ATI Radeon 9700 Pro bugging out

  • Thread starter Thread starter doug.drodskie
  • Start date Start date
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doug.drodskie

I'm finding more and more often that I 'lose' the graphics card and revert
to 640x480 16 colour screen, a couple of times every night and mostly when
on the Internet, requiring a reboot. Message (sometimes) "graphics device
failed to complete a drawing operation". Code Bcc ...........

I went right through winter without problems and the problems seem to get
worse as the weather warms up. (No change to hardware or drivers and no
o'clocking).

Does this card suffer from overheating? If so, how best to cool it down. I
already have 5 fans in the box and a table fan blowing on the box from
outside?

System:
P4 2.5GB on GA 8INXP mobo + onboard Realtek AC'97 sound.
512 MB RAM
120 GB 7200 HDD
Cat 3.7

Some advice would be appreciated before I spend money on a VGA Cooler.
 
I'm finding more and more often that I 'lose' the graphics card and revert
to 640x480 16 colour screen, a couple of times every night and mostly when
on the Internet, requiring a reboot. Message (sometimes) "graphics device
failed to complete a drawing operation". Code Bcc ...........

I went right through winter without problems and the problems seem to get
worse as the weather warms up. (No change to hardware or drivers and no
o'clocking).

Does this card suffer from overheating? If so, how best to cool it down. I
already have 5 fans in the box and a table fan blowing on the box from
outside?

System:
P4 2.5GB on GA 8INXP mobo + onboard Realtek AC'97 sound.
512 MB RAM
120 GB 7200 HDD
Cat 3.7

Some advice would be appreciated before I spend money on a VGA Cooler.
Click to expand...

Uhm... whynot just find out why your computer needs so much cooling in the
first place?
 
I get the exact same error with Morrowind using trueform. The site for
morrowind optimiser said it was a driver problem and to update to cat3.10.
I was using 3.7 when the error started. I wonder if you have changed
drivers, and that is your problem?

S
 
I got the card last summer and had a lot of such problems which seemed to be
solved by Cat 3.4, but this also coincided with winter. Continued right
thru' winter with Cat 3.4 and as mentioned, problems started up again come
summer. Recently updated to Cat 3.7 (tried also 3.8 but removed it).
However, during the summer problem, winter no problem, summer problem again
period, never changed anything on the system.
 
I have the same motherboard and graphic card setup and get the same
problems. I have read that there may be a compatibility problem between
the 9700 pro and the E7205 chipset that causes this. Some possible
solutions I've read about are to force the AGP slot to run at 4X (I
haven't tried this) or turn off fast writes (didn't work for me). Please
post if you find a solution that works without forcing AGP 4X

Mach1
 
I have the same motherboard and graphic card setup and get the same
problems. I have read that there may be a compatibility problem between
the 9700 pro and the E7205 chipset that causes this. Some possible
solutions I've read about are to force the AGP slot to run at 4X (I
haven't tried this) or turn off fast writes (didn't work for me). Please
post if you find a solution that works without forcing AGP 4X
Click to expand...

You do realise that the performance difference between 4X and 8X is
negligible don't you?
 
I took my box in under warranty with random reboot problem. I told
them to check video card, as I thought this was the problem. They put
a digital thermometer on my 9700 pro, was running 60 Celcius. HOT!!
Discovered that ATI was using some kind of thermal tape on heatsink.
Changed it out for good quality thermal grease, temp dropped to 48
Celcius. So far so good.

System:
hope this helps


I have the same motherboard and graphic card setup and get the same
problems. I have read that there may be a compatibility problem between
the 9700 pro and the E7205 chipset that causes this. Some possible
solutions I've read about are to force the AGP slot to run at 4X (I
haven't tried this) or turn off fast writes (didn't work for me). Please
post if you find a solution that works without forcing AGP 4X

Mach1
Click to expand...
email: (e-mail address removed)
 
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