Radeon AIW 9700 Pro - DOA

[InsaneMonkeyBoy]

I agree with Bajan, their technical support isn't always helpful. When I had my 9700pro which didn't work, ATI told me to get a new PSU. I did, I got a 460W Enermax but did it help? NOPE, it just cost me £80.

 

[Nic]

AIW 9700 Pro 'shutdown' fix

Some interesting info ...

AIW 9700 Pro 'shutdown' fix - Viperlair.com

...

The Symptoms

As soon as the card arrived, I went about clearing the nVidia drivers and my TV Card drivers from my system ready to install the 9700 Pro AIW. I powered down the machine and swapped in the Radeon. This is where all the trouble began.

As soon as I powered up the PC, it shut itself off. Ok, stuff like this happens. I checked all of the connections, made sure the card was in place properly, made sure I hadn't dislodged anything else by accident, made sure no loose screws were shorting something out, but everything looked fine.

Tried it again and the same thing happened. My first thought was that this was a common nForce2 problem with the BIOS, although usually if this is the case, not powering up isn't a symptom (not reaching POST is). My next thought was that the card was dead, despite getting no warning beeps from the system, however putting the card into a different system I had no issue at all. After a few more troubleshooting procedures it boiled down to this. The problem seemed to be with the Radeon 9700 Pro card as disconnecting the floppy power connector to the card allowed the computer to power up fine, albeit to only get a display warning me that the power connector wasn't connected. All the signs lead to a power issue, but the fact that I had just finished testing and reviewing a PSU that is personally the best PSU I have seen brought me some confusion.

The Problem

So with the Ti4600 back in place I went surfing for information (or at least individuals with the same problem) and my first stop was the Rage3D forums. Lo and behold I come across a long thread with individuals with the exact same problems. They had exactly the same symptoms, with differing systems and specifications, but the main commonality appeared to be the Radeon 9700 Pro AIW card (and specifically a certain PCB revision).

The actual facts of what is happening appear to be a bit hazy but using the information I found at Rage3D, as well as from a few other sites (google is your friend) it would seem the most logical assumption is this. As your machine powers up, the capacitors on your motherboard and graphics card draw a lot of power initially. Now the Radeons draw a lot more than most, and the All-In-Wonder range more than others, which makes the PSU work overtime for that first second of start up.

The PSU I have here is the Aerocool Aeropower II Titanium 520w PSU and amongst its features are Over Volt Protection and Over Current Protection. It would seem that the combined draw from the motherboard and the Radeon is enough to trip the PSU into shutting down the power. You might think this means that the PSU is to blame, but since a lot of high end PSUs have these features for a reason I don't feel its right to place the blame with them.

I had the same issue using a Vantec Stealth 480w, and an Enermax 350w. Some users reported luck with Q-Tec or Kingwin PSU's. We could perhaps blame the motherboard but with such a wide range of differing systems having this issue it isn't likely, although some folks report swapping the motherboard for a different one solved it for them (yet others have the same problem with the same motherboards). Also the fact that some folks report returning the card for a new one solved the problem for them (and others report that it doesn't), leads me to believe that the issue is likely with the Radeon Card.

The main PCB revision recorded that is affected in this way is the ones marked "PN-xxx-xxxxx-10". This isn't to say that this affects all Radeons, or to say that it is exclusively a 9700 Pro AIW problem, but it does happen and the majority of reported cases I could find were AiW cards. It's basically a combination of the motherboard, the Radeon and how your PSU reacts to the initial power draw by your system.

The Solution

Well the problem here is that the PSU doesn't like the initial draw of power by both the Graphics card and the Motherboard at the same time so this left me with only few options.

1) Send the card back to ATI and pray I get lucky
2) Swap the motherboard and pray I get lucky
3) Get a PSU that doesn't have the various protections
4) Create some form of delaying circuit to attach to the 5v rail of the floppy power connector for the Radeon
5) Install a switch in the 5v rail floppy connector and delay the initial power manually

...

Follow the link (above) to read the full article.

 

[bajan]

Originally posted by InsaneMonkeyBoy
I agree with Bajan, their technical support isn't always helpful. When I had my 9700pro which didn't work, ATI told me to get a new PSU. I did, I got a 460W Enermax but did it help? NOPE, it just cost me £80.

HAHA that bites... lukcily i managed to find and read that article on Viperlair.com and subsequently cancelled my order for that 465w Enermax PSU. Saved myself $135us.

What that guy says there about the the capacitors on both the motherboard AND the video card drawing all that current on startup makes perfect sense. Some people have said that their systems work perfectly even though they have one of the higher end PSUs with OCP/OVP circuits. In their cases it must have been the motherboard that was pulling less current than the ones we have, so that's prbably why their PSUs didn't trip.

I honestly cannot believe that the testing ATi did on this card before releasing it to market didn't reveal this problem. All the card really needs is a delay circuit so that it will delay the powerup by about 1 or 2 seconds after the system is powered on. Maybe that's what they did with the 9800 Pro. lol Ya learn from ur mistakes!!


Hehe so i'll take Solution # 5 lol

 

[danezal]

Radeon and power problems

i have a aiw 9700 pro and it gave me the same kind of trouble. i went thru power supplies and the like. what i found that worked for me, is putting the radeon on a power plug that is not on the same plug as your hard drive or cd-rom. after i did that i didn't have any more power issues, beeps, freezes, or reboots.

 

[technodad]

nic,
Thanks for the post. Alot of great info. I have some new info also. I hope this hasn't been my problem from the get-go.

Upon down loading and loading up Catalyst 4.1 & MMC 8.8 I noticed that whenever I'd run the PC Check from MMC's configuration that I fail on IDE 1 second device (hard drive) & IDE 2 first device (DVD-Rom.) The failure would say DMA mode not used. Here's the fun part..... The recomendation was to go into the Device manager and select IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Then select the advance settings of both IDE 1 & 2 to make sure they were both on DMA..... Ya,,,,,,,,, No advance settings tab in XP..... So I shot down to the IS department at work and asked if they knew what to do..... Well, after several hours of poking around they came up with, "If you have installed Intel's Application Accelerator, it removes the tabs since it does the managing. This came with mb from Gigabyte. After I uninstalled it, the tabs were returned and the PC Check passed for it's first time. This was all in the last couple hours. So I have to do some capturing and beat the heck out of the video card to see if it stays stable. I'll update this weekend. Sorry so long. This has been an issue for a year....

 

[tramendous]

AIW 9700 un-blues. It's a power issue

Thought I'd see if anyone else has had a similar problem before I get it replaced. I just splashed out on a new graphics card (Sapphire Radeon All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro) so that I can use it as a Tivo, as well as to play games.

The card arrived yesterday, so I fitted it, but forgot to attach the extra power connector. My PC booted, but wouldn't POST, and instead beeped continuously whilst displaying a message informing me to connect the extra power connector to the card. After attaching the extra power connector, my PC fails to start, and all I see is the case fans spin a couple of times before the PC dies completely. The only way to get things to work again is by disconnecting the power at the wall socket.

It seems as if the graphics card is short circuiting my PSU (431w Enermax) and causing the protection circuits to kick in. I've tried fitting it to another PC with the same results. This is the first time I've ever had anything completely dead on arrival, and doesn't say much for quality control.

I'm open to suggestions, as its quite possible that I may have missed something when installing the card. Has anyone else had similar problems in the past?

It's not doa, it is a power issue. My 9700 aiw pro card worked fine in my soyo kt400 ultra platinum system but when I rebuilt my system using the soyo kt880 board, I have the same power issue you do. I ordered a Ultra 600 watt psu. Antec is too sensative at the cold startup.