Is my Radeon 9800 Pro finally dead?

[Bopper]

I thought it was a hard drive problem first but everything works perfectly normally, except as soon as I try to run a 3d-application such as a game, I hear a sound from the computer and it freezes. After I have rebooted, an ATI error message comes up saying I do not have permission to open ATI Catalyst Center. I have been using the card heavily for 18 months (a few of those months in extreme heat when I was unaware of my heat problem), then the rest of the time in above recommended heat levels, until recently when I got a new case. Everything has been working fine, and games were still working last night, but I also got a few crashes. The problem has seemed to become worse and worse, with crashes becoming more frequent until now, when any game freezes when I try to start it up. I have tried deleting the drivers and installing several different versions of it, but it still crashes whenever I load a game. Do you think this is a hardware problem or can it also be something to do with my software (even though I have not changed anything recently)?

 

[Whizzard9992]

If you're getting a permission's error, then I doubt that your card died. You get that if you're not a local admin on the machine (i.e. It's a work computer, belongs to someone else, or you have a virus that tweaked your security settings).

What kind of sound are you hearing? From the case or the speakers?

Have you tried ALT+TAB, ALT+F4, CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE to come out of the game?

Have you tried re-installing DirectX?

 

[Bopper]

It may also be a virus, since I got some weird messages about a corrupt file or something, and now my F-Secure anti-virus is telling me that the virus definitions are old even though I just checked them.

The sound comes from the computer before it crashes.

 

[Bopper]

The computer only starts if I have my graphics drivers set to "disabled" via the device manager. I don't know if it's a virus that is somehow preventing me from using my graphics card or if it is a hardware problem.

 

[Primitivus]

Usually a last resort solution when everything else has been tried, but reformatting is always a good idea in cases like that. If you do reformat and you still have problems then it's probably hardware related. Also you said you got a new case. How recently was that? Have you checked all the connections and that all the cards are sitting properly in their slots? And that the mobo is properly grounded? Sometimes with a short circuit all sorts of weird problems crop up

 

[Bopper]

I got the case about 2 months ago and everything has been working fine with it. However, I had a LED light inside the case and it failed at around the same time that the graphics card started to mess up, so I am not sure if those problems are related or not.

 

[Primitivus]

Check the documentation of your mobo to see what that LED was for. It's very likely these incidents are connected and it will give you some idea of what's going on

 

[penguin1]

To be honest. Thats exactly how my 9800PRO died. last i heard, we are not the only 9800 owners that face this problem...

but in any case, there might be a possoblilty that u dun have enough power pumping into ur card. that might be the reason as to why ur game keeps shuting down by itself or suffer from frequent clashes.. Check that u hav at least a 340W PSU.

if u have less than than, consider getting a new PSU.. but i might be wrong.