ATI 9700 pro screen goes blank randomly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tonerhead
  • Start date Start date
I think I declared victory too soon...
Today I experienced a garbled screen followed by ATI driver warning
about switching to software mode. :(
Then I got a couple of system freezes.

Air flow in my case seems to be all right, and both CPU and MB
temperatures are at 30C. I found that I mistakenly swapped Power and
Chassis Fan connectors on the motherboard, but I'm not sure it's gonna
make a difference.

I'll run memtest 3.0 to see where the things are with RAM.
Also I wonder if going with a later Radeon model (9600XT or
9800Pro/XT) will make any difference. Maybe ATI sorted out stability
issues with them.
 
I think I declared victory too soon...
Today I experienced a garbled screen followed by ATI driver warning
about switching to software mode. :(
Then I got a couple of system freezes.

Air flow in my case seems to be all right, and both CPU and MB
temperatures are at 30C. I found that I mistakenly swapped Power and
Chassis Fan connectors on the motherboard, but I'm not sure it's gonna
make a difference.

I'll run memtest 3.0 to see where the things are with RAM.
Also I wonder if going with a later Radeon model (9600XT or
9800Pro/XT) will make any difference. Maybe ATI sorted out stability
issues with them.
Click to expand...

Hi, Doug,

According to to the netizens, ATI 9700 pro has a lot of problems
with the Granite Bay chipset. Even ATI admitted this defect:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5421
Some of the proposed solutions are:
1) Turn off AGP 8X and turn off fastwrite and combined writes.
Tweaking these do not make any differences on my system.
2) Turn off VPU recovery.
3) Up the ram and AGP voltage.
4) Unistall all previous ATI driver and install the latest one.
You may have done this for the nth time, I bet!!

The spread spectrum thingy that GothicPL found on newegg was new
to me, maybe you can give it a try. I do not have the gigabyte
granite board, but MAM is a memory speed item in the asus
p4p800 bios.

I hate to declare victory in this case, but after plugging in
the ATI 9700 pro to a different molex, the system has been stable
for almost 2 days, running aquamark3, 3dmark2001SE, 3dmark03
and the pipedream demo overnight. Of course, it has been
very cold the last 2 days.

GothicPL, I am also tempted by the ATI AIW 9800 pro but
my needs are stability and image quality and
speed is nice but not critical.

I will report back in a couple of days, good luck.
 
Thanks for that link, very interesting. I don't have that type of extreme
problem described though, where the card doesn't work at all. Just this
annoying bugging out every so often with "device/driver failed to complete a
drawing operation" style message.

Looked for Intel chipset and Gigbyte mobo driver updates from your link but
nothing much available and nothing that refers to the problem.

Don't you just hate it when you enthusiastically spend a fortune on what you
think will be the best component for your supercomp and in hindsight find
it's a lemon. :-(
 
Thanks for that link, very interesting. I don't have that type of extreme
problem described though, where the card doesn't work at all. Just this
annoying bugging out every so often with "device/driver failed to complete a
drawing operation" style message.

Looked for Intel chipset and Gigbyte mobo driver updates from your link but
nothing much available and nothing that refers to the problem.

Don't you just hate it when you enthusiastically spend a fortune on what you
think will be the best component for your supercomp and in hindsight find
it's a lemon. :-(
Click to expand...

Hello Doug, try the forums at rage3d.com or abxzone.com

At this point, I still have the intermittent freezes.
But at least, I've found that I may have more than one problem.

The first problem is the garbled graphics and it only happens when
cas is set to 3 and play aquamark and 3dmark2001se. I think that
is a software issue, that something is not reset properly.
If I play aquamark, TA demo and 3dmark, I will be fine.
Of course, the dreaded ati2mtag bug is still there,
but that is something I can live with.

The freeze is the most annoying/dangerous part.
I fiddled with the bios and turn power management completely off.
Hot cpu tester ran for 6 hours w/o error, memtest completed 36 passes
w/o any error and it ran pipedream for 9 hours w/o any problem.
Threw in some short runs of prime95. everything ran!!
And then the PC just froze. Temperature is fine, voltage is ok.
All the fans were spinning when the freeze occurred and
the ATI 9700 pro was just warm to the touch, not hot at all.

The shortest duration for the PC to freeze is 8 hours and the longest
was 5 days.

I am now just running with one stick of ram.
If this does not work, I will reinstall XP ;-(

I will post to the asus board instead.
 
After playing with the card intensively for a week,
I am convinced that I have a bum ATI 9700 pro and
hopefully a RMA will resolve the issues.

I also discovered that with my limited experience on p4p800:
1. Setting the texture in the bios to 64 meg is much more
stable than 128 meg with 3dmark2001se.
2. Disable ICH delayed transaction will increase the stability.
3. Using one monitor is more stable with 3D apps than using
2 monitors especially if their resolutions do not match.
4. Lock down the AGP and PCI speeds will slightly increase
the stability.

It is definitely YMMV.

BTW, I just received the RMA number from ATI 30 minutes
after the RMA request was submitted and that is quick response.
Time will tell whether I'll get a better board or not.
 
I was able to get rid of the problem by switching to 9800Pro, which
BTW has a different power connector. I wonder if stability issues with
9700Pro made ATI change it.
 
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