Radeon 9800 problems

Hey,

My computer runs fine when I boot up, and use day-to-day programs.
I have recently put in a Radeon 9800 pro atlantis graphics card, the card I took out was a Radeon 9500. I have installed all the latest drivers for it too.
Basically what happens is when I start playing a full screen game i.e Flight Simulator 2004, Half life 2 etc about 20 minutes into the game or less it will freeze, and the monitor will just switch off, the computer will still be running fine but it does not respond to anything it's just a blank black screen.
Also sometimes when it freezes it will say the power to my graphics card is not in, so I have to take it out and put it back in again. It's getting fustraiting, and i'm curious to why? here's my computer details:

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name TOMMO-B7F12C418
System Manufacturer GBT___
System Model AWRDACPI
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 9 GenuineIntel ~2423 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F6, 22/03/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory D:\WINDOWS
System Directory D:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name TOMMO-B7F12C418\Administrator
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 486.88 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.41 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

If anyone could help my i would appreciate it,
Thanks.

 

What output is your PSU? That could be affecting it. Also, have you tried another molex power connector from the PSU, in case the one you are currently using has a bad connection?

 

I don't know what my power output is as the metal inside the case covers the sticker and i'd have to take the whole pc apart to find out. I might try a different connection to it and see if that works. It also feels very hot under the graphics card but the PC has 4 fans including the one attached to graphics card. Could that be the cause of it? I'm due to be getting a new motherboard and PSU very soon but I was just curious as to why it's playing up. the radeon 9500 didn't require a power supply before, so I had to fish one out from the wires inside the case. It may be a bad connection like you say, so i'll give it a try at changing it. Could it be anything else?

 

Is this a brand new video card or a used one? It's sounds like it could be overheating. Use a program like speedfan to check your temps before and after you have been gaming for 10 minutes or so and see what the difference is.....

 

It's used, but it was only used for a short period and has been handled very carefully. I'll have a try at that program and let you know the results

 

The results from the speed fan test are:
(1st before I played game)
(2nd 5/10 mins after playing)
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/3005/fanspeedsnd0.png

 

Ok, my mistake, I'm not seeing the temps for the gpu there. If you download everest home edition, then under computer=>sensor you'll see the temp for the gpu (video card) do the same thing with that program and give us a before and a after......

 

103c?!?!?!?! Blimey something's not right!

 

that's what I thought + In sensor on everest what would my video card be called? It's got:
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2268/everestuy4.png
i'll do a test once i know
Also it says all this for my video card, don't know if this displays anything wrong:

Field Value
Graphics Processor Properties
Video Adapter ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
GPU Code Name R350
PCI Device 1002 / 4E48
Transistors 117 million
Process Technology 0.15u
Bus Type AGP 8x @ 8x
Memory Size 128 MB
GPU Clock 378 MHz (original: 378 MHz)
RAMDAC Clock 400 MHz
Pixel Pipelines 8
TMU Per Pipeline 1
Vertex Shaders 4 (v2.0)
Pixel Shaders 1 (v2.0)
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v9.0
Pixel Fillrate 3024 MPixel/s
Texel Fillrate 3024 MTexel/s

Memory Bus Properties
Bus Type DDR
Bus Width 256-bit
Real Clock 338 MHz (DDR) (original: 338 MHz)
Effective Clock 676 MHz
Bandwidth 21.1 GB/s

Memory Timings
CAS Latency (CL) 4T
RAS To CAS Delay (tRCD) 3T
RAS Precharge (tRP) 3T
RAS Active Time (tRAS) 8T
Row Refresh Cycle Time (tRFC) 17T
RAS To RAS Delay (tRRD) 4T
Write Recovery Time (tWR) 2T

Graphics Processor Manufacturer
Company Name ATI Technologies Inc.
Product Information http://www.ati.com/products/gamer.html
Driver Download http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

ATI GPU Registers
ati-00F8 08000000
ati-0140 00000022
ati-0144 1A29A222
ati-0148 D7FFD000
ati-0154 F0000000
ati-0158 30430042
ati-0178 00004029
ati-01C0 0BFF0080
ati-4018 00010017
ati-CLKIND-0A 01383204
ati-CLKIND-0B 48001600
ati-CLKIND-0C 0400BC30
ati-CLKIND-0D 00DF8002
ati-CLKIND-0E 0402BC00
ati-CLKIND-0F 00000000
ati-CLKIND-12 AA021212
ati-MCIND-6C 00000000

 

I would agree about the 103c as being something odd. And again in everest I don't see you're gpu listed. The other temps look ok. Do you have any kind of utilities from ATI that would show you what you gpu temps are? Cause I'm still thinking the video card is overheating. The symptoms you describe are classic of overheating......

 

No I don't, I don't think that the actual graphics card has a temperature thing on it. I did try taking the side of the case off and put a normal big fan blowing straight inside, that still didn'twork lol as crazy as it may sound. I have half life 2 running minimized, and its not caused any disruption.. it's only when I actually play the game. Or any games.
I'm so confused...

 

If you had no problems running these games with your old card then logic would say something is wrong with your new one. Do you have access to another computer that you could put the questionable video card in and run those games and see if it crashes there too?

 

It worked fine in the other pc before mine, I would put my old one in but even that now is playing up for some reason.. I'm so confused rolleyes

 

So you are saying all was fine with the 9500 and this all started up with the installation of the 9800, correct? And now you've reinstalled the 9500 and it's dorking up now to? That kind of suggest some kind of issue with the video drivers. Check ATI's sight and see if they have some kind of utility for fulling removing their drivers and reinstall and see if that helps.......

 

No, I tried putting the 9500 back in and the pc totally just didn't like it and it just all went crazy, ATI drivers are crap too, I try opening the program that comes with it and it says that the computer cant run it "natural comptuer error" when i type the code in google... so annoying

The 9800 worked for about a week, but then just decided it didn't like me.

 

Hmmm, any chance you can do a system restore back to when the 9500 was working?

 

Back to the idea of overheating.... that's what this sounds like to me. ATITray tools has a temp monitor for both the GPU and the PC's various temps (MB, CPU, etc..) When you run it, right click on the icon in the system tray, go to Hardware > Monitoring Graphs. Then click on the Add button. It has real time monitoring for all sorts of stuff... Run it for awhile, both at idle and under a load (whilst gaming for example). You can also monitor fans and FPS... poke around in there and you'll see you can monitor tons of stuff and select custon colors for each item so it's easy to keep track of in the graph. Here's the link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/ATI_Tray_Tools_d4569.html Yes, it's a beta, but I've been running it for over a month without issues.

 

After re-reading all the posts, I started thinking about drivers. I had a Radeon 9800, but I only ran it for like 2 weeks. It was just a temporary card while I waited for my X1950. Anyway, if I remember correctly, the newest drivers from ATI that run with the 9800 is version 7.9. The current release is 7.12. If you have anything newer than 7.9 installed you might have problems. You might also look into installing an older driver, maybe one of the later 6.x series of drivers. Because the card is older, an older driver may be the way to go. On the other hand- if the 9800 ran fine for about a week, then went crazy, there may be something else going on not related to the card at all. Run diagnostics on your RAM and hard drive, and try to run a restore back to a date when the 9800 was running well and see if that helps.

 

I'm going to try all of the stuff you have said, and let you know all the results soon. Thanks everyone who is helping me, I appreciate it.

 

this software is ati software pulled apart (version 4.12 ati latest software update)and fixed and as of this moment works with all agp and pci-e radeon cards and the only true working software ive seen for the hd 2600 512mb agp that works a treat http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1817