• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

massive 9800 problem, help would be appreciated

D

Dem

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 14, 2001
Messages
2,609
Heya. I noticed my 9800 Pro was artifacting when I was playing Doom 3 (hard to explain, but flickering around edges and the like). Warcraft 3 had the problem to a much lesser degree when looking at 'fog of war'. Halo also had the problem (to the same extent Doom 3 did), but other games (UT2004, Tribes: Vengeance beta) don't have the problem.

However, I got annoyed with it and decided to try new drivers to see if it fixed the problem. I tried the new ATI drivers and it didn't. I then tried new Omega drivers and not only did the problem not get fixed, I got a much bigger one:

Almost immediately after boot, the VPU would reset (ATI's VPU restarter doohickey would start it up again). Then it would do it again, and again, and again. I deinstalled the drivers in safe mode, tried the ATI drivers again and the same exact thing happened. I deinstalled drivers again in safemode, ran an ATI driver cleaner, reinstalled the ATI drivers and the problem happened again.

Finally I deinstalled the drivers in safemode, restarted and just pointed the windows hardware installer at the ATI driver directory when it asked me for files. This worked.

Unfortunately the system is now very unstable. The best I can get is about 30 minutes of play on a game, usually less, and the system just reboots or the VPU restarts and then the system reboots a minute later. I also noticed a really weird problem: going into the BIOS on my mobo, the occasional character will be wrong, ie [ replaced with Z or m replaced with l or n. Very strange glitch. This made me think the problem might be the card itself.

While I originally thought I would just reinstall windows, I tried putting the 9800 Pro into a second machine (because of the weird glitch) and the glitch happens there too. Warranty is expired on the card, so that's not really an option.

What I'd like to do is try reflashing the card's BIOS in case that has somehow become corrupted (it's all I can think of).

I'm looking but the system reboots every 30 minutes and it's making this a pain: Anyone able to point me at a program and BIOS for flashing my 9800 Pro BIOS? And a BIOS? It's just a regular ATI model, not a third-party company or anything.

Any help or advice would greatly be appreciated.

Erik
 
Obvious thing to check: make sure the fan is actually running on your card. If the cooling went bad, the card would overheat and crap out under any kind of load.

Also, try a different power connector. This sounds like a stupid idea, but they can go bad, and your card will act wierd as a result.
 
Thanks for the advice, but the fan is running fine, the heatsink is attached properly, and I've tried different molex connectors (on both machines).

I'm pretty good at the elimination game :). I'm really stumped as to why it keeps restarting the VPU when I reboot after driver installs. All I can think of is that it's something to do with the 'stability test' both drivers do after they reboot. Why it started after hte omega drivers were installed and what I can do about it though is something I'm stumped on.

Erik
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top