I have followed the said method from ATI and my card works and is even overclockable to 485/640. Still there is a strange period of "black screening" during the game connect/load screen in RtCW:ET. This happening to anybody else? If so, could this be the VPU recover working?

ordered a 5700 ultra cuz my 9600pro now gets a hardware deadlock after about 2 min into having my computer on and it even does it in friends computers

i have tried near to evrything that people have posted in this thread

I guess its just a bad card

im over with ati

how'd you get yours to work wong?
for those of you posting useless posts like "i bought a 5700 ultra" or "i have the same problem as everyone else" why post again and good for you that you bought a 5700... we don't care.

hey jack black its just a suggestion for other people that are havin problems with their cards to return it and buy nvidia cuz i know their are a lot of ppl out ther that dont feel like wastin time (like me and you) readin a 45 page thread just to get no where at all in solvin the problem so dont get p**sed if one person like me posts something that doesnt matter to you becuz no matter how p**sed you are im a prob just the same

anyone who thinks that what i have just said is irrelevant ur all hypocrits cuz i think most of you have read through this whole thread listenin to ppl bitch

trust me im mad too

Wong my card did the same thing urs did and the black screen is just vpu recover working

just watch out mine had vpu recover work for a while now it just gets a "hardware deadlock"

Hallo everyone!

I had to replace my old GeForce Ti 4200 as it went to a very hot grave. I checked some newer cards and decided to buy a Saphire 9600 Pro Atlantis 128 MB. It seemed to be a very good card. The games ran faster than ever. For about 10 minutes. The I got the freezes most of you know. Though I don't play much stragtegic games I don't know if the mouse problems would also occur. I tried nearly everything but the only solution so far was setting AGP to 4x. With that no more freezes. But thinking that buying a 8x card would mean playing wit 8x needs another solution. I tried the newest ATI driver, which is 3.9 with a Call of Duty Fix. I don't have CoD at all but gave it a shot. Didn't have too much time for testing, but it seems that now everything is working fine.

@Jack Black: Should be the patch you posted a few pages ago: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012324e.exe.

Anyone else who tried this one?

'No Clue' posted that patch; it was only a fix for the AIW cards. i dont think it fixed any of our problems.

Quote Jack Black:
Re: ATI 9600 pro problems hang freeze
then stfu and dont post here... waste of read.


Hmm well i had some troubles with this card.
Thats y i posted this update.
The asus mobo fixed my problems.

Ok Everybody,

Calm down and stop freaking out at ati or creative or whoever. If you buy something off of EBAY, remember the saying "buyer beware." eBay is a haven for cheap thugs and crooks who like to re-lable faulty products and sell them to unsuspecting buyers. This is especially true with pc components. I once thought i was getting a killer deal on a 9800pro. It turns out it was a 9800 non-pro with fake stickers and a poorly flashed 9800pro BIOS. Needless to say it was a waste of time and money. If you want dependability buy new from a trusted retailer like Newegg or something. Anyway, I tried to look through all 45 pages of posts, but the majority are "buy an nvidia' or 'upgrade your whole system.' This is not good advice. I own an ATI 9600pro and have it working flawlessly (o/c'ed to 472/328.50). Look at the bottom for complete system specs. I admit that, at first, my 9600pro didn't work when i plugged it in. But isn't troubleshooting part of building your own pc? I didn't panic, i tried an older card and everything worked. So i then tried my 9600pro on another system, and it worked. So i knew that the 9600pro was working. Here is the order of what i did to get the card working on my new system.........

1) Yanked everything that isn't neccessay (tv tuner card, sblive!, 2nd optical drive, etc....) so that you have the bare minimum [psu, mob, ram, video card, hdd, optical drive, and floppy if you need it to flash your BIOS]

2) Fresh install of WinXp pro from the cd

3) update the BIOS of your mobo (i did this through windows using abit's FlashMenu, but some of you might need a floppy---p.s. the old video card was still in my system at this time)

4) plug in new 9600pro card and up the AGP voltage to 1.6v (the new ati' s like the extra voltage) and see if you can boot into windows......if you can then you have succeeded

5) Re-install all expansion cards one at a time! (patience here please)

6) get your game on!

Now let's try to keep this thread as troubleshooting help for people with a 9600pro and not a place where others just tell you to buy something else.


abit ai7
p4 2.8c @ 3.206 w/ stock cooling
1gb Geil Golden Dragon ddr433 @ ddr458 (2.5-3-3-7)
ati radeon 9600pro (oc'ed to 473/329)
wd 200gb (8mb) ide x 2 in RAID 0

im pretty sure not all of us bought our 9600 pro's off eBay if thats your point your trying to get across... it seems your new to these forums. Most of us have tried every single thing possible to get our cards to work and weve tried all of that. I dont think its the actual card itself... i think its the catalyst drivers. I'm totally an ATI fan because they make the best cards for the price. They give better image quality and have the same if not better performance then the card in its price range but i will admit that one area that ATI is hurtin and NVIDIA is ahead is the driver area. ATI back in the day did make really bad drivers but theyre getting better and better. I'm sure they will fix our problems sometime in the future.

Hi guys,

This might interest you. I've been reading through most of the posts on the site and thought I'd my penny news. My bro bought a system from Dell that includes the ATI 9800 graphics card and it seems to have exactly the same problem as the 9600, i.e. game freezes, sound skipping, without ATIs crash guard function wouldn't be able to recover. Interesting as some games seem to work and some don't. My view is try and send the card(s) back as they obviously are triggering some type of incorrect addressing.

Cheers.

This is my fifth and final post to this thread. All my previous posts have been constructive efforts to help resolve this issue, so to anyone annoyed by the following, apologies in advance. I would just like to say that after trying the 9600 Pro AND the 9600 XT (see above), I have sold them both and bought a 5700 Ultra, my third card in three months! I know that sadly for some people this isn't a possible solution as they don't have cash to spare, but I have to report that on my Asus A7V600 this card runs at agp 8x in all my games with *no* problems. If nothing else, this proves beyond all shadow of doubt that the problem really is more down to ATI than it is to the various mobo and chipset manufacturers (VIA, SiS, etc.). I am really very disappointed to have to get rid of the 9600 pro, as if it worked as it should, it would be one of the best vga cards ever. Good luck to all of the people sticking with ATI, your loyalty and persistence in trying to get this issue resolved is frankly more than any company that makes claims its products dont live up to (in this case 8x AGP compatability) deserves. I'll continue to keep an eye on this thread in the hope that they do come up with a fix; if so, I might give them another go the next time I'm in the market for a video card.

i wouldnt have sold my 9600 Pro yet until cat 4.0/3.10 comes out. Their is supposed to be a fix for the 9600 Pro in the new driver and i would have atleast tried that first. We can't do anything to fix the problem; it all depends on ATI's drivers which doesnt make me feel to good inside but i cant do anything about it (no cash to buy a new card).

I did not now there where so many problems with this card, after I read this forum. I thought I was the only one. I have purchased the 9600 pro (Club3d) like a month ago. In the first weeks it performed alright. But then the horror began. Every time I played a game the thing stopped with it only after a few minutes. When I stay in winxp everything works ok. Butt...! What happens with me when he hangs, is that the whole pc gets in a situation where it can't get out off. Even after rebooting the whole pc it still not working. Only after disconnecting some power cables and rebooting a "hundred" times, he starts up again. Then back in Win I get the massage that the videocard has been in a loop, and that the program had to be stopped.

I bought a ATI becouse a thought that it was a reliable, good for the wallet, card. But I am starting to believe that NVidia has got the things better worked out. (Or it is just the cheap Club3d)

PS: I have got an EPOX mobo and a AMD Athlon XP 1800+, for anyone who cares.

Hi, I recently purchased a ATI Radeon Retail 9600XT 128mb, stuck it in my comp after a complete clean format, installed newest cat's tryed my favorite game(s) and my comp freezes before even i can select/play anything, as soon as anything graphical pop's up it just chrokes.

SPECS:
Mobo: ECS k7s5a PCB v3.1 newest bios
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Ram: 2x 512mb Korsair pc2700
Psu: 400w Powermax

I've tryed countless thing's i.e Basically all ati driver's known to man, bios setting's and so on. i know the card isn't faulty because we tryed it on my friend's rig and it works flawlessly. I had a GF4 mx420 in this rig before i switched to the ati card cause it whould obviously make a huge perfromance increase, but i've yet to play 1 second of a game not even a second hell i cant even get teh game to load past the menu's, mouse lock's up comp freezes sound somtime's either play's or stutter's and that causes for a reboot. I need info of any way to resolve this issue soon or im going to go insane.

Thx C.

Hiya - doing these things appear to have 'cured' pretty nearly everyone

If you've problems with either (mine's 9800) do the following until it works (assuming PSU and memory fine and that the *card*is*cool* - 9600 and 9800 get VERY hot)

(1) use catalyst 3.7, 3.4 or 3.2 - VPU recover makes things crash and needs to be off, and 3.8 and 3.9 both appear flaky
(2) reduce Hardware Acceleration 2 notches from full
(3) in BOTH BIOS AND CONTROL PANEL shift AGP frequency to 4x and switch off fast write (there'll be no real reduction in speed - no game currently uses 8x), and change AGP aperture to 64Mb in BIOS (for these cards there's no need for anything higher)
(4) go to the SmartGart app in the ATi programs folder and switch AGP Write to OFF leaving everything else ON
(5) switch off anti-spyware, anti-virus, firewall apps before playing (offline obviously!)
(6) having made settings in control panel, uninstall the control panel
(7) do a clean boot before playing
(8) boost AGP voltage in BIOS to 1.6 or higher (be gentle!)
(9) reduce fsb frequency / underclock your CPU - getting it down to 2GHz (or equivalent for AMP chips) seems to be about right
(10) disable plug and play - but then you may well lose your sound, so not so good...

The 9600 and 9800 are related, cutting edge cards that replace the 9500 and 9700 - that's why we've probs, we're basically early adopters. Just gotta hope that Cat 4.0 / next DirectX9 release help sort things out.

Cheers

Sam

HEY EVERYONE HERE IS THE SOLUTION TO "GAME HANG FREEZES":

Well basically ALL brands of ATI is off an ACTTT WFX, system flow bios turk that has a built in only DX9.0 Support. Well the thing is ALL 9600Pro's or 9600's support Direct X9.0+ thats the thing, now ah days most games even new releases are DirectX8.0+ which basically means that Radeon9600's dont have an advantage with it and "basically u can call that an incompatability problem with the game and the card" thats why game problems accur "No matter what you do even if u have the latest catalyst ur Radeon will never +FULLY+ Support anything below DX9.0 because its built for DX9.0 only and for the next generation gaming such as HalfLife2".... 9600pro's do run and play most DX7.1+8.0 games, and yes you could adjust card performance by decreasing it just to play ur game. I dont think that'd would be a good idea so mainly this problem in this forum can never be resolved.

Approved by "System Computers Analyst"
Approved and tested by "Simply Computers Technician's"
My answer supported by Computer Hardware Specialist.

Dont question the answer because the answer is the point. Goodluck everyone i hoped i proved a point here coz thats the main reason Hang Freezes accur due DirectX Game incompatabilities with the card. im sorry if this thread is too long but i couldn't have said it in a better way. Thanks guys

I dont have any problems with my pc my pc is the one my pc is theeee MX357 VAPOCHILL Series System built by michaelscomputers. i have to say im sorry

lol omg, it doesn't take a normal person to figure that out really. plus by now i guess everyone would have known that!!!!.... but anyways just read twice read trice read frice and my thread above is true.

Kind Regards
Michael

Here what i found after hours of research....
Will try this tonight.

Ps: I don't think DirectX9 has something to do with our issue as many other cards are native DirectX9.

Ps2: If someone have the ATI BIOS file for an ATI made RADEON 9600 Pro that would be excellent.

My config:
PIV 2.4
ASUS P4P800 DELUX
ATI 9600 Pro
DDR 1g

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Q1. I installed the card, and I thought I would try it with the shipped drivers. Installation went perfectly, restarted the computer, and tried running 3DMark 03… It started off well, I was impressed with the frame rate, then all of a sudden *POOF* the computer freezes. So I restart thinking it is a random freeze, so I start 3DMark 03 again, *POOF*, it freezes again ?

A1. Fix this problem by cranking up the AGP voltage and installing the latest catalysts. But it turns out the problem is the compatibility with the KT400a chipset, which is being worked on by the techs at ATI, and will be fixed in an upcoming driver release, and this can be fixed in the interim by changing the AGP speed from 8x down to 4x, or by setting the AGP voltage to 1.8v.
--------------------- reference: http://www.gecube.com.tw/faq.php?modID=7 --------------------------------------------

Hi Folks, I m back. Okay I spent the best part of a week rearranging my system and I will tell you what happened, but first lets have a good look at the problem. All of us have some type of Radeon card, not always a 9600 Pro, some of us have 9800, 9800 Pro etc, and the problems thus far are not just connected witht he 9600 Pro. So the common factors here could be (note that - could be!!!!), the use of DX9, ATI drivers, MOBO Chipsets, OS software (Win XP), CPU Speed. That is a brief but wide ranging group of factors.
Lets look at each in turn.
DX9 - if its this, then can we stick to DX8 till DX10 or somthing better arrives?
ATI Drivers- was a source of problems in the past but if ATI is to be believed, then new improved ones will arrive in do course- use the oldest ones that work the best- maybe the old ones will not run all games, but some working is better than none!!!!
MOBO Chipsets- The only types I have used are VIA and in the past week NForce2 (more on that later) VIA and Soundblaster are not bosom buddies- so its make your mind up- keep your mobo and get a new soundcard, new mobo or search for a patch that makes life between soundblaster and VIA better.
OS -Win XP seems a pain, I was once told that of all the versions of Wins 98 was the most popular, others have simple come and gone- wonder why. ME, 2000 and so on, perhaps XP is the way forward, but till games are not supported in 98 Se why use XP, unless you have shop bought system, but then grab a Win 98 disk if you can.
CPU- sometimes the faster system the the worse the problems- Most people are using 2400 plus Athlons, maybe the sytem is too fast for the card!!!! Perhaps underclocking your rig might help.
Now I had an older mobo that only had a 4x AGP slot and was VIA, no please don't take this as the only way forward, but I got a good deal from a local shop on a NForce board that re used my older memory -512 (333)ddr AND 2100+ Athlon, the board will allow me to add a 3200+ CPU when they become affordable next year- if I want too.
I took my old mobo out, re formatted the C: drive to remove any possible drivers, installed Win 98SE (my fav), installed the mobo drivers from the cd supplied, added the drivers from the gigabyte cd, up graded the DX too DX8 -not DX9 and installed the ATI stuff fro m the cd- but not the Hyper stuff for - only the drivers from the disk. Checked the system, card works in 8X or 4X but I have left it in 8X. run the DX8 tests- all fine and run Unreal 2 for the past few days- no problems. I don't see the need to use DX9 yet and any game that needs that will have to wait till a newer version is out.
Now I will try out NWNs and see what happens and the Jedi Outcast game too.
Now don't have a go at me, but I taking things slowly here and one final point. I considered a swop for the NVidia card, till I found out that they too have problems- plus the Mid range NVidia cards are not as good on the feature front as the ATI ones.
See Ya Folks
Twilight
PS I know Gigabyte are slightly different, perhaps I might start a Gigabyte thread that is for Gigabyte cards only- any thoughts folks????
PPS I used a Soltek mobo with NForce2 Chipset, soundblaster live, DX8 and Cat driver 3.7