9800 Pro Problem

dent

Hey
Is there a way to check the performance of a graphics card to ensure its working right?

I have run prime 95 ( Blend mode) as recommended and no problems have appeared. Several tests the longest being 4.5 hours. I'll try and run it longer when I get the time.

The problem is that in Far Cry the trees and background seem to shimmer and don't look smooth.
I get the same problem in Battlefield.
The characters look fine.

Call of Duty however ran like a dream. Except for the opening intro movie which looked all pixely. ( Is there a better word ).
The scrolling movie in the main menu of Far Cry also looked all pixely.

This might me down to my old DVD ( I hope ) which is only 4 speed. I have a new one on order.

I have used both catalyst 4.5 and 4.6.

I had patched Battlefield but not Far Cry.

Even so given my machine specs below should I expect such performance. How do I test my graphics card?

To be honest I'm disappointed. Do I have to constantly tweak games. Dare I say it the horrible words "Should I give up and get a console".

Does anyone else else have a Radeon 9800 pro with similiar specs. How does Far Cry play on your machines and what setup do you use. Do I need more RAM? Is it my moniter?

To be honest I kinda hope its a problem or Ive become disillusioned with new games. I was quite happy playing half life and shogun total war on my old P3 45o mhz machine. At least they worked straight out of the box.

I have included my Machine specs below.

My machine
Abit IC7 Mainboard
Corsair TWINX512-3200LL DDR-DIMM 512MB
19inch Hansol CRT Moniter .20mm dot pitch
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB S-ATA 8MB cache 7200RPM
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Atlantis PRO 128MB

unklerosco

I have baically the same setup only a 2.8pf and 512mb pc400 adata....

I can run it fine on full detail(low for shadow, makes huge difference) and that include ultra high on the water, ie it reflects everything...

Ive no idea whats wrong with urs, try taking a screen shot n post it

dent

I'll post a screen shot when I get home

When I installed the drivers it didn't perform any extra tests. It said something about performing one upon reboot. Did you notice yours running any.

unklerosco

Nope, it said it would but didn't... The only prob i'm having with my pro at the min is that it hangs my system the odd time but I think thats just cause my systems unstable. Starting afresh today, new mobo, hds n wc...

Stephen

Disabling agp fast writes in my bios solved all the problems I had with my new 9800 pro.

dent

I'll try that too. Can you disable them using the ATI control panel.

Stephen

You can, but that didn't seem to do the trick. Disabling it in the BIOS did though

fenris

Fastwrite is responsible for a lot of grief with the 9800pro - the omegacorner (the new omega drivers are working very well for me) website rants about it a bit.

I found that my powersupply was responsible for random crashes / shutdowns after I put my 9800pro in.

Use MBM5 hi/lo report to check the stability of your power rails.

I ditched the Q-TEC gold 550w piece of **** for a Thermaltake 480W Butterfly and everything is cruising along nicely with everything turner up full on Farcry and most things turned up full on Planetside.

XP3000+, 1g 3200 Ram, 9800Pro, win2k

dent

It seems IC7 doesn't set fast write in the BIOS ( From forums and searching the bios anyway)

I disabled them in the ATI control panel.
I even tried the latest Omega drivers which also disabled fast write.

Am I expecting to much are the trees in the distance supposed to shimmer.

Tried Battlefield at well and it even lags a little.

Gonna send it back for testing.

Thanks for the help. Really great forum.

Col_Loki

With a machine like that there should be no lag TBH. Have you tried the newest motherboard drivers?

This most lightly has nothing to do with it but might save you hassle in other areas, is your DVD drive DMA enabled? (control pannel -> System -> Hardware tab -> device manager -> Atapi controller and properties , it should be DMA if available)

dent

I haven't checked the drive yet but I will ( Got in late last night:) ). Could the problem be the power supply I have a Chenbro Gaming box 350W 12V.
Pretty sure the card was hooked up by itself. I'll check again.

I installed KOTOR and we set on high it seems to skip some frames.

I also noticed that the bios has different performance options for the AGP. Its an IC7 the options where auto, turbo, street racer and F1. I'm going to play with these also to see if its makes a difference. I have Cosair RAM so it should be alright.

Does anyone know of any Net cafe's in Dublin that use 9800 pros. Just so I can compare what I'm seeing.

I guess the last resort is to return it and get it checked. Should I contact Komplett or Sapphire. I bought it about two months ago.

dent

Hey all
I enabled ( If possible ) the DMA on my DVD player. I used the 3dmark becnch mark here are my results.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2765600

Seems low. I have 512 mb of memory should I only have about 300MB available for use. Seems like XP is using a lot. I don't have many other programs running.

Boro

For a rig like that you should be getting around 6000 marks. Your score is way below par.

You should download the omega ATI drivers from here if you havent done so already. You should uninstall the standard ATI Catalyst drivers first though, or at least get rid of the ATI Control Panel.

Swap File Guide. Lots of other useful tips and tricks on www.blackviper.com - recommended swap file size is about 2.3 x ram i think. If you have antivirus software try disabling the resident shield (or auto protect part) while you run 3d mark. If that makes a difference then in most antivirus configurations, you can enter directories that arent included in the resident scanning - put your games folder in here (eg if your games are all installed in c:\games\whatever\ then enter c:\games as something not to be scanned).

Check what programs you have running - something like msn or a motherboard monitor of some description - these programs can sometimes try doing something every few seconds (like trying to connect or scanning something - this could cause 'lag' in games (tip: to remove msn, go to c:\windows\inf\sysoc.inf and find the line msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7 - delete the hide word but not the commas, so the line is like msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7 - then save, go to your add/remove programs in the control panel - add/remove components and down at the bottom you will see msn - well hidden by microsoft)

AFAIK, the latest omega drivers fix several Farcry issues.
The more complicated your hardware gets, the more complicated the issues - but in the end it will be all worth while

dent

Hey
Just noticed in my abit hardware doctor some error logs. Hopefully they can shed some light if anyone can make sense of them. I see AGPV. I presume its my graphice port voltage. Any idea what this should be at.

2004/06/15 20:03:01 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.94V
2004/06/15 20:46:57 Warning:=AGPV: 1.50V
2004/06/15 21:28:21 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/16 22:01:24 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/17 19:58:05 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 20.0C
2004/06/17 20:16:35 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 20.0C
2004/06/18 22:48:37 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/19 14:09:11 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/20 15:14:06 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/20 19:10:32 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/21 23:24:36 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 18.0C
2004/06/22 20:28:37 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.28V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/23 22:43:18 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.28V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/25 19:59:03 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.25V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.94V SYS: 19.0C
2004/06/26 14:42:17 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 19.0C
2004/06/26 16:29:09 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/27 11:30:31 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 21.0C
2004/06/27 15:54:01 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/06/28 23:44:54 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 19.0C
2004/06/29 18:30:21 Warning:=+5V: 5.03V +12V: 11.80V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.94V
2004/06/29 19:08:56 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.67V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V
2004/07/01 19:09:15 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.26V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.94V
2004/07/12 19:33:45 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.33V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V SYS: 21.0C
2004/07/12 19:38:55 Warning:=+5V: 5.05V +12V: 11.73V DDRVtt: 1.33V AGPV: 1.50V 5VSB: 4.92V