Help: X850 upgrade woes......

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geronimo

I have an Asus A7N8X-X mobo with 1 gb Corsiar PC 2700 RAM, Windows XP
Pro SP2. Had a radeon 9600 pro. I just upgraded to a radeon X850 XT.
This card should be over 8 times faster. It did not come with an
installation disc, so I downloaded the Windows XP drivers for radeon
x850. I installed both drivers....actually the one that is smaller
seemed to be the actual Catalyst driver package, and the other is the
Catalyst COntrol Center, I think. Device mgr. shows no exclamation
marks.... "working OK" for both main and secondary drivers. The driver
version number is 8.33.0.0 12/16/06.
The old video card could only run FSX at abt 4 to 5 FPS at KATL.
Well, not only is the new Radeon X850 XT not running FSX a single FPM
faster.... after I take off, the video starts resetting, and then
after about three times of this, it displays an error message that the
FVT recovery has reset the video because the graphics card has stopped
responding to graphics commands. (Not exactly right but that is the
gist of it)
My son plays Gerrys' Mod all the time. He said that he also cannot
even get it to work now, it says something about the graphics
accelerator drivers, drivers not installed or not installed
correctly....something like that.

If the card is bad it won't be so easy to return/exchange, I
ordered it directly from an eBay vendor in CHina. But probably its
some software/driver problem.

I remember there were Omega drivers for the radeon 9600....can you get
alternate drivers for the X850 also?
 
A couple of other important details: THis X850XT is not PCI-E, its
AGP. The A7N8X is an AGP mobo. I upgraded the PS to an Ultra 500
rated for 32 amps on 5V rail. IT shouldn't be a PS issue, as the PC
runs all programs other than games, and also mutimedia, just fine
with the new card. And yes, I uninstalled the Catalyst drivers being
used by the 9600 in device manager, before turning off the PC, and
replacing the old video card with the new one. Geronimo
 
I have an X850 AGP in my 2nd PC running XP Pro SP2 and haven't had a single
problem with it with various ATI drivers (currently I'm using Cat 6.12).

Unless the card itself is faulty, it should work. Did you *completely*
uninstall the previous driver? You can do so in add/remove program in
control panel. Then, download microsoft.net 2.0 and reinstall the ATI driver
along with the control center.
 
Well, I saw in previous post that there are new Omega drivers (3.8 )
available for radeon family, so I uinistalled the catalyst drivers and
installed the Omega drivers for XP. I didn't know whether to enable
"fast writes" or not, so I elected to enable that feature during
driver setup. Ran FSX again. This time the video did not crash/reset
during the sim. But when I exited the sim to go into the SETTINGS
menu, the monitor went black, and the HDD lite was steady on. After 10
or 15 minutes, there was nothing to do but reset PC. FSX Frame rates
were the same.....pathetic. SO there was somewhat of an improvement,
but still a video problem with games. At least the sim itself runs
without crashing now.

SInce it seems to be a problem with Direct X 9 games only, I ran
DXDIAG. I saw only black in one test where I was suppose to see a
white bouncing cube. I checked Direct X files tab, and it said "no
problems found". SO all the files are there it seems.
WIndows Plug and Play is doing something wierd....The New Hardware
wizard pops up after startup, and wants to install drivers for a new
device. I looked at device manager, and it has an "unknown device with
a qiestion mark since switching to the OMega drives. COme to think of
it, I think I was cancelling Hardware Wizard with the Catalyst drivers
installed also. I don't have an installation disk with an .INF file
to point it to. So something about the driver installation is screwed
up. But under display adapters, it shows two devices, the primary and
secondary devices on the video card....there is not supposed to be a
third device installed with X850, is there?
 
Well, I saw in previous post that there are new Omega drivers (3.8 )
available for radeon family, so I uinistalled the catalyst drivers and
installed the Omega drivers for XP. I didn't know whether to enable
"fast writes" or not, so I elected to enable that feature during
driver setup. Ran FSX again. This time the video did not crash/reset
during the sim. But when I exited the sim to go into the SETTINGS
menu, the monitor went black, and the HDD lite was steady on. After 10
or 15 minutes, there was nothing to do but reset PC. FSX Frame rates
were the same.....pathetic. SO there was somewhat of an improvement,
but still a video problem with games. At least the sim itself runs
without crashing now.

SInce it seems to be a problem with Direct X 9 games only, I ran
DXDIAG. I saw only black in one test where I was suppose to see a
white bouncing cube. I checked Direct X files tab, and it said "no
problems found". SO all the files are there it seems.
WIndows Plug and Play is doing something wierd....The New Hardware
wizard pops up after startup, and wants to install drivers for a new
device. I looked at device manager, and it has an "unknown device with
a qiestion mark since switching to the OMega drives. COme to think of
it, I think I was cancelling Hardware Wizard with the Catalyst drivers
installed also. I don't have an installation disk with an .INF file
to point it to. So something about the driver installation is screwed
up. But under display adapters, it shows two devices, the primary and
secondary devices on the video card....there is not supposed to be a
third device installed with X850, is there?
Click to expand...


Well first thing you should realize about FSX is that a very intesive
sim. It requires far more then what MS list for requirements. I'm
running in on my system with two ATi X1900's in crossfire, using an AMD
X2 3800 and 2 gig's of memory. It runs FSX smooth but at Medium High
settings with 25fps. I've been reading reviews of system tests on Tom's
Hardware Guide and they claim it taxes the crap out of the latest
cpu's. Even if you go to the FSX group you will see many talking about
poor performance.
 
Restore to a previous point where you hadn't installed the X850 and start
over again. As another poster wrote, you won't be able to get a performance
boost from the 850 when playing FSX. In order to play it at an acceptable
frame rate, you would need at least an X1950 Pro.
 
geronimo said:
Well, I saw in previous post that there are new Omega drivers (3.8 )
available for radeon family, so I uinistalled the catalyst drivers and
installed the Omega drivers for XP. I didn't know whether to enable
"fast writes" or not, so I elected to enable that feature during
driver setup. Ran FSX again. This time the video did not crash/reset
during the sim. But when I exited the sim to go into the SETTINGS
menu, the monitor went black, and the HDD lite was steady on. After 10
or 15 minutes, there was nothing to do but reset PC. FSX Frame rates
were the same.....pathetic. SO there was somewhat of an improvement,
but still a video problem with games. At least the sim itself runs
without crashing now.

SInce it seems to be a problem with Direct X 9 games only, I ran
DXDIAG. I saw only black in one test where I was suppose to see a
white bouncing cube. I checked Direct X files tab, and it said "no
problems found". SO all the files are there it seems.
WIndows Plug and Play is doing something wierd....The New Hardware
wizard pops up after startup, and wants to install drivers for a new
device. I looked at device manager, and it has an "unknown device with
a qiestion mark since switching to the OMega drives. COme to think of
it, I think I was cancelling Hardware Wizard with the Catalyst drivers
installed also. I don't have an installation disk with an .INF file
to point it to. So something about the driver installation is screwed
up. But under display adapters, it shows two devices, the primary and
secondary devices on the video card....there is not supposed to be a
third device installed with X850, is there?
Click to expand...

It sounds like maybe you didn't get the older drivers completely
un-installed before you started. Whenever I update my drivers, I
uninstall the Control Center and video driver, then reboot. I cancel
Windows "Found new hardware...blah blah" thing. Then I run the setup
for whatever driver I am installing, then reboot again. You may want to
use Driver Cleaner to make sure everything is removed, then start over.
Here is the Omega uninstall routine plus what to do if Windows keeps
finding the Omega drivers after install.

What is the full uninstall procedure I must follow if I want to remove
the XX drivers from my system?
1. Go to the Windows Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs section.
2. Uninstall the ATI Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center, don't
restart.
3. If uninstalling the Omega Drivers, uninstall Radlinker (if using an
old driver set).
4. Uninstall the existing driver set, restart.
5. If uninstalling the Omega Drivers, now uninstall the Setup Tools from
the Start Menu.
6. Now you can install any driver you like.

I uninstalled the drivers, But after restart, Windows keeps finding the
Omega Drivers...
There are some files that Windows saves for backup purposes that cannot
be removed by any means, except manually, here is how to find them and
remove them:
1. Open Windows Explorer and go to the "Windows\Inf" folder.
2. Do a search inside it for "A word or phrase in a file", type OMEGA
and click search.
3. In the search results box delete all the files with the name
"OEM##.INF", where ## can be any number...
4. Now remove the video card(s) from the Windows Device Manager and
restart.

Remember, the Omega drivers are based on the ATI drivers so if you had
problems with ATI (other than Catalyst), then Omega drivers will
probably have the same problems. You might want to view the FAQ at
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/ati_faq.php , it is pretty informative.
It also mentions other things to consider such as chipset drivers and
smartgart service. I have the same motherboard with a X850 XT PE and
use the ASUS drivers because the Nvidia motherboard drivers seemed to
make it flaky.

You may also want to make sure your DirectX is up to date:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en
here's a shorter link: http://tinyurl.com/bdp39

Good Luck
 
geronimo said:
Well, I saw in previous post that there are new Omega drivers (3.8 )
available for radeon family, so I uinistalled the catalyst drivers and
installed the Omega drivers for XP. I didn't know whether to enable
"fast writes" or not, so I elected to enable that feature during
driver setup. Ran FSX again. This time the video did not crash/reset
during the sim. But when I exited the sim to go into the SETTINGS
menu, the monitor went black, and the HDD lite was steady on. After 10
or 15 minutes, there was nothing to do but reset PC. FSX Frame rates
were the same.....pathetic. SO there was somewhat of an improvement,
but still a video problem with games. At least the sim itself runs
without crashing now.

SInce it seems to be a problem with Direct X 9 games only, I ran
DXDIAG. I saw only black in one test where I was suppose to see a
white bouncing cube. I checked Direct X files tab, and it said "no
problems found". SO all the files are there it seems.
WIndows Plug and Play is doing something wierd....The New Hardware
wizard pops up after startup, and wants to install drivers for a new
device. I looked at device manager, and it has an "unknown device with
a qiestion mark since switching to the OMega drives. COme to think of
it, I think I was cancelling Hardware Wizard with the Catalyst drivers
installed also. I don't have an installation disk with an .INF file
to point it to. So something about the driver installation is screwed
up. But under display adapters, it shows two devices, the primary and
secondary devices on the video card....there is not supposed to be a
third device installed with X850, is there?
Click to expand...

As others have said make sure you clean out all of your old drivers before
installing the new ones
Driver cleaner can help with this
http://www.drivercleaner.net/
You might find that the unknown device relates to VIVO if your card has it.
If so you would need to instal the appropriate driver
3 of 3 here
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonxip-xp.html
 
geronimo said:
Well, I saw in previous post that there are new Omega drivers (3.8 )
available for radeon family, so I uinistalled the catalyst drivers and
installed the Omega drivers for XP. I didn't know whether to enable
"fast writes" or not, so I elected to enable that feature during
driver setup.
Click to expand...

When I had my 9800 Pro. Setting the AGP speed to 8x caused lockups in
Battlefield 2 100% of the time. Enabling Fast Writes caused severe visual
artifacts in the form of odd-colored polygon clippings. Leave it disabled
for troubleshooting.
Ran FSX again. This time the video did not crash/reset
during the sim. But when I exited the sim to go into the SETTINGS
menu, the monitor went black, and the HDD lite was steady on. After 10
or 15 minutes, there was nothing to do but reset PC. FSX Frame rates
were the same.....pathetic. SO there was somewhat of an improvement,
but still a video problem with games. At least the sim itself runs
without crashing now.
Click to expand...

You would be surprised how many people would religiously clean out old
drivers, but never once reinstall the games. Does FSX have an autoconfig
function or separate "launcher" that can redetect your system hardware? I
know Oblivion and MechWarrior 4 had launchers, while Battlefield 2 spends a
long time recompiling shaders whenever it detects a video card change. If
FSX doesn't have such a function, reinstall the game, and be sure you do NOT
re-use any saved profile or settings the previous install.
SInce it seems to be a problem with Direct X 9 games only, I ran
DXDIAG. I saw only black in one test where I was suppose to see a
white bouncing cube. I checked Direct X files tab, and it said "no
problems found". SO all the files are there it seems.
Click to expand...

Microsoft releases a DirectX update every two months without rolling the
version number. Latest release is Dec. 2006.

You should also reinstall your motherboard AGP chipset drivers (yes, this
applies to Intel chipsets, too). Do this and the DirectX update before you
try reinstalling the game, since FSX is rather groundbreaking in disk space
usage...
WIndows Plug and Play is doing something wierd....The New Hardware
wizard pops up after startup, and wants to install drivers for a new
device. I looked at device manager, and it has an "unknown device with
a qiestion mark since switching to the OMega drives. COme to think of
it, I think I was cancelling Hardware Wizard with the Catalyst drivers
installed also.
Click to expand...

Is your X850 advertised with any video capture or VIVO capability? That
"unknown device" should go away once you install the WDM capture drivers. Of
course, if you don't do any video capture, simply disable the item in Device
Manager.
 
Well, am I correct that because the video only has problems during
Half-life and FSX (any direct x game, probably), then the video
card itself is good....I just have a problem with drivers? Have to
decide whether to return the card or not. THanks, Geronimo
 
Does this mean you've tried a few "stressful" OpenGL titles like Quake4 and
Prey? If the card works fine in those games, then the card itself is good.

If DirectX games are having trouble, then obviously the first things to try
are to update DirectX to the latest version, then your chipset drivers.

And it goes without saying you should disable any anti-virus, "crash-guard"
programs, Zonealarm, toolbars, anything with Symantec or McAfee's name on
it, etc., etc.
 
I found a fix for the DXDIAG DIRECT DRAW (step 7) test that was
failing. I went into the MORE INFO tab from DISPLAY and set manual
override vert freq to 75. I have a Viewsonic LCD monitor that works
with refresh rates up to 85 HZ. THen I got a normal full-screen test,
all passes now. However, FSX doesn't even get into the sim before it
locks up the PC now! It locks up in the latter stages of loading the
sim. I thought sure it would be fixed! FSX automatically detects a
vdideo card change....I know because there is a line near bottom of
FSX.CFG that says current video=X850 XT. DOn't know what to
do...maybe try a reinstall of FSX anyway.
No iI don't have any open GL games to try... maybe I could get one or
some freebie Open GL test game somewhere?
I really would like to have some more direct x games (like demos)
or some freebie apps for testing Direct x, too.
Also I am wondering if the current draw can go up when the video
card is stressed by a game? ALthough the PSU is billed as (I think)
550 watts, The 12 V rail is only rated for 330 watts (28 amps), and
the one and only 6-pin output line for HDDS and such is also having to
power the X850 XT. Well, there are a total of FIVE HDDs also supplied
by this one power rail. The PSU has two special 4-pin connectors which
I think are for video cards, but unfortunately the X850 uses the usual
HDD 6-pin connector. So My idea is to borrow a PSU from my spare
(inop) PC, and use that to power the X850. But then how to get it to
turn on when it is not plugged into a mobo?

Thanks Geronimo
 
Your PSU is not to be blamed. I haven't had any problem whatsoever with my
X850 with a 300W Antec PSU.
 
Did you update your DirectX runtimes like I suggested? FSX is technically a
DX10 game meant for Vista, so you are running it in some kind of fallback
compatibility mode. Thus it is highly recommended you use the latest
runtimes (DX9.0c Dec 2006 release).

One thing you can do, for ease of troubleshooting, is to make sure the
forced in-game refresh rate is the same as your desktop refresh rate. There
is usually no need to force the refresh rate in DXDiag; rather, you should
do it through Catalyst Control Center or ATi Tray Tools.

Just so there are no misunderstandings, the 4-pin connector is meant for
disk drives, while the 6-pin connector is a new design meant for PCIe video
cards. The X850XT AGP should have a *4*-pin connector. In any case I doubt
power is an issue, since max current draw for disk drives occurs at cold
boot (platter spin-up), then drops to negligible levels at idle. Besides,
the X850XT draws less than 3.5A from the 12V rail:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-powercons_4.html (X800XT
is similar to X850XT.)

Make sure you have the latest nForce chipset drivers, and try dropping the
AGP speed to 4x. It fixes lockups in some systems. Uncheck "VPU recover" in
Catalyst Control Center or ATi Tray Tools, too.
 
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