Something Screwed up w/my Radeon 9600??????

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Young
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T

Tom Young

Hi:

Essentials of system:

Windows ME
Athlon XP +2600
ASUS A7N8X motherboard
512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory

I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
because things seemed satisfactory.

Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
place.

I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
3D settings set at "performance."

The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.

Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.

Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?

TIA.

Tom Young
 
Have a 9600 also and race Nascar 2003 on line. Was getting bboted out of
game and I isolated the problem to DirectX 9.0c. Did a system restore and
everything is okay. Revert to 9.0b and it may solve your problem.
 
I have a 9600 pro and experienced graphics lockups when gaming after I
installed DirectX 9.0c. I did a lot of unecessary work just as you did.
Finally did a system restore to date before upgrade. System is fine now. No
problems. Was in a forum the other day and saw that the 9600's were having
problems after direct X upgrade.
 
Straight off, I guess this is what most people will say regarding WinME -
get rid of it. Its not the best gaming platform. But, seeing as how you
didnt ask for advice on your OS and you're probably very happy with it, I'll
just shut up ;)
Second, if it was my system I'd check the registry. Perhaps theres some file
links or such there which have not been altered so suit where the game is
now residing (second drive). Worth checking anyway.
Thirdly, check you havent still got 'old' driver files interferring with the
newer ones. Get a little program which searches for and erases all instances
of the ATI drivers. Its on the ATI website, I think. Again, worth a check.
Then of course install the newer drivers for a clean hookup.
Let us know if any if that helps.
 
Tom said:
Hi:

Essentials of system:

Windows ME
Athlon XP +2600
ASUS A7N8X motherboard
512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory
Click to expand...

bin muppet edition for starters
 
TR said:
Have a 9600 also and race Nascar 2003 on line. Was getting bboted out of
game and I isolated the problem to DirectX 9.0c. Did a system restore and
everything is okay. Revert to 9.0b and it may solve your problem.
Click to expand...


I didn't mention every single step I'd taken in the process - too long
- but right after the fresh install of Windows ME I downloaded and
installed DirectX 9.0b. After installing Quake 3 and copying over the
Quake files I saw the wildly fluctuating FPS. Found the DirectX 9.0c
download and installed that, with no improvement.

Doesn't seem like DirectX is the source of my problem.

Thanks.
 
Blaedmon said:
Straight off, I guess this is what most people will say regarding WinME -
get rid of it. Its not the best gaming platform. But, seeing as how you
didnt ask for advice on your OS and you're probably very happy with it, I'll
just shut up ;)
Click to expand...

Too, since things seemed to be working OK under WinME on the old hard
drive it doesn't seem like a fresh install of WinME on a new hard
drive should adversely affect anything.

Second, if it was my system I'd check the registry. Perhaps theres some file
links or such there which have not been altered so suit where the game is
now residing (second drive). Worth checking anyway.
Click to expand...

I did an actual "install" of Quake3 using the CD, did the update to
the latest point release, then copied the Quake3 directory over from
the hard drive to the same directory created by the install. As far
as I can see in the registry everything points in the right direction.
Thirdly, check you havent still got 'old' driver files interferring with the
newer ones. Get a little program which searches for and erases all instances
of the ATI drivers. Its on the ATI website, I think. Again, worth a check.
Then of course install the newer drivers for a clean hookup.
Let us know if any if that helps.
Click to expand...

Found and downloaded ATI Inspector. It gives lots and lots of info -
some of which I'll admit I don't understand - but there's nothing
obviously wrong. Under the "ATI Driver Files" there's lots of files
listed. Many have different version numbers, but there's no
duplication in file names. Since I always uninstalled before
installing drivers I'd guess that all's well.
 
Geoff said:
bin muppet edition for starters
Click to expand...

Sorry, that's a little too obscure for me to understand. Are you
dissing WinME? This setup worked OK before, so I don't think that has
anything to do with it.
 
Hi:

Essentials of system:

Windows ME
Athlon XP +2600
ASUS A7N8X motherboard
512 Mg of PC3200 RAM
Xtasy Radeon 9600 graphics card w/256 Mg memory

I've been playing Quake 3 for some time with this setup and generally
held right around 125 FPS (Frames Per Second) most of the time playing
CTF4. I'd never bench marked this system using the FOUR.DM_68 demo
because things seemed satisfactory.

Just recently I installed a new hard drive in the system, did a fresh
install of Win ME, updated Win ME, installed most recent Nvidia
drivers for the motherboard, installed the most recent ATI graphics
card drivers, downloaded DirectX 9.0c, re-installed Quake 3, updated
Quake 3, and then copied the entire Quake 3 directory (with config
files, etc.) from the old to the new drive. Now, I'm getting wildly
fluctuating FPS's in CTF4; it'll hold steady at 125 when looking up at
the black sky but drops down as low as the 50's when there's lots of
action going on. During regular game play FPS jumps all over the
place.

I've tried un-installing drivers and loading older drivers, where
possible, though nothing in the list of "Fixed in this driver:" notes
suggests anything is wrong with the latest drivers. Since I copied
the contents of the old Quake 3 directory over to the new drive,
nothing has changed in my configs. Looking through the graphics card
properties, everything seems OK: refresh rate at "optimal", hardware
acceleration "full", AGP speed at "8x", fast write as "off" (which I
think is correct for this card as the "on/off" option is grayed out),
3D settings set at "performance."

The DirectX Diagnostic Tool says everything's OK.

Nothing has changed in my BIOS, as far as I can see.

Can anybody suggest anything else to look into to solve this issue?

TIA.

Tom Young
Click to expand...

It looks like the problem had something to do with conflicts between
the graphic card drivers and imbedded sound card on the A7N8X
motherboard. Removed the sound card via Control Panel > System and
disabled the sound card via BIOS then installed a new Sound Blaster
PCI sound card; FPS seem to be back up where they were before. I had
removed the "latest and greatest" ATI drivers and installed the same
drivers I was using before the new WinME install, but I hadn't
uninstalled the "latest and greatest" NVIDIA drivers; looks like the
NVIDIA drivers caused the conflict.
 
It looks like the problem had something to do with conflicts between
the graphic card drivers and imbedded sound card on the A7N8X
motherboard. Removed the sound card via Control Panel > System and
disabled the sound card via BIOS then installed a new Sound Blaster
PCI sound card; FPS seem to be back up where they were before. I had
removed the "latest and greatest" ATI drivers and installed the same
drivers I was using before the new WinME install, but I hadn't
uninstalled the "latest and greatest" NVIDIA drivers; looks like the
NVIDIA drivers caused the conflict.
Click to expand...


Well, it seems I spoke too soon. Although the FPS were good
immediately after the install of the new sound card, when I tried
again later in the day the FPS were bouncing all over again, dropping
down to the 60's at points. I still think it's some sort of driver
conflict issue, but don't know what else to try at this point.
 
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