alienuser09
Posts: 20 +0
I've got an old computer (2003) with the original ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB graphics card still in it. Never had a problem with graphics, games, or drivers until just recently. After several months without gaming, I finally had the chance to play a little but when I launched the game, I noticed the graphics were corrupted and "artifacting". Trying another game had the same results. When not attempting to game, there were no noticeable graphics problems. Knowing this is an old system/graphics card that has many many hours of great gaming behind it, I immediately suspected the card beginning to fail. However, not wanting to shell out cash for a replacement without first making sure the problem was truly with the card, I tried a few things I saw on various tech forums to troubleshoot.
Reinstalled Catalyst drivers (9.3) - no help.
Reduced acceleration to 4X - no help.
Turned off fast writes - no help
Removed card, cleaned dust, and reseated - no help
Turned acceleration OFF completely - made things much worse: after determining this didn't help either, I returned all SMARTGART settings to their original settings (8X acceleration, everything else ON) and rebooted but this time after getting to the desktop, the screen went blank and the computer rebooted again. After THIS (successful) reboot, I found that the only SMARTGART settings that stayed were the 8X acceleration and the Fast Writes ON. Everything else was turned off. Now, I CANNOT get back to the settings I originally started with - the computer always double-reboots with all SMARTGART settngs OFF except fast writes and 8X acceleration.
Anybody experience anything like this? Until I can get a replacement card, I would like to get the catalyst settings back to where they originally were as the way things are now, "everyday" graphical tasks are very slow.
Would appreciate any and all ideas. Thanks
Reinstalled Catalyst drivers (9.3) - no help.
Reduced acceleration to 4X - no help.
Turned off fast writes - no help
Removed card, cleaned dust, and reseated - no help
Turned acceleration OFF completely - made things much worse: after determining this didn't help either, I returned all SMARTGART settings to their original settings (8X acceleration, everything else ON) and rebooted but this time after getting to the desktop, the screen went blank and the computer rebooted again. After THIS (successful) reboot, I found that the only SMARTGART settings that stayed were the 8X acceleration and the Fast Writes ON. Everything else was turned off. Now, I CANNOT get back to the settings I originally started with - the computer always double-reboots with all SMARTGART settngs OFF except fast writes and 8X acceleration.
Anybody experience anything like this? Until I can get a replacement card, I would like to get the catalyst settings back to where they originally were as the way things are now, "everyday" graphical tasks are very slow.
Would appreciate any and all ideas. Thanks
