hey guys, it's me again (i posted around a month ago with this same problem, but i was waiting for the right fans to be in stock)
my 9600 Pro has locks up while playing any game. for a few weeks, i strongly believed it was a heat problem, but after i bought two fans (one 80mm fan, another harddrive fan) for the front of my case blowing in air, the problems still exists.
before i start, here are all the things i've tried, and none of them worked.
- Turned off VPU recover in the ATi control panel.
- Turned off fast write in the ATi control panel.
- Reduced Anti-alaising to 2x.
- Reduced the hardware acceleration down two notches.
- Reinstalled the newest ATi drivers.
- Removed one side of the computer case to increase cooling.
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 128 (from 64).
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 256.
- Installed latest motherboard driver.
- Installed latest BIOS driver.
- Installed two fans both blowing in air.
- Decreased the quality of Direct3d through the control panel
- Underclocked my card -16.8% for the engine, -16.1% for the memory using Powerstrip 3.47
- Reformatted
what happens is when i play a game (i've tried GTA3, Vice City, Sim Cicy 4, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003), it will randomly freeze for 2 seconds or so, and a blue screen will show up. the blue screen doesn't have any text on it, and the music cycles. the only way i can get out of it is by rebooting.
one thing that really confuses me is these lockups started right after i upgraded from 3.2 to 3.9. and it appears that the damage is irreversible (meaning if i drop back to 3.2, the problems are still there). but on the other hand, when playing Unreal 2 before upgrading, it would freeze then and not on any other game.
this Monday, my friend is going to let me borrow his Radeon 9600 Pro to see if it will work. i'll upgrade the drivers, if it does run perfectly, then great, i can eliminate the possibility that my card is faulty. if it still doesn't work (it works on his computer), then somehow ATi cards won't work with my computer and i will have to live with nVidia cards.
i WAS going to buy some cooling for my card (probably Zalman or Vantec Iceberq), but i figured the card isn't even hot at all. my computer runs at around 45C idle (i would think it would hit 55C if it is being used), but if i feel the back of the GPU, it is barely warm. i could comfortably put my hand there for hours and not get burnt at all. so i would guess additional cooling won't do anything.
another thing, i was wondering - once booting up, and playing the same game, how come the game can still run for 5 or so minutes? if the problem is heat related, shouldn't the game
crash less than 5 minutes, as the card is already hot from previous crash?
surely, it is impossible for the GPU to cool down so rapidly since rebooting from the blue screen (around a 10 minute gap)
here are my system specs:
CPU: Intel P4 2.8Ghz 800Mhz with Hyperthreading
RAM: 4x Samsung 512Mb DDR 400Mhz PC3200
PSU: Task (generic) 400W
Video card: Powercolor Radeon Pro 9600 at 398.25/297.00
any ideas/comments at all? i've seen around 6 other people on the internet who also have this problem.
my 9600 Pro has locks up while playing any game. for a few weeks, i strongly believed it was a heat problem, but after i bought two fans (one 80mm fan, another harddrive fan) for the front of my case blowing in air, the problems still exists.
before i start, here are all the things i've tried, and none of them worked.
- Turned off VPU recover in the ATi control panel.
- Turned off fast write in the ATi control panel.
- Reduced Anti-alaising to 2x.
- Reduced the hardware acceleration down two notches.
- Reinstalled the newest ATi drivers.
- Removed one side of the computer case to increase cooling.
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 128 (from 64).
- Increased AGP Aperture size to 256.
- Installed latest motherboard driver.
- Installed latest BIOS driver.
- Installed two fans both blowing in air.
- Decreased the quality of Direct3d through the control panel
- Underclocked my card -16.8% for the engine, -16.1% for the memory using Powerstrip 3.47
- Reformatted
what happens is when i play a game (i've tried GTA3, Vice City, Sim Cicy 4, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003), it will randomly freeze for 2 seconds or so, and a blue screen will show up. the blue screen doesn't have any text on it, and the music cycles. the only way i can get out of it is by rebooting.
one thing that really confuses me is these lockups started right after i upgraded from 3.2 to 3.9. and it appears that the damage is irreversible (meaning if i drop back to 3.2, the problems are still there). but on the other hand, when playing Unreal 2 before upgrading, it would freeze then and not on any other game.
this Monday, my friend is going to let me borrow his Radeon 9600 Pro to see if it will work. i'll upgrade the drivers, if it does run perfectly, then great, i can eliminate the possibility that my card is faulty. if it still doesn't work (it works on his computer), then somehow ATi cards won't work with my computer and i will have to live with nVidia cards.
i WAS going to buy some cooling for my card (probably Zalman or Vantec Iceberq), but i figured the card isn't even hot at all. my computer runs at around 45C idle (i would think it would hit 55C if it is being used), but if i feel the back of the GPU, it is barely warm. i could comfortably put my hand there for hours and not get burnt at all. so i would guess additional cooling won't do anything.
another thing, i was wondering - once booting up, and playing the same game, how come the game can still run for 5 or so minutes? if the problem is heat related, shouldn't the game
crash less than 5 minutes, as the card is already hot from previous crash?
surely, it is impossible for the GPU to cool down so rapidly since rebooting from the blue screen (around a 10 minute gap)
here are my system specs:
CPU: Intel P4 2.8Ghz 800Mhz with Hyperthreading
RAM: 4x Samsung 512Mb DDR 400Mhz PC3200
PSU: Task (generic) 400W
Video card: Powercolor Radeon Pro 9600 at 398.25/297.00
any ideas/comments at all? i've seen around 6 other people on the internet who also have this problem.