4-2.4ghz chip. However, I did used to run the SBLive in my old KT133 machine and it was a royal pain in the ass. Creative washed their hands of the problem and VIA didnt do anything other than take the solutions that the forums at VIAHardware.com (now Suhdian) gave them and put them in the 4-in-1s and hope for the best. I eventually swapped the card for the one in my work machine (a Hercules Fortissimo) but got it back when I left and put it into this machine.

After my experiences with this card again causing my machine to screw up I can say without any shadow of a doubt that if you have a SBLive (maybe even an Audigy) and you are planning on upgrading to a Radeon 9600, then either change the soundcard first, or buy a different graphics card. Creative/ATi have stolen a couple of weeks of my life trying to get this damn system working and I've pulled out the remainder of my hair doing so. Creative + ATi = bad idea. get it?

As for buying a whole new system to go with your 9600Pro? Are you nuts? Does money grow on trees? We wouldnt be here trying to get these systems working if we could do that. We'd just go out and buy a 5950Ultra/9800XT/Parhelia-256 or maybe a new XGI Volari V8 Duo. It IS a shame that the graphics market has become a two horse race and that you have a choice between a) a good value, high performance card with lack lustre drivers that is a pain in the ass to get working or b) a not so good value, "optimized" card with driver cheats and lack lustre image quality.

I hope that the XGI Volari can do some damage to both NVidia and ATi and force them to go that extra mile to make sure we get quality goods in the future.

Now back to the problem. If anyone currently has a Creative soundcard in their machine and has freezing problems with their Radeon then I recommend you bite the bullet, remove the card, remove the drivers, reboot and give Call Of Duty (or whatever) a try with Catalyst 3.7 drivers (or 3.8/3.9 with the 3.7 OpenGL driver) with AGP at 4x and Fast Writes OFF.

Before you test, make sure that the settings in the registry that I outlined in my last message are still in force and that they havent reset back to AGP 8x and Fast Writes ON. Me not checking caused me a few more reboots and quite a bit of head scratching.

Good luck.

Marcos kc

"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."

Hello, i tried that out but no luck for me
Did you also lower your hardware acceleration by 1 notch perhaps? or did you move the mouse tails to 1 notch more then the minimum?
also what games have you tested your fix with? so far the only game i've tested is Empires: Dawn of the Modern world (and that's one that can be fixed by lowering the hardware acceleration by 1 notch) and as i said it still crashed in the exact same way as before

surfboy (and other sblive! owners) - don't jump to conclusions about the sblive! being a piece of trash. my sblive! works great with the 9600 pro (KT333 chipset MSI KT3 Ultra ARU mobo). see my previous posts.

Ok, I spent ages typing up a nice and eloquent speech to aggressive responses, so I shall surmise below.

Firstly, sorry for my last post if it was seen to be misleading, I was in a rush.

I was simply saying that it is time to upgrade my computer because its core components are pre Feb 2001 (1.2 GHz, PC 133 RAM, K7 MOBO – OLD). The new graphics card that I have recently bought to be transferred to my new system. Problems with the new card in my old system are, as is claimed, whimsical, and have not have affected my decision to upgrade my computer completely (made half a year ago).

What I was not suggesting, as was thought, was the purchasing of an entirely new system if the new component doesn't work; a sub-standard intellect is required to think that this is serious option considered by anyone.

Three years of saving up amounts to £500+ funds, and although a lot of money, I do not mind spending this amount considering that the new system will last an equivalent amount of time.

Why would I want to buy an even newer card instead of upgrading my system? System specs were not stated, so please, no comments. My intentions don’t have to conform to assumptions made people who don’t know my situation.

To put it frankly, I was impatient and got a new card first, before an entire system overhaul. I had conflicting ideas as to whether I should buy a budget card that could be used for now but with noticeable effects, or a new card that is intended for a new system. That’s why I was pis*ed about spending £120 on a card that does not work FOR NOW, although in retrospect this was a much better idea as spending on two cards would have been equally stupid.

Problem: card in present system (compatibility with older hardware an obvious problem). Stated solution: system upgrade.

Don’t make ignorant comments that waste my and your time. Now back to the card.

I’ve been suspicious of the S(o?)B card for while, crackling seems to be a common feature. I’m in between with SB, I think that on a newer system with a new SB card, it would do the Radeon justice.

So much for a summary.

p.s if the new card does not work on a new system, then well..... I'm fugged... unlikely >1%

K... So I freaked out on customer service at ATI Canada... we are exchanging cards for a 9700 PRO. From all the specs I've seen this should solve my issues. Faster and more stable. (also older and proven) They are sending me the replacements and I am returning mine. If this doesn't work I'm gonna scream......

I think there is a bit of misunderstanding here with regards to buying new equip to get an iffy card working. If you were going to do it anyway and the card was going to be carried over to a newer system then thats reasonable, but some people may feel that they have to change other things in their system too. Example might be, their mobo is only 4x so they may feel that 8x is better and so on. But do remember t at a lot of people who read these pages will be looking for help, they will be very frustrated and they may may also have had shopkeepers telling them that only a new modo, CPU, power unit etc will sort out the problem. So these people who do not have to be thick of daft may try anything in a hope to simply get their systems running.
I only upgrade when there is a real benefit to be had. Earlier this year I bought a game by mistake that needed a Gcard that had a T+L engine, my old trusty Kyro (stop laughing) does not have this,so I put the game to one side and plan to only get this out when my system can play it. Now after about 8 months with some time to spare I wanted to upgrade the G card, hence my finding this site- but I was going to collect a 9600 Pro tomoorow from my local shop- that plan is on ice now- till further reseach or a better option is found.
Final point, no one says what brand of card they are using, is it Hercules, Gigabyte and so on, this point might be helpful too. I know its chipset is going to be ATI 9600 Pro, but perhaps different brands may do slighly different things to the Radeon card layout. Mem speed on card, quality of transistors, resistors on the board could be anything.

Last point tonight/morning. I am going to give the local comp shop the address to this site if he insists that 9600 Pro is a good buy and tell him that all these people may disagree with that comment. I certainly cannot buy one of these now- cheap or not.

DUH on me about the directxb thing... I think I will email ATI a link to this thread, maybe then they can see how many satisfied customers they have...maybe it will change some things who knows.

i have several times. They say the catalyst crew reads forums on the web. I told them to tell the catalyst crew about this particular thread but they didnt say they told them, they just told me that they read threads on the net.

it seems im having the same problems but only in 8X...fast writes works perfectly fine (5+ hours RtCW:ET)
nor is FSB settings in the way (AMD 1800 @ 1920mhz [11.5x167]). ALL CATALYST Drivers dont help...ive gotten a BIOS flash for the mobo (MSI KT4VL) and the card (Sapphire OEM w/ weirdo TSOP chips) is overclocked too...it seems that 8x is the only barrier. The mobo doesn't allow the user to set AGP nX in the bios and 8x is "automatic" if the card supports it. it seems that alot of mobo/bios operations are going on behind our backs. I cant set the PCI/AGP clock dividers, but the bios "automatically" did them when i hit certain FSB ranges. i thought that my FSB overclock resulted in a way too high AGP bus speed but this checked out fine in SANDRA...

but fast writes is there and its on and it works. Ive installed ATI and OMEGA drivers from 3.2 to 3.9 no good. 8x causes complete crashes or system errors with that damn annoying windows popups. And the rare blue screen of death as well.

Also, in the windows power settings, there is an option to auto turn off monitor after so and so minutes...when my monitor is turned off in such a fashion, my overclock on the card vanishes, leaving me with stock settings.

This leads me to say that there is something up with the RAMDACs on the damn thing...I can't quite put my thumb on it, but its those RAMDACs

holy s**t... do you have a palomino 1800xp or a tbrd? what temps are you getting with that overclock? i have a 1800xp palomino at 1625 with a vantec aeroflow, and the same MOBO as you but im getting 50c temps. Im guessing you have a tbrd because my 1800xp cant overclock worth s**t.

yeah tbred B fo' sho' but its the 1.6 volt DUT3C version >: [

it runs about 34C on idle and about 43C at full load although prime95 makes it close to 45. I got just a generic copper base cooler with a decent (~30 CFM) fan nothing fancy there must be the 5 case fans at work

i was thinking of pushing the FSB to 180 but my RAM sux or my mobo cant handle it. but lets plz stay on topic here

Twilight Guy, I have a Powercolor card (256 Mb), it seems to be getting a lot of flack from everyone - especially because of this cheeky EZ system going on - slowed down RAM speeds or something.
Have been looking for Mobos for ages - have any good suggestions?
The card has been behaving pretty well recently - lets keep bombarding ATi and hope that the new drivers can fix at least some of the problems - as much as i love fixing hardware (yeah right), it isn't our fault or our job to fix it, and we have a (£120) right to bitch.

holy s**t... didnt know tbreds were so much better. I cant get mine past 1626 WITH an aeroflow... one of the best coolers out there.

for those of you with COD freezes, theres a fix for it here.
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4291.html
its specifically for COD so i dont think its going to fix other game freezes that a lot of us are having but its worth a shot. Get back to me if it works for other game freezes too.