Radeon 9800pro lock up/direct3d/failure problems

Hi all

I would just like to raise a problem im having with a Radeon 9800Pro, and after reading numerous other posts on the Radeon blackout problems, i can only asume its either power problems or a wrongly configured setup. However im quite new at this and am looking for a more Judged opinion

After a good year my Radeon started to freeze my computer while watching divx movies and then starting up games such as Halo/far cry. I thought a driver reinstall might fix it, using the CD that came with the card. With no joy. So i uninstalled with driver-cleaner and installed newer catalyst drivers from 4.12 - 5.6, from the ATI site, all of which had various success but would eventually put the monitor into standby permantly.

I then reinstalling Win XP, latest nVidia NForce drivers for mobo, .NET for catalyst, old drivers again & latest version of directX 9.0 and ran dxdiag. Direct draw tests worked but not the Direct 3D tests. I noticed the CPU and mainboard temps were 50-55C so now the case is open with a table fan constantly blowing cool air which brings it down to 35-40C The shuttle case can get quite warm. Also the PSU is only 240W and ive heard that a power supply of around 400W could be more beneficial (that cant fit in a shuttle case) but if so how did it sustain the Radeon for so long up until now?

In the meantime i have ordered a Radeon 9600 because it uses a heatsink no fan, fits a shuttle and i assume needs lower power demands, not bothered about speed for games too much, just want the card to work!

The bios settings are: aperture set to 128mb, 4x AGP, fastwrite on, and it auto detects the Radeon as no graphics card came with the shuttle and the options arent present on bios.

Now, when the computer starts, if i try to run any program it comes up with a display device failure prompt and puts everything into a lower res and colour pallete from the backup VGA drivers.

Im totally stumped, and been through numerous solutions posted on forums, but now have decided to write about it. Before i hastily return it i just wondered if anyone has had experiences like this before and if they had any ideas as to how to solve it.

My specs are:

Machine specs
Shuttle XPC small form factor
240W PSU
Athlon 64 3000mhz
512 Kingmax 333mhz DDR ram
80 gb seagate ide
ATI radeon 9800 pro 128 mb
Award Bios
nVidia NForce 3 chipset

Software
Win XP SP1
Microsoft .NET 1.1
Direct X 9.0c
NForce unified drivers
Driver Cleaner
AVG
ZoneAlarm

Thanks in advance...

 

Hi m8 welcome to MG,that psu is seriously underated for an nf3 and a643000,while your case is open can you post the make and model of your psu,see if we can find out how good it is

 

Wow thanks for the quick response,

Its the standard Power supply unit that came with the shuttle case, these are the specs off the Shuttle website for my model:

Silent-X 240 Watt mini PSU, supports 115/230V
connectors: 20-pin ATX, 4-pin ATX12V

i wont know the model No. until i get home. At work now

will underclocking the CPU help with power demands?

also ive just read about raid - ide conflicts. After reformatting the machine i noticed that i always get something about sata Raid after the initial POST screen, because there is sata support on mobo. However the Hard disc is connected through IDE and the Radeon daisy chains through to the HDD for power. I maybe throwing out useless info here, but do i need to configure the bios to use stop using sata raid?

 

Yup disable the sata controllers should speed up boot slightly,remember to enable them again if you get a sata drive though,or you'll drive yourself nuts trying to find the problem.lol ,you want the vid card on its own rail really,it needs a steady strong supply of power like the cpu,you could try switching the molexes around,but I wouldn't bother you could screw something up,most people bin the psu that comes with thier case straight away they are crap.

your board and card should be running at agp x8 this could also be causing the problem,I'm not familiar with ati drivers,but I think you have to increase the agp speed using smart gart,If you cannot,go into bios and try raising it there,I'll see what psu's silent-x make that are 240w alot of the time they dont publish it on the web because it isnt one of there retail ones,the model number would be most helpfull,then we can just google it!

It would still have to be one of the most awsome 240w psu's in the world to keep your system stable.

 

Ah well, it looks like the board has totally died on me! Decided a bigger case for airflow, better motherboard and power options are the way to go with this.
ive kept the parts bought a new atx case and mobo (Gigabyte GA-K8N-S Pro)

could u recommend a decent PSU that would run:

Athlon 64 3000mhz
512 Kingmax 333mhz DDR ram
80 gb seagate ide
ATI radeon 9800 pro 128 mb
AOPEN dvd/cd-r writer

would 400W be enough?

Many thanks

 

It may be alittle help :

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=65650

 

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

 

thanks for a great resource there!