ati radeon x800gto driver problems

[deagent21]

I just did a super budget build and everything seems to work great except my video card drivers dont seem to work right. I can get it too boot up to 1024x 768 16 BPP, but if I try and get 32 bit then it will goto it and when I restart it reverts back to 640x480 4 bit color and says that the one or more of the ati drivers is not installed. Also when I get it into 32 bit color mode and I try and play CS it flickers and goes back to 640x480 4bit again. I have tried downloading newer and older catalyst drivers but nothing seems to work at all. Anyone have any suggestions of things I could try?

BTW heres my system:

AMD Athlon64 3700+
Abit KN8 Sli Motherboard
GeCube Ati Radeon x800gto 256mb PCIe
420W PSU
512mb DDR ram

 

[Rik]

If you have tried several drivers you could have too many drivers all trying to run. You can check for this by booting into safe mode then looking in device manager. There should be 2 drivers,1 for monitor output and 1 for tv output, if there is any more than that then remove the whole lot and reinstall once more when it reboots.

 

[deagent21]

I just reformatted and reinstalled the drivers and it didnt work. Is there a way to test the video card to make sure something isnt messed up with the actual card? Or is there something that might be check on in some system settings where it keeps reverting back to bad settings?

 

[Rik]

I don't know of anything that will do what you ask. It sounds like gpu recovery which means that the card is playing up, but it could also be down to mobo drivers. I have an Asus K8V-X mobo that i got off a friend cheap because it kept having similar problems to yours. I just waited for a bios update and mobo driver update and it has worked fine ever since.

Go to http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp and check out how much power your system needs just in case its a power issue.

 

[deagent21]

whats gpu recovery? and is there a way to turn it off? I did the calculator and it says all I need is a 250w.

 

[Rik]

Gpu recovery is graphics processing unit recovery and there is no way to turn it off that i know of.

Get speedfan from the downloads section and use it to look for any unusual temperatures and voltages.

But i really think its down to mobo drivers as my problem was. You may just have to wait for new ones to fix the problem. Pci-e technology is very new and therefore relatively untested so patience may be your only option.

One thing, are you using GeCube or Ati drivers or is there no difference?

 

[deagent21]

Ive tried both and they both do the same thing. I think im going to have to take it into a cmputer shop and have them take a look at it.

 

[Sharkfood]

It's assumed you installed the most recent NForce chipset drivers? Without those, you wont be able to get videocard drivers to install/take.

If you missed the chipset drivers, you should uninstall + Driver Cleaner Pro any video drivers you may have installed, then get the latest nforce drivers at:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html

From there, be sure you .NET Framework 2.0 or 1.1 installed (surf microsoft downloads section or use windows update), then grab the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI at www.ati.com.

 

[deagent21]

I tried the nvidia drivers and it seemed to work untill I opened counterstike source and then the screen flickered and went back to lowest settings. Thank you everybody for your suggestions, if anyone has anything else for me to try I am willing to try anything.