I recently upgraded my system, along with this GeXCube Radeon 9600 XT Extreme (2.5ns BGA RAM). While the install of everything went fine, this damn radeon has been nothing but constant trouble.
First off, it was fine at desktop at 800x600, running at 60Hz with the drivers that came with it. When i bumped it up to 1024z768, it began to run at 43Hz interlaced. Gave me a hell of a headache, then rebooted itself after a while running like this. My monitor ran fine on every other video device ive ever used.
When it rebooted, Windows told me my graphics device driver stopped responding to commands, and that the 'Radeon 9600' Drivers were to blame. So i did the usual thing of swearing and downloading of newer drivers from ATI, catalyst 4.2, and the latest drivers for my card from the GeXCube site. No change. After fiddling with the options for a while, i found the DDC overide for my monitor embedded deep within the ATI control panel, and forced it not to use DDC info, which enabled my monitor to run at 1024x768 @ 60Hz. Fine and dandy, but it didnt stop the lockups/freezes/reboots every little while, at random times
So i ignored that for the time being and turned to why i upgraded, games. To find even worse problems there. Locks, resets, reboots, freezes with graphical corruption, screen turning off (no signal) with games continuning to run, and the very few times that the VPU recovery actually did something, i switched back into the game and it kept running.
Being a patient person, and having a intermittent problem (I cannot draw any links between the crashes, they appear completly random) ive spent the past few weeks using my computer like normal but tweaking or getting new drivers here or there and changning one thing at a time and running games until they crash and i move onto the next possible cause. To no avail.
The only one time i could reproduce the bug is in a particular Unreal II level, where your receiving a briefing, when a map came up in the holotank the computer would reboot. If i looked away while the map came up it kept running, but when i turned to look at the map *poof* reset. I ended up looking at a wall for the duration of the breifing to get past that one. A level later, it reset for the 50 millionth time and when i went back into the game the game and now the savegames corrupted badly.
The ONLY link i can find is the types of resets and the different games. Different games have different types of resets. Ive tried keeping a note of heat, driver types, patches, touching and checking the temp of the card and heatsinks, resolutions, refresh rates, etc, and could not find any links. It crashes as much on cold days as warm; new games and old; openGL games and directX games.
That said, some games dont crash at all. I played Need for Speed Undeground for the majority of a day and it didnt pause for breath, never had a problem. Come to other games, like Aliens versus predator 2 or Unreal II, and i have never quit the game properly.
A rough list of games and types of crash follows:
Deus Ex: Invisible War - Frequent resets and crashes to desktop. V1.1 Patch fixes desktop crash problem but freezes and reboots stay.
Need for Speed Underground: No crashes found
Unreal II: Every crash in the book. Reboots, freezes, freezes followed by graphical corruption. On the few occasions the ATI VPU recovery have worked i have been able to switch back into the game and continue playing until it froze again.
Morrowind: Crashes and reboots after 30-hour of playing
Halo: Crashes and reboots after extended playing
AvP 2 - Primal Hunt: numerous crashes and reboots, along with freezes and graphical corruption.
Command and Conquer Generals: Occasional freezes in the menu, otherwise run without a problem.
Worms 3D: Runs for 20-30 mins and resets
A list of the things ive tried to fix it:
Clen reinstall of XP
Update radeon 9600 xt drivers to catalyst 4.2 and also tried latest
drivers from gexcube's website
Updated VIA chipset 4-in-1 drivers
Patched games in question
Tried different resolutions
Tried different refresh rates
Checked BIOS AGP settings
Checked ATI control panel settings
Lowering AGP bus speed from 8x to 4x
Setting AGP fast write to off
Checking ATI/Gexcube knowledgebases
Searching web for solutions
The crashing while at desktop doing whatever didnt happend as often when i set up my secondary monitor, but it does still crash. Often it just freezes and both monitors lose signal, and sometimes the display stops but the computer keeps running (winamp keeps playing songs)
The ATI website notes that there is a conflict between radeon 9600 and (from memory) KT400 chipsets. My chipsit is a KM400, which was not listed as a problem for radeons 9600's.
The other thing was that radeons suck power in a way, and that a 300W power supply is a minimum. I have a 300W power supply, and i tried disconnecting all unnesercary drains (Case fan, FDD, CD-ROM, DVD drive, etc. No change.
After all this, i do believe that there is either a problem with the radeon and the motherboard, which i will test when i receive my new motherboard tuesday, OR the radeon itself has a small fault, perhaps damaged slightly in shipping. The latter is hard to belive (but i guess possible) as i received the card shrink wrapped in perfect condition inside another packing box, and there was no visible damage to the box except for a tear on the inside.
The only things i havent tried is switching motherboards OR upping the agp voltage. My current motherboard doesnt support voltage adjustments (Which is why im getting a new one) and i was going to use this motherboard in a computer im building for a friend. Although, if it turns out to be a conflict with the motherboard, ive ordered him pretty much the same card (GeXCube Radeon 9600 XT with 128 MB 2.8ns BGA RAM), and if he has the same conflict and the motherboard ive ordered works fine, ill basically have to give him the new mobo so that he has a working computer. When i get the new mobo ill see how it goes, but that's not till next week.
I also contacted ATI support last night but with a shorter version of this but i KNOW theyll take weeks to answer and when they do it will be a reply like 'aah, read the FAQ, install latest drivers, bye'
In the meantime, i would like to try and solve the problem before i build this computer for my friend in case it becomes a bigger issue then.
System specs:
GeXCube Radeon 9600 XT Extreme 128MB RAM (2.5ns BGA RAM)
300W power supply
AMD 2500+ XP
GA-7VM400M motherboard
2x 256 MB PC2700 DDR RAM
Western Digital 120GB HDD
ASUS 52x24x52 CR-RW
LiteOn DVD-ROM
Case fan
Sorry for the incredibly long and perhaps unnesecary explanation but i wanted to give a thourough breakdown on what the problem is.
