x1950 Pro AGP crashes and other unstable behavior

[s4fun]

To date I've been experimenting with one Powercolor X1950 Pro AGP on a number of platforms, i.e. any combinations of the following:
- Motherboards:
Abit AV8
Gigabyte Ga-K8U-939
Asus A8V-deluxe
- CPUs
Amd64 3000+
Amd64 3500+
Amd64x2 4400+
- PSU
450W, 28A on 12v
500W, 30A on 12v
600W, dual rail 20A on 12V1 + 18A on 12V2

And the consistent answer has been random crashes in the first pass of running 3dMark03 or 3dMark 05. Sometimes it is a crash to desktop other times it is a hard system lockup, sometimes requiring pulling the plug since the hardware reset doesn't work sometimes, and it is unpredictable when it crashes, but it has never finished a 3dMark03 or 3dMark05 test run before crashing.

I've tried a number of combinations of 4x/8x, fast write off/on, boosting the AGP voltage, and none of them seemed to matter. I was hoping to obselete and replace a 6600GT or 6800GT, but as of now I've had to RMA
the board.

Has anyone seen behavior like this on their x1950 pro AGP?

Thanks.

 

[blade85]

yeah there are alot of posts here about the x1950 pro going crazy. Its a case of some component not being upto scratch.


the only way to fix it will have to be to send this card back and get another one.

 

[s4fun]

Is it just that I'm unlucky, or is it that ATI lets all these board manufacturers and OEMs have lower standards?

Because I had to go through this 15 months ago with the X850xt on my Gigabyte board, which took a couple tries to get stable. And then going back 2.5 years ago, I had the same kind of problems with the 9800xt on a Socket A system. Random crashes lock up etc. This x1950 pro is particularly bad, less 10 min before crashing, although it was more tiresome to find a crash after 3 hours of testing, and to consistently reproduce it.

Why doesn't ATI stuff just work like my 6800gt? Or the silent passively cooled 7600gs in my Shuttle G5 HTPC? Heck, that little thing is even doing a passable job on Company of Heroes.

The question is, should I bother to try again with any ATI board? Perhaps it is time just to go PCI-E and Core 2 Duo and stick with nVidia.

 

[kaotao]

I'd say you've just had plain old bad luck. The majority of the cards I've owned were ATI, and I never had any problems. I'd RMA it and try again.

 

[HunterKiller_]

I've got the same model in PCI-e. Has stability issues, too.
This is also the first time I've used an ATi card, needless to say, it will be my last.

 

[blade85]

I'd say you've just had plain old bad luck. The majority of the cards I've owned were ATI, and I never had any problems. I'd RMA it and try again.

yeah, my last 3 cards were ati and they all worked fine. I had 1 nvidia in between but didnt like the image quality in game compared with the ati ones, so i switched back.

 

[kaotao]

This is also the first time I've used an ATi card, needless to say, it will be my last.

ok... :roll:

 

[s4fun]

If I were to try again, how long do you all reckon I should wait for the problem to be sorted out by ATI and the various board manufacturers?

More importantly, is it a known problem that they are trying to keep hush-hush and trying to fix and getting the right components out, or is it something they haven't even figured out yet and have not decided what to do?

 

[muffin]

My 1950 pro works fine - no problems at all, other than I hate the "Catalyst Control Center" and don't install it. Are you sure you're installing your AGP driver and DirectX?

 

[s4fun]

Hello Muffin,

Canyou tell me what motherboard, x1950pro manufacturer, and PSU you are using? Thanks.

BTW, I do install the AGP drivers for the motherboard, and I do install the DX9c the August 2006 release. I tried the latest of everything, and I've tried the "golden sample" ones, i.e. the ones that worked stably on my x850xt and 6800gt, and in all cases I get random crashes and lockup somewhere in the middle of the 3dMark testing. I didn't even bother to try any games, because it would be a major waste of time to the other players have it crash in the middle of an online match in Company of Heroes or Call of Duty 2, and get people pissed off.

 

[sandok]

A lot of the problems with these cards seem to be caused by overheating of the VRMs (Voltage Regulator Modules). See these links: Silent PC Review forum and Sapphire tech support forum

Although most of the references talk about the Sapphire cards the problem occurs with other cards as well.

 

[barathum]

Have you connected the two molex connector to the AGP card? Most people only attach 1 molex.

I have the gecube x1950p agp for almost a month now and have no issues (besides screen flicker/refreshing everytime NWN2 loads a new area).

My System:
AXP 3000+ (Barton)
GA-7N400Pro2 Rev 2
2x 256 Mb PC 2700
Enlight 400w (15A on 12v rail!!!)

I have a concern with my low amperage on 12v rail, but as for now I can't afford another 80 bucks for a new PSU, maybe next month.

 

[Kutter]

I also have a Powercolor x1950 AGP card and have been having problems with it.

I have now tried it on two different builds and it is consistently crashing in World of Warcraft. I've checked everything else (Memtest 86 - no problem; Prime95 - no problem) - everything is pointing to the card.

What happens is that after a short amount of gameplay the screen goes blank and my monitor loses it's video signal. I'm forced to do a hard reboot.

I don't have any problems in 2D desktop work.

I will try running 3D mark and see what happens.

Hopefully I don't have any hassle RMA'ing it.

 

[s4fun]

Thanks Kutter.

That is exactly the symptoms I've seen with it. I don't know if for a fact the VRM component on these boards are bad or not, or if they just lack adequate cooling/heatsinks on them. But from researching this thing, that seems to be most common recognized source for this problem. It also seem to apply to some PCI-Express version of this thing too, and across a range of makes.

 

[JustJack]

I have the GeCube version which has only presented a problem with Serious Sam 2 (previous post) in that the Greendale demo does not play smoothly. I have not had any other problems.
I played Quake 4 from start to finish over the xmas period without problems at 1600/1200 with high details. Just completed 2 play throughs of Starship Troopers same. I'm now in the middle of Cold War not as taxing for graphics and still OK.

Day to day stuff fine.

The only thing to consider is to make sure you have removed all drivers, I used DriverCleaner, and make sure you go through safe mode to zap everything before you attempt to install the new one. I would also perform cold boots in between stages.

Otherwise you have a duff GPU.

 

[Kutter]

Update:

After going through the forums at www.worldofwarcraft.com I found that there were a lot of people having problems with x1950 cards. I made the decision to RMA my x1950 Pro and return it for refund.

I picked up a BFG 7950 GT OC today and installed it. Happily I play 2.5 hours of WoW tonight without a single crash or issue.

I clearly had an issue running on the ATI card - whether the card was bad or it was a driver issue - I'm not sure - but my guess is that the problem was the hardware itself.

 

[Mach5Motorsport]

Update:

After going through the forums at www.worldofwarcraft.com I found that there were a lot of people having problems with x1950 cards. I made the decision to RMA my x1950 Pro and return it for refund.

I picked up a BFG 7950 GT OC today and installed it. Happily I play 2.5 hours of WoW tonight without a single crash or issue.

I clearly had an issue running on the ATI card - whether the card was bad or it was a driver issue - I'm not sure - but my guess is that the problem was the hardware itself.

Glad to hear you are up and running now. Just wondering how you could return an X1950Pro AGP card and replace it with a 7950 GT PCIe card without any other changes? Do you have an asrock mobo or are the x1950 problems occurring on both interfaces? 8O

 

[mhtsaras]

I have Gecube RADEON X1950 PRO, 256MB GDDR 3, AGP 8X Edition and for two days now, I cant manage to make it work.
After I install ATI catalyst drivers I reboot and after I make the desktop resolution 1024x768 @85 or 100 Hz, I cant acess catalyst control centers section with 3D settings.(the moving car in a road )
It always crashes catalyst C.C and give me an error message.
And after the first reboot after the driver instalation 5 out of 6 times I cant boot to windows to the log in screen.It restarts the pc with a blue screen or freezes it, the blue screen says something about an error with ati2dvag.
The card works fine only with the standard VGA windows xp drivers.
I tryied Gecube's drivers and the last catalyst 7.1 drivers, but still tha same.
Could it be a driver issue? Like a conflict with my old ati 9800 pro or 9250 drivers?
Could it be a power issue? I have a 480W tagan Power supply unit and it has 28A on 12v.
I returned the Gecube X1950 pro AGP back to the store, they test it and they said it had a problem and gave me a new one
I formated, and after a fresh install of win xp and all the updates and dx9c, I cant acces Catalyst control center's 3D settings, with this new one X1950 pro AGP.
When it tryies to render the 3d car on the road in the preview window, it gives me a blank window with an error message from windows with the directx sign, titled "windowed preview application" and asks to send the problem to microsoft with Error signature :
AppName: preview.exe
AppVer: 1.0.0.4
ModName: atioglxx.dll
ModVer: 6.14.10.6287
Offset: 000e1258
And the other thing is that if you search the words " x1950 reboot crash" on google, you will find thousands of forum posts all over the world, with unhappy people with x1950, that they are returning those cards and replace them with nvidia more stable ones.
I don't think that there is a problem with the PSU's, the problem is that x1950 pro's suck major.
Where is ati drivers crew to fix something, is anybody home??
My pc has :
Winxp, Athlon XP 2800+, tagan psu 480W, two dvd recorders, two HD drives.

 

[JustJack]

mhtsaras as you state you have the GeCube version, which is what I have (see previous post) however you state your PSU has 28A on the 12V rail. This is the problem. The user manual for the 1950 Pro from Gecube states you need at least a 450W supply with 30A on the 12V rail.

I upgrade my suppy to the Seasonic 550W S12 with 41A on the 12V rail and have not suffered any problems with booting or crashes.

Make sure you use the supplied 2 4-pin molex to 1 6-pin PCI Express converter and put the molex on two different lines.

I have checked my 3DMark05/06 scores and they are inline with others whether they have AGP or PCI Express.

I would definitely say it is your PSU.

 

[s4fun]

Hey Jack,

Do you play Company of Heroes on your x1950 pro agp? Or anyone else for that matter, do you experience random lock-ups and hangs when running CoH with the x1950 pro agp or even pci-e for that matter?

I am also seeing this kind of behavior on my another of my systems, running the x850 xt. My other machines using nVidia seems to a whole lot more stable than the ones running ATI concerning CoH?

I was wondering if anyone else can confirm or deny this?

Thanks.

 

[mhtsaras]

I know that the manual says that 450W, and 30A on 12v rail needed, but usualy those specs are the highest to have you covered with many power hungry harware and usualy all the hardware can work with lower amps and/or voltage.
In many pc stores they give 500-600W PSUs, with 18-24A on the 12v rail, to give power to the more power hungry chip of NVIDIA G80 and 8800 gr.cards.but usualy they have 2 x 12v rails(2 x 20A =40A ???)
On the other hand, x1950 pro is based on RV570 which is more power efficient, and in many forums, x1950 owners, stated that they can work with lower than 30A on the 12v rail.
If the x1950 cards can't work with lower ampere than 30 on the 12v rail, then all the boxes should have it printed in fornt for the people to know, not printed in a manual inside the box so you must buy it first.
We should all send e-mails with complains to the comitee which sopports the consumers that they are try to cover some facts, like the need of special PSU with spesific specs and not any PSU.
Buying a >30A on 12v PSU I need 110-150 euros + 210 euros X1950 = 340 euros total cost for a graphic card upgrade.
I can save the extra PSU money for a 2008 DX10 buy and pc upgrade.
The one thing that makes me believe that this is not a power only problem, is that once I manage to boot on WinXP, the only problem that I have is that Catalyst control center can't render the 3d settings (the moving car on a road) and crashes with out causing problems to pc.
And the boot crash hapens when windows try to load the driver and the hardware mouse pointer, the card stop sending signal to the monitor which goes on standby mode. A driver conflict?

 

[NamelessMC]

Glad to hear you are up and running now. Just wondering how you could return an X1950Pro AGP card and replace it with a 7950 GT PCIe card without any other changes? Do you have an asrock mobo or are the x1950 problems occurring on both interfaces? 8O

Nice try at being a sarcastic moron, but he's not the original poster of the thread, so maybe his 1950 Pro isn't AGP, he just said he had a 1950Pro and it had problems, but maybe he misquoted the AGP part of it.
Instead of trying to pick holes in people's 1950 Pro problems, how about addressing the issue head strong?

Anyway, a lot of people are having problems with the 1950Pro.

What I think is the real issue is that the 1950Pro is a high maintenance hot girlfriend. She's great in bed but you better have the best things in life or she'll dump you.

The 1950Pro AGP makes this even more of an issue.

The sad thing is, the 1950Pro AGP is considerably more than the PCI-E version, and when you factor in having to upgrade your power-supply and buying stand-alone cooling, you end up spending more than the advertised and gloated "$220 for high-end performance" that 1950Pro users boast about.

It ends up being a better option to ditch the AGP set up, and spend money on a PCI-E motherboard set up with a 7900GS.

The 1950XT and 1900XT and 1900GT etc are all great cards, so please don't associate the mixed results of a 1950 Pro's stability with those cards. I'm running a lot of games, even WoW on my 256MB 1950XT and I haven't had any stability issues what-so-ever.

 

[JustJack]

S4fun: I haven't looked at COH as yet. The only one of the limited number of titles I have tried since upgrading that has shown a problem is Serious Same 2. I am going to reinstall it this coming weekend. I will also look at some of my other titles that benefit from a good GPU such as FEAR. Will provide update after.

mhtsaras: Yours does sound like a software conflict. Did you have any problems during your install of ATI drivers and CCC? I had to disable Zonealarm to get mine to install fully. I have had mine up and running for over a month now - no crashes and no problems with CCC. The important aspect of the PSU is the total Amp on the 12V rail and how you spread your use of it. That is why I mentioned it.

NamelessMC: I would say lack of information in letting people know that they may need a new PSU to run the card is at fault. I did some reading on PSU's before I got my card and was aware I may require a new one. The supplied manual confirmed it so I got Seasonic 550W and have no problems. Yes it made the upgrade more costly but still a lot cheaper than buying a new system which if I went that route it would be DX10, etc and as such you are talking £1500 plus easy. definitely not worth doing at this time. Looking to go Vista/DX10 ten some point in 2008.

 

[s4fun]

I would argue that including the cost the PSU as part of the upgrade is questionable, given that you'll probably need a new PSU for a new system or even just switching to a PCI-E board with an equivalent mid-to-high end video card, especially if your starting point was some 300-350w 18A PSU. The PSU will need an upgrade either way.

So at $200-$250 for the AGP x1950 pro compared to a $175-$225 PCI-E version the delta of $25 give or take is really not enough to cover the PCI-E motherboard and the hassle of reinstalling all software and such. Additionally, if I were to switch to PCI-E at this point, I'd trickle down all of my socket 939 parts to the other systems and go straight to Core 2 Duo, which means costs spike up to cover motherboard, memory, and processor.

And out of pure cussed-ness, I don't think we should have to switch to PCI-E just because the industry wants us to. We should only have to switch on our own terms. My 4400+ x2 is still good for another two years as my main machine and then it will still be good as hand-me-downs to the other machines, and similarily the x1950 pro will find to a new role in a couple of years.

 

[Gary_Busey]

Glad to hear you are up and running now. Just wondering how you could return an X1950Pro AGP card and replace it with a 7950 GT PCIe card without any other changes? Do you have an asrock mobo or are the x1950 problems occurring on both interfaces? 8O

Nice try at being a sarcastic moron, but he's not the original poster of the thread, so maybe his 1950 Pro isn't AGP, he just said he had a 1950Pro and it had problems, but maybe he misquoted the AGP part of it.
Instead of trying to pick holes in people's 1950 Pro problems, how about addressing the issue head strong?

Anyway, a lot of people are having problems with the 1950Pro.

What I think is the real issue is that the 1950Pro is a high maintenance hot girlfriend. She's great in bed but you better have the best things in life or she'll dump you.

The 1950Pro AGP makes this even more of an issue.

The sad thing is, the 1950Pro AGP is considerably more than the PCI-E version, and when you factor in having to upgrade your power-supply and buying stand-alone cooling, you end up spending more than the advertised and gloated "$220 for high-end performance" that 1950Pro users boast about.

It ends up being a better option to ditch the AGP set up, and spend money on a PCI-E motherboard set up with a 7900GS.

The 1950XT and 1900XT and 1900GT etc are all great cards, so please don't associate the mixed results of a 1950 Pro's stability with those cards. I'm running a lot of games, even WoW on my 256MB 1950XT and I haven't had any stability issues what-so-ever.
Way to come up with the worst case scenario when judging and entire line of cards. I have an X1950Pro AGP and have had zero problems with it, and since I bought the HIS IceQ version, for $229, it's idle at 35C, so it's nice and cool. Even if you had to upgrade to a new PSU, I only paid $50 for mine and it works perfectly, along with powering 3 case fans and and an overclocked CPU. Don't be so quick to jump on the PCI-E train or condemn the X1950 Pro.