Video Card help

lordroba · Post by **lordroba** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:22 am

So I recently bought a new video card, a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP. I need help cause i've been having a few problems with it, and this is usually a pretty helpful place.

Anyways, here are some of the symptoms; flashing when scrolling in internet, 3d games freeze/lag, after playing 3d games for a while the signal from the video card just stops being sent and the moniter goes all dark.

Here's what i've tried to do; made sure it was installed correctly, cleaned out all the dust inside my computer, installed various drivers from ATI website, and new drivers for my motherboard.

Here are some of my computer stats (from dxdiag)

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
System Model: Aspire T135
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3100+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 413MB used, 1090MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

I don't know what's wrong... So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:12 pm

it seems that the card is overheating and then turning its self off from ther symptoms

lordroba · Post by **lordroba** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:41 pm

Overheating is definitely one thing it is not doing. The card has it's own fan and heatsink, and I've got two extra case fans blowing on it for safe measure. (I've also touched the heatsink while it was running and it was really cool). I've also tried disconnecting my extra harddrives to see if it might be a power supply issue. (It wasn't)

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:57 pm

Perhaps it thinks it's overheating. The internal temp sensor might be buggy. I'd look for more obvious problems first though.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:01 pm

if the fan isn't spinning then it doesn't do much for ya.
it really sounds like overheating

from the reviews on newegg, heat is a mentioned problem.

the other thing mentioned is this:

BIOS Tweaks Fix Problem

Pros: Card is now running stable after below BIOS tweaks. It is fairly quiet and easily handles High Definition TS files.

Cons: For a few months the video was randomly shutting down. Rebate still has not arrived after four months and three emails.

Other Thoughts: To fix problems I made the following BIOS settings: 1). Change AGP Voltage to 1.7 2). Disable AGP 8X Support 3). Disable AGP Fast Write Capability Card has not randomly shutdown in several days now! These settings do not appear to degrade performance.

lordroba · Post by **lordroba** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:55 am

Thanks Kariudo. I disabled 8X AGP and turned off Fast Writes. I also uninstalled the 7.2 Catalyst drivers and installed Omega drivers based on the 5.6 version of Catalyst. Everything works fine now