Radeon 9700 - Weird Corruption

[agw_01]

Hi guys,

I got my new Radeon 9700 Pro yesterday which I bought from an online auction. I got it at a good price on a no-returns basis as the seller wasn't sure whether it was the card, or his machine that was faulty.

Anyway, I put it in my machine and booted up. The first time it booted, I had lots of blue blocks, evenly spaced out across the Windows 2000 start-up screen and also when it got into Windows.

After I had installed the drivers for the card and restarted again, the corruption on the start-up screen remained, but there was none in Windows. I tried a game, and sure enough, was presented with a screen corruption.

I've tried re-flashing the BIOS to a 9700NP and also a 9500NP, hoping that if I tried to only use 4 pipelines it would be ok. I still get corruption in 3D applications, but none when sat in Windows. I've tried running the Milkdrop plug-in for Winamp and I get no corruption in that, although I get corruption while playing a video in WMP.

So, my question is... has anyone had this problem before? Is the card faulty, or is it a simple fix? I've taken the shim off and bolted the old CPU heatsink I had fixed to my 9500 to the card, so it can't be overheating. I'm just about to try flashing to a 9700 Pro and will also try the Omega drivers.

Oh, it has Samsung RAM.

Thanks for any replies.


Oh the joys of Doom 3 with 512mb RAM




As you can see, in Windows I get no corruption.

This is what the corruption looks like with the 9700 Pro bios...

[Todd a]

This looks bad! A few things you can try:

Make sure you have the latest drivers.

Flash the graphics card's BIOS.

Turn off things like AGP fast writes, change AGP appiture size, or lower the AGP speed in the system BIOS.

Underclock the card.

Up the AGP voltage.

It could also be a mod'd 9500Pro or something goofy like that and the enabled extra pipelines are no good. If it is a real 9700, then I'm leaning toward bad memory, but you never know.

[Martin_89]

I read about stuff like this happening on 9500PRO's, 9700PRO's and some 9800PRO's

upping the AGP voltage helped the problem in some cases.

[MuFu]

Originally posted by Todd a
Flash the graphics card's BIOS.

...and make sure you're flashing the right BIOS for your RAM!

Underclock the card.

This has helped people with similar problems in the past.

I think it's on its way out though, mate.

[CenturionStrategy]

Damn, I have the same card and same problem. Had it working for 3 months before the display got distorted. Tried flashing the BIOS&underclocking the RAM, etc. It's got the same Samsung RAM btw. I've given up on it, but it'd be great if you found a way of getting it working - I want to swap it with my Ti!

Nick