I have the same freezing problems as most here, except my board is the 9600 non-pro. I've replaced the card twice from the same vendor with no success. Used every different type of settings to try to get some games to work, and have even bought a new mobo. Still, no success.

Just about every RTS game I've tried will freeze, with the exception of one which allows me to change the mouse pointer. Tortuga - Pirate Hunter. Vietcong is the only FPS I've experianced the freeze in. And now, my latest disappointment, Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic.

Anyhow, I've gone beyond the point of frustration and am now numb to the situation. I suppose my next step will be the 9800.

My system specs, incase anyone would care.

Athlon XP 2500+
Shuttle AN35N-Ultra (Nforce2 Ultra)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis
3x 256 Giel 200mhz DDR
80gb hd @ 7200rpm\ATA100
430w psu
Sufficient cooling, and stock voltages\clocks.

Regards

I think the problem lies in the AGP bus/RAMDAC connection and has nothing to do with drivers at all.
Since the RAMDAC produces the final signal that ACTUALLY GETS SENT TO THE MONITOR, it explains some cases of very corrupted display or even monitors turning themselves off (mine did in AGP 8x). I've mailed ATI on several occaisions calling for an emergency patch/driver update for us having the problems (even linked to this extremely long string of forum posts, indicating at least several hundred faulty production samples...) but with no reply...They probably know that you have to crack the BIOS on the card wide open and change settings from there. There is NOTHING with the AGP 8x bus: the Radeon 9700 and all nVidia cards (that support it) run flawlessly at that speed. Therefore, I am confident that a "regular" driver update will not do anything to resolve this issue: only a mobo BIOS flash or GPU BIOS flash or both will do anything.

BTW: Does ANYBODY out there have a Radeon 9600 Pro with the RAM in TSOP format? I never knew that kind of sh*tty memory was even used on half decent videocards anymore... I know that the regular Radeon 9600 and EZ/SE/256 MB versions use the old TSOP packages, but on a tru blu PRO card?? I shopped around before running into my curse and saw that Sapphire had the fastest memory (2.8 ns chips : 350 DDR) and excellent overclocking potential (525+ core) so I got one. Lo and f*cking behold, the memory chips aren't even BGA and the core struggles to get past 480. I'm getting this POS exchanged for a REAL 9600 Pro. >: (

Also, on closer inspection of the first dozen or so posts to this topic, it has been 4 months since ATI has "promised" a software release to fix to this issue...once again...they know something and just aren't telling the public. Besides, any company that goes 4 months without a single driver release is going to have its board and employees dragged into the street and shot into mass graves.

Yeah i tried the video card on my friends mother board and guess what. The f**king s**t worked fine. i tried two games, Halo and SoF2. Both workee fine, on my comp neither of them worked. My friends motherboard is MSI MS-6330 Lite. I still can't get it to run on my comp.

im stuck with that VGASAVE s**t. Anyone know what can fix this? Is it the chipset or is it the motherboard. And what exactly is "flashing" the bios. Im just very frustrated with this problem. I have nightmares about it


Nforce2 chipset
Machspeed motherboard

lalalalalal *hops away*

"flashing" the bios, is when you expose yourself to your computer (with the case open of course).

just kidding. Its when you overright the bios of the actual hardware.. so if you screw it up, you really screw up your card.


Ya, same problem here.. goes away when i turn it down to 4x... but i mean, i spesifically bought it for the 8x ;(

For me, when i used the drivers that came with my card, the problem didnt' happen.. only when i update to newer versions... so maybe it is just ati's crap drivers?

anyways, hope it gets fixed soon..


Athlon 2500+,
Abit KV7,
1024 MB ddr pc3200,
Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro

Driver update in MID-2004? Have they gone fu*king mad? Everyone needs to post problems on this link, becuase they are seriously not taking notice AT ALL. £120 = bithcing rights. Bring it on page 50

http://apps.ati.com/cservice/webform.asp

All report your problems now if you haven't already. KEEP THE PRESSURE UP!

I just wanted to post that I have found the solution to this pain in the a## problem.

This thread has become so big that it took me this long to find it. In a message posted on Sept. 7, 6:33 am, (page 8 of this thread) I found a message by Matthias Noack that said:

1.) Disable "AGP FastWrite" in the BIOS
2.) Browse to your folder, where you installed the ATI Control Panel
3.) Execute file: SmartGard (this is a link)
4.) Do following settings (no matter what the auto-detection says!):
PCI Write: ON
PCI Read: ON
AGP Write: OFF
AGP Read: ON
5.) Apply
6.) automatic restart and after that WAIT some seconds because during windows logon, the driver tests your system
7.) SmartGard starts automatically and you have to confirm the new settings with "OK"
8.) Have Fun!

This worked for me!!! This is especially relieving for me because I have been struggling with this problem since October. If only this thread were much shorter, I would have found it sooner! Anyways, if any of you are still struggling with it I encourage you to try this fix. A few notes on mine:

A. I do not have an "AGP fast write" option in my bios. The only thing I had to change was AGP Write = OFF in the SmartGart.
B. The utility is called "smartgart", not smartgard. This threw me when I did a search for it.
C. Before the fix, I was having difficulty with the following games:
Age of Mythology & Age of Titans: freeze/hang when I moved the mouse
SimCity 4 Deluxe: freeze/hang 30 seconds or so after moving the mouse
Tom Clancy- Raven Shield: A really ambigous error message upon launch
Any DVD player: Freeze/hang system if you move mouse too quickly or have too many background programs running (I actually forgot to check if this is fixed yet or not)

Now everything works fine. I can't believe how easy it was. Thanks for all the help everyone, and thanks Matthias for figuring it out. I hope this works for the rest of you.

My system:

ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro (catalyst 3.9)
ECS k7s5a (no updates on the bios but updated AGP drivers)
Athlon XP 1600+
512mb DDR 2700 RAM
Windows XP Pro w/ SP1 and ALL updates
Audigy 2 ZS (updated driver-I forget which version)
Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM 8mb cache HD

here the fix for all of your problems!!!

ati has hot fix driver dated 01/12/2003 . i had all the problems you guys have with my ati built 9600 pro. now i am running my card at all settings at full. no problem at all in any game i play. my 3dmark score is up by 18 points than cat 3.9 amd pictures is better.

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4291.html

this page will say that this fix is only for call of duty. but guy from ati told me that this is for all and they will include it in future drivers. and if your card still crashing after installing this driver in that case your card is bad.

this worked for me... good luck

Just a simple question. Is anyone noticing problems running Knights of the Old Republic? I'm locking up pretty much after launching the game. I'm gonna try following the advise given in earlier posts before posting all of my machine specifics, but felt like venting to those with similar problems.

I got KOTOR to work. I downloaded the 1.01 patch for it, installed it. Opened up the config utility and turned the Hardware Mouse OFF. (After learning if the readme the patch fixed an issue with the 9600 + hw mouse)

I might also add that prior to this I had turned AGP write off, but I am uncertain if it helped or not.

Hi everyone, I have the same problem with my system and I used both ati radeon 9600 Pro and XT.
I updated with the last patch and still have the same freeze with NWN and Age of Mythology.
I've had it wasting my time wtih this sh*t.
If tech support does not give us proper aid, we should send an email to Tom's Hardware or that type
of site. I am sure they'll find a way to get some answers from the %*^**^*.

later

John, disabling the hardware mouse worked for me with NWN, but not for KOTOR. In an earlier post I read today though, someone recommended droping the hardware accelleration a notch. I did so, and I didn't crash!

However, with my hardware mouse disabled, the pointer was unbearable. So, I tried turning back on Hardware Mouse, and it still worked. And the mouse was bearable again.

I don't know about KOTOR yet, but I know that when I ran NWN with the hardware mouse disabled, I got a much poorer framerate. With the hardware accelleration lessened and the hardware mouse enabled again, I think the experience is better.

Just mentioning it as maybe you should give it a try and, if it works for you as well, see what you like best.

I have noticed that expecially 9600 has crap memory
Souu if cards work with old mobos, not with new!? New ones dont support **** memory? It might be that or not.

Nobody can solve problem exept drivers(maybe)
If u have notised someones card works with exampleN, ON, OFF & someones OFF, ON ,OFF?

I've tried disabling the Hardware mouse for NWN and it worked without downgrading the system, but the mouse sensitivity becomes very poor. I had a Gforce 3 before and everything was working great.
I haven't found any solution for Age of Mythology without of course down grading the system.
I am just saying, what's the point of getting a new card to increase performance and then decrease your system performance to actually make it work. It doesn't make sence.
Did the patch for Call of Duty worked for most of you guys ????

so that ATI tech guy said that ALL future catalyst drivers will include that patch? if so, im just gonna wait for the next driver. I'm the one who posted that patch along time ago but i guess no1 tried it.

I tried the call of duty patch/hotfix but still had the mouse freeze problem with Warcraft III. Had to turn mouse acceleration off still. I also updated from Catalyst 3.7 to 3.9 before applying the patch.

Jack Black Yeah you are the one who posted the patch along time ago but you posted the wrong and old patch. ATI has updated it since. that link that time was downloading
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012324e.exe.

and the patch i posted here is will download
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012624e.exe
do you see the difference in file names and also i stated that dated “01/12/2003”. so first read it carefully and try it before you fly and post you confusing comments to just mislead other people. This is a public forum. people usually come here to seek help to solve there problem. Your single wrong advise may run some body in serious trouble.

PRIOR to USING wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012624e.exe

you must UNINSTALL any previous version (uninstall driver and control panel both) of the RADEON display driver prior to installing this version.

When installing Display Drivers or Software a "Version Conflict" message may appear multiple times during the installation.

If you encounter a "VERSION CONFLICT" message while installing this display driver select the "NO" option to proceed.

* Selecting "NO" will ensure that the components of this driver bundle will replace your existing driver components.
* Selecting "YES" will result in a MIX of new and old driver components, which is undesirable.

It works again. A friend mine was running his ATI 9600 pro at 4X until now on VIA KT600 MSI motherboard. If we set it at 8x..boom is hang in every 10 to 20 second in any game. I just installed http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012624e.exe and guess what. It's now running at 8X with full hardware acceleration and no hang and no crash. It is running smooth for last 30 minutes. We tried crimson skies, command and control, halo, 3d mark, MS FS 2004.
before it will not stand 10 seconds in 3dmark and now after this new hot fix driver no problem at all.

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-cod-7-96-012624e.exe