Video Card Help

[lordroba]

So I recently bought a new video card, a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP. I need help cause i've been having a few problems with it, and this is usually a pretty helpful place.

Anyways, here are some of the symptoms; flashing when scrolling in internet, 3d games freeze/lag, after playing 3d games for a while the signal from the video card just stops being sent and the moniter goes all dark.

Here's what i've tried to do; made sure it was installed correctly, cleaned out all the dust inside my computer, installed various drivers from ATI website, and new drivers for my motherboard.

Here are some of my computer stats (from dxdiag)

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
System Model: Aspire T135
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3100+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 413MB used, 1090MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

I don't know what's wrong... So any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Andy]

sounds like a driver problem. try to uninstall the driver completely, download it from the AMD site, and reinstall only the driver. ditch catalyst, its pretty useless

[Mayday]

it Indeed could be a driver problem, But .... one of my friends actually had a smilier problem games would freeze, and what not ..... we kept looking at it for weeks on end not really knowing what was the problem, we tried unistalling the drivers reinstalling new updates, heck we even tried differnt motheboreds. nothing worked. What it actually turned out to be was that the FAN was connected correctly. Or as to say, one of the circuts that controlled the fan was actually accidently be re-routed and then being routed right back to the fan. it was always only split seconds and you could never here anything when the fan was stopped. But because of that it caused things to freeze, or make the screen shut down. .......

I actually have a Question of my own. Sometimes when i use Steam to play anything CSS, HL2, or DOD, my entire system would just shutdown ....does any1 know why this happens, I have looked at it, Even tried taking it in and getting it revamped. but it still does it .... i have updated all drivers, and everything ...... but it still does it every so often.

[War_Caymore]

Mayday wrote:

I actually have a Question of my own. Sometimes when i use Steam to play anything CSS, HL2, or DOD, my entire system would just shutdown ....does any1 know why this happens, I have looked at it, Even tried taking it in and getting it revamped. but it still does it .... i have updated all drivers, and everything ...... but it still does it every so often.

I have had my share of problem with "steam". I tried installing it to play half life 2 and, out of nowhere, my whole computer froze. I decided to reboot and try again, same thing. I run XP Home (service pack 2), and it never works, yet it runs perfectly fine on my friends windows 98.

anways, back to the subject at hand....

lordroba wrote:

So I recently bought a new video card, a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP. I need help cause i've been having a few problems with it, and this is usually a pretty helpful place.

Anyways, here are some of the symptoms; flashing when scrolling in internet, 3d games freeze/lag, after playing 3d games for a while the signal from the video card just stops being sent and the moniter goes all dark.

Honestly, other than what others have already suggested, i don't know what else to day... Mabey your Mobo isn't compatible with the ATI graphics card. Thats the only other reasonable explination that i can think of for your graphics going all crippy... What make is your mobo? Mabey, jsut to clear up my thesis, try anoher ATI card, and mabey try a GeForce. With any luck, you might find a resolution. Sorry i can't be of much help....

[Andy]

unless its a per-unit defect, i don't see how a video card can be incompatible with a mobo. ATI tests all their gpus against all chipsets. And the stress stability scores in top 5 percentile.

[War_Caymore]

Andy @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:33 pm wrote:

unless its a per-unit defect, i don't see how a video card can be incompatible with a mobo. ATI tests all their gpus against all chipsets. And the stress stability scores in top 5 percentile.

Thanks for making me feel stupid

[Andy]

I'd rather feel stupid than be ignorant. I've worked at both ATI and NVIDIA, so trust me, I know what I'm talking about.

[Toxic_Ninja]

Good god man! Why oh why would you buy such an old videocard? Anyway I recently traded up from a Radeon 9500 to a Radeon x1650 myself and had the same problems, just went over to the ati site and got a new Catalyst driver and it works! Maybe it's your monitor?

[Andy]

right because a monitor can CLEARLY cause a computer to lag. What's next? It'll steal my megahertz?

[Mazer]

Maybe he's using an LCD that doesn't support lower resolutions, thus forcing his hardware to try to run a demanding game at a high resolution? Oh, hell, I haven't been paying attention to the thread anyways.

[lordroba]

the reason i got the card is that before i had a radeon 9200 128mb, so for $25 it was a nice step up. Anyways, thanks for the help, i'll be trying some of your suggestions over the weekend. (BTW i have a standard CRT)