Video Card Problems?

I just want to request some advice. I just bought Vice City and decided it was time to update some hardware drivers. I started with the video card.

I have an ATI AIW Radeon 9800 Pro. Under display drivers, should I be seeing "ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 SERIES"? There's that and a "ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 SERIES - Secondary".

Is this the right driver to have? Or is it just not identifying my card correctly?

Bruno?

*edit*
To clarify, these items were listed before and after I updated the driver.

Try these drivers,
http://www.omegacorner.com/

I don't think I'm comfortable using those drivers. That's just me, I suppose.

Does anyone else have an answer for this? Bruno doesn't seem to be around at the moment. I suppose it doesn't really make a difference, I just wanted to be sure.

I guess you tried downloading the new drivers from ATI's website, but did you try uninstalling the old drivers first?

I've got the Radeon ATI 9800 Pro (not an AIW)(All In Wonder)) and installed the new Catalyst Driver Suite Software on their website here: http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html

Device manager definiately says: "Radeon 9800 Pro" but then again it may be different with the All in Wonder.

but then again it may be different with the All in Wonder

I hope that's all it is, because I definitely installed that lastest drivers from their website, and I did uninstall the old ones first.

I thought I might have been sent a 9700 by mistake, but I remember the box said 9800, and from what I can tell of pictures online, this is definitely the 9800 board. I just wonder if this is a problem that will affect the performance of my card. I think it's having trouble playing things for extended periods of time. It's heating up like crazy, and I'm only able to play GTA3 Vice City for about 10 minutes at 800x600 before my computer reboots its self.

*edit*
There's a difference between mine and this one, in that my fan is surrounded by a black heatsink, whereas this one is silver. But that's the only difference I can see.

What do you see when you right click the ATI icon in the tray and click settings ->display settings->options tab->details? Does it look like this?

Oh boy, it says 9700. This is worrying me a lot now. I don't see how it could possibly be the 9700. I'm absolutely certain, after finding all the pictures online, that my card looks like the 9800. I also think the 9800 boards are the only ATI boards that are red (at least, it appears the 9700 is green).

So it must be in software. I'll poke around and see what I can see from ATI's software on my PC, but I'm not expecting to find much.

I don't want to worry you any more, but my genuine ATI 9700 board is red...

pca

Not good news. I'll have to take a look at the pictures again.

Is it an All In Wonder? If so, does it look anything like this?

Can't you just remove the heatsink on the GPU and look what it says on the chip ? It's not hard to do and easy to put back on.

What a bummer

I took the card out and I didn't even have to pull the heatsink. Printed right on one of the labels was "9700 Pro."

So, good people of the empeg board. What is the difference between the 9700 and the 9800?

I guess I must have spaced on the numbers when I got it this Christmas, and confused the two models in my mind. Of course, if (when I get back there) I find that the box says 9800 on it, I'm going to be quite mad, although I don't know how much I could do about it.

Well, to my understaing the multemedia stuff is identical. The 3-D stuff is like 7% or 8% faster.

It's a newer revision of the core. The 9700 has a R300 and the 9800 has a R350. The differences are mainly performance tweaks and the shader length has been increased. The 9800 Pro also runs at a higher clockspeed than the 9700 Pro.

Is there any difference in heat dissipation? My card seems to be running too hot for its own good, and I'm constantly getting freezes and instant reboots. This is in GTA Vice City. I was able to run at 1600x1200, stuff like the frame limiter turned off, and the draw distance set to maximum with no slow down. But after about 3 minutes it would lock up. I'm not running at 800x600 and other settings on safe levels, and I'm still not able to run more than a mission at a time without taking a break in between. I even removed the card that was two slots below it, the spacers on the back, and I took the side panel of the case off, and it's still running hot!

I don't think there is much significant difference in heat dissipation between the two. The 9800 Pro runs at a higher clockspeed so it should in theory get hotter. They're made in the exactly the same process so there isn't any differences in that way.
It shouldn't ever get so hot that it'll reboot though. I would suggest taking the covers off the PC case but you've done that already...

and I'm constantly getting freezes and instant reboots. This is in GTA Vice City.

I'd do a test to see if I have the same problems but since I don't play games I don't suppose I can.

It certainly is quite warm to the touch. I'm not sure what the deal is. Like I said, it has no difficulties running at high speeds and incredible detail, but it can't do it for long. I doubt my hardware is the problem (Athlon 2100, 1GB RAM, 80GB WD SE).

So given how warm the card its self is, I tend to think it's due to heat there. The fan on the card is working, too.

My original Radeon also got very hot to touch. It didn't have any problems though.

Is it just Vice City that has these problems? Have you tried your other games again?

Well I suppose that's the odd part. GTA3 didn't have this problem that I can remember, although I may have turned that down to its lowest settings as well. I haven't played it for quite a while. I also don't play games very often. The last one was Warcraft 3, but I don't imagine that that game is more taxing on the system than Vice City.

could be your power supply, i was getting strage lockups and reboots with my dying cheap power supply i have installed. those video cards might be pushing the power supply to its limits.

To recap: *All* 9800 Pro boards made by ATI have a SILVER heatsink. No exceptions. The 9700 Pro and 9800 Pro boards were both RED (AIW and non-AIW). AIW 9800 Pro has only been available for couple of months - if you got the card at Christmas, it was before the 9800 asic was even announced, so it's DEFINITELY a 9700 and would say the same on the box. I know my friend at work did not complete the artwork fr the AIW 9800 Pro box until only a few months ago.

I was away at Macworld in NY, otherwise I would have replied sooner, sorry. The 9800 boards should run hotter - they consume about 75-watts of power. Many people have AIW 9700 Pro boards in Shuttle systems with stock power supplies and two hard drives without 3D problems. I have the same setup but don't play 3D games right now. I'll be swapping it out for an AIW 9800 after I move (already have he card just no time to play with parts until then).

The ASIC has some small optimizations and is running at a higher clock rate (along with the memory) in the 9800 series, 380/340MHz). There were some 9800-specific driver optimizations that helped account for an "up to" 30% improvement over the 9700. I believe those optimizations have now been exposed for the 9700 as well. Both will still provide better quality, more stability and higher speed than a similarly-priced board from the competition.

We just announced (and shipped) the 9800 Pro for the Mac (which I had a tremendous amount to do with). Macworld was super-tiny, but it was a good show for us. We accepted the award for "Most Dangerous Swag of Macworld" with honour (Nerf-type rockets, finger launched). Other vendors did not share our joy.

Bruno

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed, but I'll get over it. I would be much happier if I could figure out what was locking up my computer. I haven't gotten many sudden reboots from the game recently, but without fail, if I don't stop playing for a while after every single mission, the game will freeze and I can only manually reboot.

Don't worry, Bruno. I figured you were out of town.

Do you think that overheating is something that could cause this? might it be something else?

It could be overheating or it could be software or firmware problems. But remember that even if it is temperature-related, it might not necessarily be the video card that's overheating. And example of something else that could overheat is the motherboard's AGP chipset.

they consume about 75-watts of power

Ouch! That's about the same as a T-Bird 1.4GHz, which IIRC was about the hottest-running Athlon produced.

So an AIW 9800 and a T-Bird 1.4 would put you at 150W disippated into the case. Add a drive or 2, a couple of sticks of RAM, and the motherboard chipsets, and I can easily see 250W into the case.

How is your case cooling?

Well, my games box is a Shuttle SN41G2 (very small box) with the 9700, an athlon 2800, 1GB DDR 333, a PCI Nvidia Geforce4MX card, a combi dvd/cdrw drive and a 100GB maxtor HD. It gets quite warm on the case outer surface after it's been running for a while, but it's rock-solid stable, even when playing GTA3 or vice city, both of which are a little unstable in my view.

I would suggest that you have either a faulty card, or a faulty motherboard. I had one a while ago that would invariably crash after a few minutes of 3d gaming, no matter what card was used. The problem never occurred if the 3d was software generated, only when a 3d card was used. It seems to have been a chipset issue, as force cooling the chipset heatsink would delay the onset of the crash, although not eliminate it.

pca

If it's a faulty motherboard, I'll not be happy at all. I've already replaced the motherboard with a nice, reliable ASUS, and I was hoping that would solve it.

I agree, both GTA games are quite badly ported, but the first one runs just fine on my machine on the same minimal settings. Argh. But I think you're right. There's no reason, if the hardware has no difficulty rendering the graphics, that it should overheat so quickly.

If I wanted to get into watercooling, what would you kind people suggest?

Tom's Hardware guide had an article on that last year, in fact they have had a couple after doing a search for water cooling.

Edit: Of course if you really wanted it cold you could get one of these.

If I wanted to get into watercooling, what would you kind people suggest?

For best performance, don't buy a kit, but put the essential pieces of the watercooling rig together yourself. Most kits are not fully optimized.

This is what I ended up buying :
Eheim 1048 pump
Innovatek reservoir
BlackIce Xtreme radiator
Swiftech waterblocks

This gave me a pretty good setup, with CPU temperatures not exceeding 37°C, no matter how hard I'm overclocking my CPU.

But THE best feature that came with it (for me) is the noise level. My PC is now practically silent.

Ouch! That's about the same as a T-Bird 1.4GHz, which IIRC was about the hottest-running Athlon produced.

Well, the R300 chip is only about 110 million transistors. At a 0.15 micron process... so it is bound to use some power.

As far as the overall problem, how well ventalated is your system. Many people run 9700/9800 cards in Shuttle systems (myself included), but I would have to say the Shuttle case is better ventalated for the 9700 then most normal tower cases. Shuttle cases manage to pull hot air out of the case quite well, as the dust pattern on the inside of mine near the 9700 can attest to.

My system should have very little ventilation problems. My case is certainly big enough (Lian-Li PC-75), and there are two fans near it blowing outward.

I also had a PCI card in the slot two below it, but since I don't need it at the moment, I took it out. Now I have about 6 inches of space below the card, and plenty of space around it given the great size of the case (it's enormous).

This is just frustrating. I put my girlfriend's computer together last night, and it's basically the same system, but a Shuttle with onboard video. It had absolutely no problems playing the game at 800x600 (I didn't try higher - not enough time). My hardware can play the game at very high resolutions perfectly smoothly, but it only gives me about 4 minutes of playing, particularly if there's a lot of action. No slow down, just crashes.

Someone said it might be the chipset. Any advice on cooling that? I can't go through another motherboard exchange, particularly when that might not be the culprit.

Maybe I should get a Shuttle...

Are you running AGP 8x? Go to the SMARTGART tab of the display properties and play with the settings there. Drop AGP speed first to troubleshoot. You may also check AGP fastwrites...

Bruno

I am running AGP8x, and the fastwrite is set to "On". I'll try lowering to AGP4x