Strange Radeon 9800 Problem

hello everyone!
To everyone having a problem with their video card I feel for you because i'm having a problem and I help and I figure this would be the best place to turn to! My knowledge of computers is very very rudimentary. I did download the updated bios file and the file to help memory problems from the biostar site but I have no clue what to do with these files.
I just built a system with the following specs:
Biostar m7ncg 400 board
Amd Xp 3200 chip
1.25 pc 3200 ddr ram
120 gig Maxtor HD
Ati 9800 Pro SE with 4.9 Catalyst drivers (with VPU recover msg disabled)
using onboard sound card for now
Win Xp with Service pack 1 installed
Whenever I try to play doom 3 or even Counter Strike: Condition Zero I can only play these games for a few minutes before either the system shuts down entirely or i can hear the sound looping but the system freezes and I have to restart it manually.
If anyone can help I really really appreciate it. Welps it's off to do homework while I have the doom3 shakes
William

Worked for me.

Had exactly the same problem as everyone else.

Specs:

AMD FX-55 CPU
2G ram
Asus A8V Motherboard
ATI 256 9800 Pro
Windows XP (Home)

The good news - It runs every program I have (including Half-life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3, and UT2004) with every option turned up to highest and at 1280X1024 with frame rates up in the 70s.

The bad news - Most games shut off after 5 or 10 minutes.

I tried everything from new/different ram, reinstalling everything, newest drivers, etc.

Finally found the answer (in my case anyway). I bought the ATI Arctic Cooling fan for the graphics card and installed it. Haven't had a problem since. Even though the motherboard was running at about 85 - 90 degrees, and the CPU was running at about 113 - 120 degrees, apparently the ATI card was running too hot for it's own good.

I would advise trying this before reinstalling windows or other such time consuming actions.

The fan is about $30, and well worth it.

Hope this helps.

Well my computer wasnt fixed as I thought. I sent my 9800se back and got a new one. Same problems. Now Ive been trying to convert Movies to play on my Lyra Movie player and the computer keeps freezing. Ive decided to run Prime95 to test the CPU and Ram. The comp freezes on test 1 and test 2. I get an error while running test 3. Im gonna start running memtest98 all night tonight to see if I get any errors. When I did a quick test before when I switched the setting to Memory Bios-All I got like 10000 errors but that might just be because my k7vt6 doesnt support that test so im just gonna run it in Bios-STD mode all night. Hopefully its the Ram because I dont feel like sending my whole computer back to the Company I bought it from I have to much Work on it now.

Weird My computer reset itself after like 2 hours of memtest 98. I have no idea what this means though?

Sent via email to me. So posting it here as requested.

I'm having this problem, it's so much fun!

Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB DDR
MSI K8T Neo2 + AMD 3500+
Kingston 1GB DDR RAM (one piece)
400w power supply

I've tried another power supply, it didn't solve anything. And al those ATI updates and all that.

My screen goes blank in Comand and Conquer Generals. But, I have also had this probelm (monitor shut-off) when viewing certain websites with Internet Explorer.

Just wondering if people are having this problem both in and out of games.

Thanks.

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB Problem Solved!!!

Well, after 3 months of endless battles with this card,
Which did not want to work at 8x speed for more then 3 minutes at any game and graphic settings, i decided to take it to the store,
They changed it, and told me that it was overheating because of some broblem it had, so i got a new one (warrenty) and installed zalman zm-80C+OP1 Fans and cooling thing... Now i can overclock it, and play 8x and fastwrite and everything works smooth like a babies ***!!!!!!!!

This card, rocks! P.s. Best program to overclock is ATItool...

This card really heats it's self up... otouched it before zalman cooling and it burned my finger...

My Specs:
Asus p4s8x MOBO
Intel P4 2.4GHz 533FSB
512MB some ****ty vendor, ddr333 (not dualChannel)
Maxtor 7200 IDE 60G
Creative Live!Value with Cambridge PcWorks... Great sound system.
MS Forcefeedback pro 2 Stick.

Well guys. talk to ya.
Bah Bye.

Umm...one thing I would try is fixing the cooling in your case. I used to have the same problem with a 9800pro back in the day. And the way I fixed it...atleast for the couple of days that I had it was to have the side of the case off and had a usb fan pointed directly at it. But if you are going to be keeping the card I would suggest either getting better cooling for the card or for your case.

I dont believe it!

Oh my god I dont believe people are still haveing problems with the Radeon 9800 pro! I'm still getting problems with mine and its been over 6 months since i had my 9700 pro replaced by the 9800 pro. Puzzah have you solved you're problem?

My 9700 pro used to completely crash and it turned out to be a faulty card due to the memory. i just recently bought a dell inspiron 9200 with a 9700 pro inside and it works really well. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to play half life 2, doom 3, far cry, rct 3 on the move anywhere!

Yeah anyway, about the 9800 pro. If i'm playing any game (and i mean any) after half an hour of playing or sometimes a couple of minutes it locks up, then a high pitched beep constantly sounds, along with loads of colours all displaced around the screen and then vpu recover comes in. when its disabled the computer locks up so nobody tell me to turn it off, cause it's there for a reason. To Recover.

Sorry for being a tad agressive but you must feel my anger after a lot of money spent, and a lot of time wasted to get poor gameplay. I think i might change to nvidia.

Thanks in advance for help. :giddy:

9800 Pro and XP

Hi, my problem is similar but hopefully simpler.
My Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro has not handled the clean upgrade I made from Win98 to XP Pro (SP2).
It only works in VGA mode, immediately going to blank (no signal) screen when I try to get it to use it's hardware, leaving Windows running in the dark.
It used to work fine in Win98 with none of the problems you have all been describing.
My old Geforce 2 works fine with the setup so at least I can blow up Mechwarriors.
I have updated ATI drivers, I have not updated monitor drivers, or reloaded Win98 to see if the card still works with it.
Any ideas?
:bounce:
Mobo: MSI KT4AV (Via KT400a chips)
Athlon XP2800+
512 MB DDR400
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis 128MB
Win XP Pro SP2

Ok I just built my 6 year olds new box with...

Asus K8n mobo
althlon 64 2800+
ati radeon 9800 pro
512 ddr266 ram

Everything seems to register properly but I get the same lockup, crash to desktop, monitor shuts off but puter still running, issues that this guy has got. I used the catalyst drivers from the ati site. The system seems stable in everything but Unreal Tournament2k3. The post information appears to be accurate but I don't know. I mean the memeory is ddr266 @ the right size, the cpu shows as 1.8 ghz I believe.

I don't have that vpu recover tab either but am willing to try it. I am not sure if I have the game set to run d3d or opengl...I am assuminf it is opengl and ati's crappy support is causing the problem.

I really would like some suggestions as I stay away from the athlon 64's and ati cards because of issues like this. So I really don't know where to start. Any help would be appreciated.

As i said b4 - Software installed incorrectly/or not installed at all will be a great concern for you. Direct X -Mobo chipset drivers - service packs are always a pain with xp as well.
Windows Xp is a delicately balanced eco system - one wrong move and it goes to poo. get 2000 pro. Can i ask you y u are using hardware like an athlon 64 and a 9800 on a 6 yr old's pc - a bit excessive

Well I run 2k pro on that box and stay on top of drivers and things like that. So I'm not really concerned about that kind of thing. My problem is the known fact of poor driver support for the ati cards and some drivers not working with certain hardware as well as they could.

I don't think it is a heat issue though as the case is still open from the rebuild. I guess it is possible but the cpu/mobo temps are quite low.

As far as being excessive for a 6year old to have that kind of system is because he likes to play most of the stuff I play and so he gets a system that will play them. Also if I ever get the damn thing stable it won't have to be messed with except for a memory upgrade anytime soon. It was a deal where I had the money now might as well do it...you never know what the future holds.

Help me plz

My radeon 9800 pro plus is doing the same. I have tried every thing nothing works. plz help me. I have the same vpu recovery after 2 min of play

well I got my issue resolved. What resolved my issue was that I had changed the seconday molex connector for the vid card. It was sharing one with my the hdd and an opticle drive, I simply switched it to its own plug from the psu and it has been working fine since. So it must be a power issue.

Yeah i remember i had a similar problem with my 9700 pro.
I guess it was the powersupply. Couldnt pump out enough watts ..lol

Cheers

Nope

I have tried that and it doesn't work. Isn't their a fix or path 4 it?

Maybe this is of interest to some of you. I solved my problems with my Radeon 9700 Pro. For almost one year and a half I was facing problems when playing Far Cry and Doom 3, basically getting a blank screen which forced me to press the reset button in order to regain control over the PC.

Just today, I received my replacement board from Guillemot France, and guess what: MY SYSTEM WORKS NOW!!!

Believe me, I tried may things (except exchanging the PSU) to remedy the issues. Left without no idea anymore, I thought let's give it a try and open a case with ati.com, since my three years guarantee was about to expire. They told me to contact Guillemot (Hercules Support), because I own a Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro. They mentioned by the way that I could have been hit by a memory problem some cards were affected by.

And it proved it was a hardware problem of the video board! What exactly, I don't know. No PSU, no driver, no firmware, no AGP 8x, no AGP FastWrite, no voltage setting, no wrong BIOS setting, no whatever-they-tell-you issue. Anyway, happily ever after... :giddy:

My problem occurred in one of the following situations:
- playing Far Cry or Doom 3, freezing took place within the first 5-10, maybe 30 minutes. Detail level set to anything below high.
- trying to start the games with a pre-defined detail level to high or above.

My system specs:

- Win2k / SP4 and some patches
- Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro
- Asus A7N8-Deluxe nForce 2 chipset
- Athlon 2600+, 1GB PC 2700 DIMM
- Built-in PSU 360W from a Chieftec tower

I just thought this was worth to post, although it might not help all of you as the symptoms vary slightly, as far as I read. In any case, this forum entry was the best I found to describe and deal with the issue I had.

Toni

Infinite Loop Doom

i dont know peoples but i hope this doesnt happen to u...all was going well after one day my computer decided to crash on every 3d game i was applying at random after 5 10 or 30 minutes...i searched the web to my grief i found out that LOADS of people experience the same problem with both ati and nvidia and its like the graphics card goes in an infinite loop microsoft has a posting on the problem with no solution and ATI also says theyr still gathering information..i did EVERYTHING one can do with software like updating changing deleting drivers and bios the bios nothing until i opened the pc saw how DUSTY the graphics card was especially on its onboard fan so i blew it crystal clean put it in again...unfortunately before closing the case i also CHANGED SLOT TO THE audigy SOUND CARD because i was a bit suspicious of the wierd noises that kept coming after the game had crashed and i had a no signal screen.closed the case booted back ive been playing NFS eversince thanking GOD hope it works for u make sure theres no dust and just change position to the sound card i didint even reinstall anydrivers the damn thing works its friggin unbelievable