Catalyst 3.8 driver causing overheating

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olefarte

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Catalyst 3.8 overheating problem

I've been wondering if anyone here is using the newest ATi drivers. I've been seeing reports of the new drivers causing video cards to overheat as much as 10 degress C., especially the 9800 series. Also reports of monitors going up in smoke, with these drivers.

Has anybody noticed any problems? Although I can't monitor my video card temps, I've gotten paranoid, and went back to the 3.7's, after noticing that my cpu and system temps seem to have risen by a couple of degrees, at idle and while gaming. I can't afford to by a new monitor and video card.

I've been using the latest Omega 3.8 Beta drivers, and I can say that this is the first time that I can REALLY see a difference between Omega's and regular ATi drivers. The colors seem to be so much more brilliant with these drivers, it was very noticeable after restoring to the older drivers, I really hate to go back to the older ones.

My question is, has anybody seen any of these problems with there systems.
 
I have been using Omega 3.8 drivers with my 9600 Pro card since they were released, and I have not seen any issues whatsoever.

As to monitor damage, the only way that could happen is if the refresh rate was cranked beyond spec for a long period, and I haven't seen this happen with any drivers yet. I can't see how your graphics card could possibly overheat due to drivers, unless they played a part in controlling the fan speed, or they overclocked your card without you noticing.

These are the first drivers to support the new 'Overdrive' active overclocking feature, but as far as I am aware, this feature only works on the new XT version cards.

If you already had your XT version (e.g. 9800XT) card overclocked, then maybe the active overclocking could push it over the edge when it cuts in, but I don't really know how this feature works with an already overclocked card, so I can't comment.

If you have any links to those issues that you have pointed out, then please post them so that we can take a look. I haven't heard of any problems, nor have I experienced any problems at this time, so I see no reason to panic and swap drivers.
 
After going back to the 3.7's, I can say positively, that my system temps have gone down about two degrees. I realize this is not a big deal in itself, but after reading about others having problems, I'd rather be safe than sorry. As far as going into a "panic", I've been using these since the day they came out, I just decided to change and see if ATi comes up with anything, afterall, I don't imagine they'll buy me a new monitor or video card if somthing happens.

Here is a quote from Rage3D about the problem. Also, heres a thread at Rage3D, and another thread at FutureMark forums. And I've seen others. By the way, I have a 9700 Pro and do not overclock.

I'll admit there are a lot of people in those threads that are like Nic, and have not had any problems, and people whose monitor's went out, might have went out anyway. Some are saying that ATi changed the bios of the card. As you can see from the quote, ATi knows nothing about the problem and is investigating. I'll wait and see, and continue to use the 3.7's for now.

1) Overheating. We have spent a great deal of time analyzing the temperatures due to the CATALYST 3.8 drivers. We do not under any circumstance see anything near a 10 degree Celsius increase in temperature (but we don’t overclock our test cards either). We do see a slight increase in temperature in certain cases (3Dmark2003 Nature Scene for example). However any temperature increase is well within our safety range. Investigation continues and we are trying to determine why this change in temperature exits
2) Monitors. We have spent a great deal of time trying to reproduce this problem and analyzing the driver code. There is nothing to be found. At this point we are working very closely with an ATI Beta Tester who experienced a monitor loss. There have been zero reports in our customer support of monitors dying.
 
From what I have read in those links, it seems that those that are experiencing problems already have their cards overclocked to the max, and the new drivers are pushing the cards over the limit. Maybe the new drivers are stressing the graphics core more than the older drivers did, and are thus causing heating problems with cards that are already operating close to their limit. Can't think of why this should happen, unless there is some issue with the new 'Overdrive' feature that was added. If you don't overclock your card, then you don't have anything to worry about as far as I can tell.

As to monitor damage, well I really can't see how that could be possible other than by cranking up the refresh rate, which is not something that is likely to happen without you noticing (you would lose sync, and your picture would disappear, before anything was likely to be damaged, I think, though I'm not certain).
 
Here's a post from Zardon at Driver Heaven on this issue. Looks like ATi cannot find a problem with the drivers. They were able to see a 2 or 3 degree increase in temps though in some cases. If thats all that's happening, I wouldn't worry about it. As he says here it's all over the web, but a lot of it may be people just trying to give ATi a bad name.
well to be honest I dont know what to think kelvinchi. I mean ive spoken to Terry Makedon in ATI and he has told me they cant reproduce any problems in internal testing, meaning the reports we are reading of 15C+ temps, fans failing monitors blowing up etc etc, and I do personally like and respect the guy so I do believe him.

But who I am to ignore the many people who are emailing, PMing and asking me about heat problems, lower overclocks and failed hardware. I mean it cant possibly all be made up, can it? its all over forums across the net. I just hope alot of the comments im reading arent more sinister in nature, meaning people just jumping on the bandwagon trying to "attack" ATI in some way. (im not accusing anyone here of doing it just being honest with an assumption ive made.)

I have personally tested my 9800 pro card with 3.7 drivers and I do get a slightly higher overclock than I do with the Cat 3.8s so that would lead me to the assumption that temperatures are increased slightly but I havent tested in it Lab conditions as ATI have told me they have. they are only seeing slight increases of 1-3C in most cases.

As for omegas softmod, well most of us know that with any kind of mod in this manner ATI arent going to support it and there are always risks involved as its bound to increase temperatures as you are pushing the card higher than it was designed and beyond the specification sold to you, the customer. Im not sure if its the cause of reported card failings as the reports ive been reading most of the people appear to be using the offical 3.8 set but again I cant vouch for this either way.

The only thing I can recommend for people concerned and especially those running soft mods is to roll back to 3.7 for the meantime.
 
I found this posted by Hilbert on Guru3D's front page. For those of you running ATI cards it's a must read.

I think it's time to send out the warning, or at least make 9800 owners aware of a potential issue with the new 3.8 drivers. I've been monitoring this issue on the web ever since gossip on this issue started yet was not sure it was isolated to particular users, actually I'm still not convinced. Yet a lot of sites have picked up on this on their forums and it would be just flat out wrong not to report this.

It seems that a number of 9800 (Pro) users are reporting that the new Catalyst 3.8 drivers can overheat your Radeon 9800.

Cards Affected:
All Radeon 9800 XT's
All Radeon 9800 Pro's
All Radeon 9800 Non-Pro's
All Radeon 9700 Pro's soft-modded to 9800 series.
All Radeon 9700 Non-Pro's soft-modded to 9800 series.
All Radeon 9500's soft modded to 9800 series.

Note: Radeon 9600, 9200, 9100, 9000, 8500 or previous generations are NOT affected by this serious issue.

Software Causing Hardware Failure:
ATI's Catalyst 3.8 Driver Series
OMEGA Catalyst 3.8 Driver Series

Here's a snip from SimGuy over at shortMedia:

While we're not quite sure what part of the Catalyst 3.8 drivers are causing this, some part of the driver (whether it's the new VPU Recovery feature, HyperZ Enhancements or the ATI Overclocking software) is causing the core on BBA and OEM Radeon cards that are identified as "RADEON 9800 XT", "RADEON 9800 PRO" and "RADEON 9800" in Windows to have their GPU's overheat by as much as 15*C over normal during 3D graphics sessions. This has caused a number of fans on the Radeon 9800 XT series to fail, allowing the heat to completely destroy the card.

This news is especially important for individuals who performed the 9800 to 9800 Pro BIOS flash and did not include additional cooling on your card, as the GPU is already overclocked and producing more heat than normal.

As a safety precaution, I am strongly encouraging that anyone with any of the affected cards above roll their drivers back to the Omega Catalyst 3.7 drivers or the ATI Catalyst 3.7 drivers, as they are verified not to cause this overheating issue.

I did some testing with my Radeon 9800 NP BIOS-flashed to a 9800 Pro. The results are not encouraging.

Running looping 3DMark2003 for 30 minutes and utilizing a temperature probe on my GPU (regular cooling), the following temperatures were recorded:

Catalyst 3.8: 135 Fahrenheit
Catalyst 3.7: 117 Fahrenheit
The heatsink on my Sapphire Atlantis 9800 was so hot during the Catalyst 3.8 test that I burnt my hand when I accidently touched it.

2) The Catalyst 3.8's seem to have a bug in some systems that allows the driver to process the SECONDARY adapter settings when a game is started and tries to switch to the resolution and refresh rate specified in the program.

Normally, the card is limited by the INF file settings for the PRIMARY adapter, so that no resolution or refresh rate is attempted that is beyond the capability of the monitor hardware. But in the 3.8's, it seems to be processing the SECONDARY adapter settings first. In a system without a monitor plugged into the second adapter, there is no INF file limiting refresh rates and resolutions, so, the system is trying to force refresh rates and resolutions beyond what the monitor on the PRIMARY adapter is capable of.

So instead of having the monitor "flicker" once when it switches to the desired resolution/refresh, monitors are "flickering" between 4 and 8 times, with resolutions and refresh rates that are beyond the capability of the actual monitor. As a result, some monitors have been damaged, while others have blinked out and recovered. Some users monitors are under warranty and can be RMA'd, but for those who don't have a monitor under warranty, their monitor is damaged and they must buy a new one.

I recommend as a safety precaution, that anyone with any of the affected cards above roll their drivers back to the ATI Catalyst 3.7 drivers, as they are verified not to cause this monitor refresh-related problem.
 
You've just created a duplicate thread on this very issue, but at least you found more detail as to why the issue occurs. Maybe someone can move this post into the original thread posted by olfarte over here ...

Catalyst 3.8 overheating problem
 
Check out the thread that Tarkus just posted ...

Catalyst 3.8 driver causing overheating

It would appear that 9600 series cards are not affected (lucky me), but 9800 series, and 9700/9500 series that have been soft-modded to 9800 spec (i.e. overclocked), should roll back their drivers.

As suspected, monitors are possibly being damaged due to refresh rate/resolution being set too high in the secondary adapter settings, when no monitor is attached to that port. A bug in the drivers appears to be allowing these settings to be applied to the primary adapter port, which is in some cases causing damage to the user's monitor.
 
You have to login to view it, but someone at DriverHeaven.net did this:

Ati Drivers Put To The Test
By The_Neon_Cowboy

I wanted to see and show other weather the rumors of problems are true or not. I started off with the latest omega drivers based on the 3.8.5's since they were already in my system. I ran good old driver cleaner in between installs. Also all 3 temps were taken @ the exact same point in 3dmark just after test 3 while loading/starting test 4. Nothing on the desk or pc was moved (except my mouse) from start to finish.

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28844&

I think you'll be suprised at the results....
 
I've been looking at that too. Here are the basic results. This guy did a very extensive test with a lot of pictures, if you can go there to look at them.
Room Temperature 25.9C

Omegas based on 3.8.5
GPU
Idle 47.1
Full Load 55.6

Memory*
Idle 40.9
Full Load 52.1


Official Cat. 3.8’s
Idle 40.9
Full Load 46.3

Memory*
Idle 40.9
Full Load 52.1


Official Cat. 3.7’s
Idle 41.5
Full Load 47.6

Memory*
Idle 40.9
Full Load 52.1


Summary



The drivers based on the dell 3.8.5 leaked betas were the hottest. Closely followed by the cat 3.7’s and finally the cat 3.8’s were the coolest. The results were surprising to me to say the least.
 
So the beta's appear to be the worst ... hmm

I guess we'll be hearing a lot more on this in the coming weeks ...
 
Unfortunately, the Beta's were what I was using, before going back to 3.7's, but I sure think they had better IQ than the regular 3.8's. Maybe that's the reason for more heat.
 
Omega's latest drivers were "leaked" drivers from Dell. Now there are some more "leaked" drivers from Asus making the rounds.

Whats with all the leaked drivers? ATi hasn't let that happen before.
These are based from the leaked Asus Drivers from asus ftp.

Whats good about them?

- Newer then Atii 3.8's
- Control Panel fully Working (100%)
- Flicking Texures FIX
- Great IQ and Performance
I think I'll leave them alone, for the time being.
But here's the links.
Here's the drivers.
And the Control Panel.

[size=1/2]Credit to analyze at Driver Heaven.[/size]
 
I don't think a temp change could be responsible for causing such mayhem, it's the re-fresh rate monitor killing that has me concerned...

I've been using the CAT3.8's since they were released on my old 17"CRT that came bundled w/ my OLD (but state of the art at the time!!!) PIII500....(long since upgraded, several times)

If there is any merit to this and the drivers kill my monitor, I'd like to get re-embursed the pro-rated worth of my monitor and grab a shiny new LCD flat-panel:grinthumb

We'll know soon enough.....stuff like this either gets debunked or proven in pretty short order....
 
Here's two reports about these issues, one from Rage3D and another from TheInquirer. I don't quite know what to make of this. If I read correctly, (and maybe I didn't) one says there is no problem, and the other says they are still investigating. Both of these statements are supposed to be from ATi reps.
 
Here's the response from ATI:
RESPONSE TO ALLEGED MONITOR FAILURE ISSUE

We have spent a great deal of time trying to reproduce this problem and analyzing our driver code. There is nothing in our driver code that has changed since CAT 3.7 to CAT 3.8 that could possibly cause this behaviour. We believe that our drivers are not causing these alleged problems.

We do not currently believe these stories are valid. We have already confirmed that of the nearly 100 OEM customer programs have asked for and received this driver, we have received no reports on any such problem from the OEMs. We have also run comprehensive QA tests on the driver before releasing it and have had no cases of failed monitors.

Since we announced CATALYST 3.8 on October 8th, we have recorded hundreds of thousands of downloads, and thus far there have been absolutely no reports whatsoever to ATI's Customer Support department to report monitors failing.


RESPONSE TO ALLEGED HARDWARE OVERHEATING ISSUE

We have spent a great deal of time analyzing the temperatures due to the CATALYST 3.8 drivers. We do not under any circumstance see anything near a 10 degree Celsius increase in temperature (but we don't overclock our test cards either). We do see a slight increase in temperature in certain cases (3Dmark2003 Nature Scene for example). However any temperature increase is well within our safety range. Investigation continues and we are trying to determine why this change in temperature exits. At this point we are reproducing individual driver packages with code being checked in and measuring the temperature. However nothing shows the alleged increase in temperature. One independent website even tried to reproduce this issue, and found no measurable difference in temperature between CATALYST 3.7 and 3.8.


TECHNICAL REBUTTAL OF MONITOR FAILURE ALLEGATIONS

There have been many posts in the forums discussing this issue, it seems it is a common theory, picked up from one place and keep being circulated. One such theory suggests the following:

"Instead of reading the refresh rates from the PRIMARY display INF files, it is reading the SECONDARY display INF refresh rates."

In XP and 2K, we don't have access to monitor INF information in our driver component that manages display capability. We have never used this monitor information for any purpose. We rely on EDID data or user override information to determine monitor capability. Even though the OS may use the monitor information to expose high refresh rate based on monitor INF content, the driver always restricts the actual refresh rate going to the monitor based on EDID or the user override. In essence, the user may be able to select from OS controlled monitor page (in advanced property pages) a high refresh rate but internally driver will restrict the refresh rate going to the monitor based on EDID information or user override information. If user set the override information incorrectly then incompatible signals would be sent to the monitor.

In 9x, we can access monitor INF information but due to issues with how OS maps the INF to a monitor, we had disabled reading the monitor INF via registry. Unless someone deliberately changes the registry setting for this in 9x, they would not run into any monitor INF related issues.

It's also curiouus how these rumours "were started by people who arrived on forums on the same day, spreading this gospel":suspiciou
 
Is the 9800pro heatsink supposed to be hot?

i have a 120mm intake fan blowing at my 9800pro. when i feel my video card heatsink while idle, it feels hot. is this normal? i am using CAT3.8 and the video card is not overclocked. my mobo says my system temp is 36 C.
 
If your system temp is 36 C, then your heatsink will be quite hot, as it will likely be 10 to 20 C higher than system. My system temps are pretty close to room temps, and is currently sitting around 20 C. I'd expect my heatsink to be around the same temp are your system temps. I think you need better cooling for your case, though I'd imagine that California is a lot warmer climate than UK, which would explain your high system temp.
 
my system temps are usually quite close to room temperature but the weather is unseasonably hot right now. yesterday it was like 40 C outside and 32C at room temperature without the A/C on. the santa ana winds and the massive, out of control wildfires across southern california (where i'm at) is not helping either. :blackeye:

right now my room temperature is 29 C. my system temp says it is 32 C. is this a normal temperature difference?
 
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