Something Screwed up w/my Radeon 9600??????

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Hi:

Essentials of system:

Windows ME
Athlon XP +2600
ASUS A7N8X motherboard
512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory

I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
because things seemed satisfactory.

Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
place.

I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
3D settings set at "performance."

The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.

Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.

Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?

TIA.

Tom Young

 

[TR]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Have a 9600 also and race Nascar 2003 on line. Was getting bboted out of
game and I isolated the problem to DirectX 9.0c. Did a system restore and
everything is okay. Revert to 9.0b and it may solve your problem.

"Tom Young" <tgyoung@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b2eecfd8.0410110746.5a87bcd2@posting.google.com...
> Hi:
>
> Essentials of system:
>
> Windows ME
> Athlon XP +2600
> ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
>
> I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
> held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
> CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
> because things seemed satisfactory.
>
> Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
> install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
> drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
> card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
> Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
> files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
> fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
> the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
> action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
> place.
>
> I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
> possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
> suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
> the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
> nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
> properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
> acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
> think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
> 3D settings set at "performance."
>
> The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.
>
> Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.
>
> Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?
>
> TIA.
>
> Tom Young

 

[TR]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

I have a 9600 pro and experienced graphics lockups when gaming after I
installed DirectX 9.0c. I did a lot of unecessary work just as you did.
Finally did a system restore to date before upgrade. System is fine now. No
problems. Was in a forum the other day and saw that the 9600's were having
problems after direct X upgrade.

"Tom Young" <tgyoung@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b2eecfd8.0410110746.5a87bcd2@posting.google.com...
> Hi:
>
> Essentials of system:
>
> Windows ME
> Athlon XP +2600
> ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
>
> I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
> held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
> CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
> because things seemed satisfactory.
>
> Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
> install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
> drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
> card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
> Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
> files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
> fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
> the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
> action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
> place.
>
> I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
> possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
> suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
> the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
> nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
> properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
> acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
> think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
> 3D settings set at "performance."
>
> The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.
>
> Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.
>
> Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?
>
> TIA.
>
> Tom Young

 

[geoff]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Tom Young wrote:
> Hi:
>
> Essentials of system:
>
> Windows ME
> Athlon XP +2600
> ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
>

bin muppet edition for starters

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

"TR" <who@where.com> wrote in message news:<Exzad.226417$D%.209266@attbi_s51>...
> Have a 9600 also and race Nascar 2003 on line. Was getting bboted out of
> game and I isolated the problem to DirectX 9.0c. Did a system restore and
> everything is okay. Revert to 9.0b and it may solve your problem.
>
> "Tom Young" <tgyoung@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:b2eecfd8.0410110746.5a87bcd2@posting.google.com...
> > Hi:
> >
> > Essentials of system:
> >
> > Windows ME
> > Athlon XP +2600
> > ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> > 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> > Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
> >
> > I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
> > held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
> > CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
> > because things seemed satisfactory.
> >
> > Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
> > install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
> > drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
> > card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
> > Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
> > files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
> > fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
> > the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
> > action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
> > place.
> >
> > I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
> > possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
> > suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
> > the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
> > nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
> > properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
> > acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
> > think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
> > 3D settings set at "performance."
> >
> > The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.
> >
> > Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.
> >
> > Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?
> >
> > TIA.
> >
> > Tom Young


I didn't mention every single step I'd taken in the process - too long
- but right after the fresh install of Windows ME I downloaded and
installed DirectX 9.0b. After installing Quake 3 and copying over the
Quake files I saw the wildly fluctuating FPS. Found the DirectX 9.0c
download and installed that, with no improvement.

Doesn't seem like DirectX is the source of my problem.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

"Geoff" <fooooooool@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<2t0edkF1oik5tU1@uni-berlin.de>...
> Tom Young wrote:
> > Hi:
> >
> > Essentials of system:
> >
> > Windows ME
> > Athlon XP +2600
> > ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> > 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> > Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
> >
>
> bin muppet edition for starters

Sorry, that's a little too obscure for me to understand. Are you
dissing WinME? This setup worked OK before, so I don't think that has
anything to do with it.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

tgyoung@yahoo.com (Tom Young) wrote in message news:<b2eecfd8.0410110746.5a87bcd2@posting.google.com>...
> Hi:
>
> Essentials of system:
>
> Windows ME
> Athlon XP +2600
> ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
>
> I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
> held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
> CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
> because things seemed satisfactory.
>
> Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
> install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
> drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
> card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
> Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
> files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
> fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
> the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
> action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
> place.
>
> I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
> possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
> suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
> the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
> nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
> properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
> acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
> think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
> 3D settings set at "performance."
>
> The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.
>
> Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.
>
> Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?
>
> TIA.
>
> Tom Young

It looks like the problem had something to do with conflicts between
the graphic card drivers and imbedded sound card on the A7N8X
motherboard. Removed the sound card via Control Panel > System and
disabled the sound card via BIOS then installed a new Sound Blaster
PCI sound card; FPS seem to be back up where they were before. I had
removed the "latest and greatest" ATI drivers and installed the same
drivers I was using before the new WinME install, but I hadn't
uninstalled the "latest and greatest" NVIDIA drivers; looks like the
NVIDIA drivers caused the conflict.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

tgyoung@yahoo.com (Tom Young) wrote in
news:b2eecfd8.0410191007.e34ff5@posting.google.com:


> drivers I was using before the new WinME install


new WinME install!!!!

you are totally insane!!!!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Good Man <heyho@letsgo.com> wrote in message news:<Xns958796A944A4sonicyouth@216.196.97.132>...
> tgyoung@yahoo.com (Tom Young) wrote in
> news:b2eecfd8.0410191007.e34ff5@posting.google.com:
>
>
> > drivers I was using before the new WinME install
>
>
> new WinME install!!!!
>
> you are totally insane!!!!

Thanks for the helpful suggestion.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

tgyoung@yahoo.com (Tom Young) wrote in message news:<b2eecfd8.0410191007.e34ff5@posting.google.com>...
> tgyoung@yahoo.com (Tom Young) wrote in message news:<b2eecfd8.0410110746.5a87bcd2@posting.google.com>...
> > Hi:
> >
> > Essentials of system:
> >
> > Windows ME
> > Athlon XP +2600
> > ASUS A7N8X motherboard
> > 512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
> > Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
> >
> > I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
> > held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
> > CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
> > because things seemed satisfactory.
> >
> > Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
> > install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
> > drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
> > card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
> > Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
> > files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
> > fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
> > the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
> > action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
> > place.
> >
> > I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
> > possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
> > suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
> > the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
> > nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
> > properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
> > acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
> > think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
> > 3D settings set at "performance."
> >
> > The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.
> >
> > Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.
> >
> > Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?
> >
> > TIA.
> >
> > Tom Young
>
> It looks like the problem had something to do with conflicts between
> the graphic card drivers and imbedded sound card on the A7N8X
> motherboard. Removed the sound card via Control Panel > System and
> disabled the sound card via BIOS then installed a new Sound Blaster
> PCI sound card; FPS seem to be back up where they were before. I had
> removed the "latest and greatest" ATI drivers and installed the same
> drivers I was using before the new WinME install, but I hadn't
> uninstalled the "latest and greatest" NVIDIA drivers; looks like the
> NVIDIA drivers caused the conflict.


Well, it seems I spoke too soon. Although the FPS were good
immediately after the install of the new sound card, when I tried
again later in the day the FPS were bouncing all over again, dropping
down to the 60's at points. I still think it's some sort of driver
conflict issue, but don't know what else to try at this point.