Problem with new ati 9600 pro card

[JVaudry]

I just bought a new Radeon 9600 Pro 128 meg yesterday to replace my aging GF2 MX. At first the card ran great, no apparent problems. But after a bit of gaming, my PC started freezing up accompanied by a whining or buzzing sound from the headphones. This freeze up forces me to hard reset my PC, ALT-TAB and CTRL-ALT-DELETE don't work. This has occured with EVERY game I have. I have all the latest drivers for my hardware installed, I cant figure out what the hell the problem is.

System Specs:
Windows XP Professional
Asus Motherboard (CL-something - Pentium 2/3 mobo)
Pentium 3 1000 Mhz (133 Mhz FSB)
512 meg PC 133 ram
Radeon 9600 Pro 128meg
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value

All latest drivers and DxDiag tests complete successfully.

Freezing instances:
Rise of Nations, freezes with whinning sound trough headphones as soon as I enter the "Conquer the World" tactical map.

War Craft 3: Frozen Throne, freezes with buzzing sound after 20 minutes or so of gameplay.

Morrowind, freezes with buzzing sound after 20-30 minutes of gameplay.

Raven Shield, freezes with buzzing sound after 20 minutes of gameplay.

Red Faction 2, freezes with buzz sound after of 20 minutes of gameplay.

Unreal tournament 2003, freezes with buzzing sound after 20 minutes of gameplay.

All times above are approximate.

 

[lordmaximus]

Sounds like a heat problem, i know i know its a new card and all, but becuase the times at which it freezes are all the same, it sounds like heat, i dont know if you tried running with the side cover off for a bit, or even put a fan blowing into the case. Other than that i caint think of anything else that causes that to happen.

Maximus
Out of the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.
My Rig: P4 2.4C on 875P, 1GB DDR400 Kingston, Ti 4200 128

 

[sargeduck]

What version of catalyst drivers do you have? I know the new 3.5's had a lot of bug fixes in them, and some of those games were on the list.

Also, did you completely uninstall the old nvidia drivers? They have a habit of sticking around in the registry, even after you deleted them. I formatted my hd when i went from my nvidia card to my 9600Pro. Havn't had a problem yet. If you don't want to format, I know there are programs out there which will fully get rid of all nvidia drivers.

 

[cleeve]

This could be heat, but more likely it's a power supply problem. If this is a P3, you probably have an older power supply.

You should have at least a name brand 350 watter in there. Or a generic 450 watter.

This is exactly what happened to me and a good power supply fixed it...

------------------
Radeon 9500 w/256 bit memory bus @ 367/310
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
3dMark03: 3439

 

[JVaudry]

I cant find any mention of power supplies causing problems with the 9600 on ati's website. Or even a mention of the required wattage for the card on the site or on the box, if the card dose require that kind of wattage they should really mention it on the box or at least on their site.

FYI I have a 320 w generic power supply.

 

[cleeve]

Wether they mentinon it or not, that Generic 320 watter is probably your problem.



------------------
Radeon 9500 w/256 bit memory bus @ 367/310
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
3dMark03: 3439

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I don't know about the PSU, could be.

I have the R9600Pro (with an XP 2000+, on a GA-7VAX, with an Audigy card, with an Enermax 365 (350W) Whisper, plus more stuff)

I have had NO problems with Morrowind or Raven Shield (demo) even though I have played both for extended periods (Raven shield when I first got it for 10hrs straight @ 432/308mhz). So I doubt it would be GPU specific. Always try newest and older drivers just in case it's a game conflict, but it doesn't sound like it though since it's not corruption/errors on an ongoing basis so much as time-sensitive lock-ups/crashes.

Since it's locking up on so many games so often (but 20 minutes later) I doubt it's the GPU, and it's likely something else. I would think heat myself, but Cleeve may be right, it could be your PCU, despite the R9600Pro being low on power consumption, your combined items could be stressing something. Did you spread out your components among different power cables, instead of eveything on one chain?
If you can spare the $4, get another fan for your case (or try running it open like someone else suggested), see if that does it.
A good PSU is always the right start, but it may not be the main problem. Replace it if you can and add extra cooling if you can. Beyond that you may have try running burn-in type programs (CPU and GPU ones) to see if it's something else. That should stress your system enough to induce any possible heat/power issues.


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[untweaked]

do you have agp running at 8X
if so you may have to lower it to 4X
give it a try.

good luck!

<A HREF="http://home.earthlink.net/~untweaked/system specs.htm" target="_new">My Rig</A>

 

[confoundicator]

That's an odd suggestion. What good would that do?

<font color=blue>Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. -Einstein</font color=blue>