How many problems did you have with your R300+ video cards?

[Nakor Allthumbs]

I have had only one problem with my 9700 pro card. I had stuttering in NWN. It's been fixed, and i couldn't be happier.

All I ever see is people referring to how many complaints people have with the R300+ cards, and I wanted to give people proof that they aren't nearly as buggy as they seem.

edit: List your problems if you have any.

[BobbyRPI2712]

Just minor problems, that have been fixed through patches or updated drivers, nothing terrilble.

[MultiGL]

It's really quite sad, I spend nearly 1000 bucks every 6 months upgrading my comp, and well, I just don't play anything demanding. The only thing I've had to do was make a 98SE HDD so I could play Star Trek Armada (the STvSW mod)

[EMunEeE]

Two problems:

1) SimCity 3000 AA/AF bug

2) Counter Strike ESC bug6+2

[I KNOW GUN-FU]

It's true that ATI has been somewhat known for problems that REALLY are on larger scale than they should be. Don't even bother bring up Nvidia -- we're ATI customers here... saying, "if you bought Nvidia card you would have problem X" will not solve our problems on our """"ATI"""" cards.

If it wasn't the fact that no one else can produce a product right now...

[mAcOdIn]

Depends on what you call a problem, for me to say the level they are.

For example I can not use AA on tribes2, or Homeworld, and I spent alot of time trying to figure out why.

Now come to find out t's isn't a problem just different because of how ATI does anti aliasing. So is it a bug or problem? No. But it IS something my nvidia card could do.

So not sure what to categorize that as.


As for issues I have only two "issues" and thats that morrowind and NWN FPSA are way below my old Geforce3.

So I'm going to say almost no issues and all is peachy, because sans those two games everything else I play runs far better and prettier than my GF3.

[Bomb&Run]

Yeah no probs all the cards i know work like a charm.

[Sasquach]

alot

[cvearl]

I cannot run Warcraft III and Dungeon Siege in AGP 8X mode. Have to go to 4X AGP to play them. Otherwise they both freeze. All other games tried seemed to be fine and play well.

Charles.

[5150 Joker]

Originally posted by cvearl
I cannot run Warcraft III and Dungeon Siege in AGP 8X mode. Have to go to 4X AGP to play them. Otherwise they both freeze. All other games tried seemed to be fine and play well.

Charles.

I run warcraft III just fine in AGP 8x mode. Must be your motherboard at fault.

[Kuja]

I went for tons of problems, but I took the shim off so I couldn't RMA if I wanted to, which is a shame cuz there's nothing more I'd like to do than go back to nVidia after my taste of ATi.

I have problems in:

Vice City (whole game crawls whenever there is smoke/backwash/fountain/water splash)

OFP and OFP:R (ridiculous amount of z-errors - even at 100m, whole parts of models disappear, never happened on my ti500, can't look at forests while zoomed without the whole system crawling)

HL/CS (black boxes all over map, crashes when I alt-tab, blurred text)

NWN (what isn't wrong with ATi and this game )

Had no FSAA in Falcon 4 - only accidentally fixed

NFS:HP2 (models only have reflective mapping + menus are all missing)

and they're just the games I have installed at the moment - I would imagine that if I installed all of my games and tested them, I would find a multitude more errors.

[Sticky]

Not a problem with my card since install.

Kuja,

A little OT, I have a few of those games and they work fine for me.

I am not sure what trouble shooting you have did buuuut.

I had problems with my system mem. memtest 86 your ram.
Up your AGP voltage in your bios.
Use AGP 4X if need be... there is no performance difference.


Do a fresh install with eveyrthing at stock speeds of xp and all your games.

XP>SP1>Chipset Drivers>DX9>ATI drivers>Control Panel.

reboot when needed.

This install method worked for me.

[cvearl]

Originally posted by 5150 Joker
I run warcraft III just fine in AGP 8x mode. Must be your motherboard at fault.

I don't think so. You have to take into account the following items...

#1. You have a 9800 Pro. I have a 9700 Pro. So we can't go by your example.
#2. I have not found anyone with a version 3.0 9700 Pro and an 875P motherboard from Gigabyte or ASUS playing Dungeon Siege or Warcraft III. SO I have no one to compare to so far.
#3. I did not have trouble with my P4PE mobo. But it was 4X AGP and this one is 8X. The fact that disabling 4X solves my problem points at least to AGP mode in combination wtih something else is the issue.

Things I have tried...

- SWITCHED MOTHERBOARDS. I started with a P4C800 Deluxe. Problem first arrived. Solved by going to 4X. Thought it could be the board. Installed another P4C800 Deluxe. Same thing. Thniking it could be ASUS, I switched to a Gigabyte 8KNXP and still the same problem.

- UPGRADED THE PSU - As per a comment from ASUS tech support. I had a 350 WATT Enermax. Went to a 420 WATT Antec True Power. Same problem.

- DRIVER UPDATE - Went from 3.4 down to 3.1 and no change. Recently tried 3.5. With 3.5 in 8X AGP I am able to go longer but the locking up stil occurs. Still have to go to 4X AGP.

- TESTED RAM EXTENSIVELY - Stress tested the RAM overnight with Memtest86. Passes with flying colors. Sandra Mem and CPU overnight in a loop in burn in mode passed with flying colors. 3DMARK2001SE (using AGP 8X mode) looping overnight no problem.

- REBUILT XP FROM SCRATCH - I have reinstalled XP twice not including the rebuild when I changed motherboards. Did not help. Drivers installed in this order after install. XP PRO, CHIPSET, NIC and USB, VIDEO, SOUND CARD, DX 9.0a.

- REMOVED SOUND CARD - Took out the Audigy and went with on board sound. (BTW - not using EAX on either title). No change to the issue.

- TURNED OFF FASTWRITES IN ATI CONTROL PANNEL - This helped a little. Could play a tad longer in 8X mode but still locked up.

- COOLING - Noticed that under heavy load (like playing a game) My processor gets to 48-50. That should not be too bad but thought to add a Vantec Stealth REAR fan and a Blowhole side fan to blast air directly at the card. Still no change but temps dropped a few degrees.

So what am I left with. 4X fixes the problem. ATI Tech support comment. "Well you have to remember that 8X aGP was first implemented on the 9700 Pro. It was our first attempt and the industries first attempt. It is not uncommon to find 8X work on one chipset and not another depending on the 9700 Pro you have. It can be hit and miss. More hit than miss. Don't worry about AGP 8X though. It really makes little difference with present games. Could be the card itself. You might want to try an RMA to see of that helps."

Well I am not worried about present games but future ones may make use of AGP if the textures go over 128MB so I would like that feature to work.

If there is anyone that plays Warcraft III or Dungeon Siege on an 875P motherboard in 8X AGP mode using a 9700 Pro in XP Pro, I would like to hear from you. If it works for you than it could be my card needs to be replaced.

Charles.

[5150 Joker]

Originally posted by cvearl


Charles.

I guess I should've added that I played warcraft 3 just fine using my revision 1.0 9700 pro on my IC7-G board using 8x AGP.

[Furious]

WC3 and 8X mode here too without a glitch.

[Tork64]

No problems , still working strong $$

[Kuja]

Originally posted by Sticky
Not a problem with my card since install.

Kuja,

A little OT, I have a few of those games and they work fine for me.

I am not sure what trouble shooting you have did buuuut.

I had problems with my system mem. memtest 86 your ram.
Up your AGP voltage in your bios.
Use AGP 4X if need be... there is no performance difference.


Do a fresh install with eveyrthing at stock speeds of xp and all your games.

XP>SP1>Chipset Drivers>DX9>ATI drivers>Control Panel.

reboot when needed.

This install method worked for me.

I tried everything cvearl has and much more

• I've tried disabling AGP8x and FW
• I've tried changing the AGP freq
• Every possible combination of FSB/mult
• Memtested ram, it's ok, tried it with 2.90v anyway
• Disabled everything unecessary in bios
• Spent a day changing all the possible settings and testing to see if it fixed it
• Removed everything from my system except 1 HDD and the 9700pro and formatted - no dice
• PSU is fine - 430trupower
• Tried formatting XP (I've done it probably 15 times between when I first noticed it and now)
• Tried the Cats from the one before 3.0 onwards
• Tried all the Nforce2 drivers
• Tried every bios for my 8rda and 9700 (currently using Mufu's 9700p bios)
• Tried using the cats and windows untweaked
• Tried tweaking the cats and windows - spend a day going through every setting available to the Cats
• Banged head on wall and wished for the detonators

[Jackl]

In my old system when I got a 9500pro. It wouldn't run any Dx games.

So after many tweaks and such I got it to work.

Basically I was running very old Bios and chipset drivers.

Both needed updating for the new tech to be used properly on my old Kt-133a board.

Now on my new system, my 9800pro hasn't done a damn thing wrong. *pride*

[Furious]

Kuja,

Did you have these problems before taking off the shim? If so, why would you do that when the card might be bad and you might've had to RMA it?

[Kuja]

I can't remember if it was happening before I took the shim off, and I thought it was limited to OFP and a driver issue.

As it turns out, it happens in Vice City, OFP and CS.

[cvearl]

Originally posted by pharoh
I have had only one problem with my 9700 pro card. I had stuttering in NWN. It's been fixed, and i couldn't be happier.

All I ever see is people referring to how many complaints people have with the R300+ cards, and I wanted to give people proof that they aren't nearly as buggy as they seem.

edit: List your problems if you have any.

I guess it did not quite go as planned. At this point only 65% of respondants are problem free. Now don't some dumbass fanboy come sayin "all those ones with issues are just more dummer cause they dont know how to set up a system. Thier just n00bz and suxor" Most people that are in this forum and were smart enough to buy a 9700 pro have enough brains to "Install and expansion card" at least the basic install that is expected. Insert card. Install XP. Install Chipset Drivers ect... But then to have to tweak for nights on end and still not have the issues resolved is inexcusable. I know this is not everyone. But I along with many others out here are still fighting "small" issues that wont go away.

When I did my Faint Rolling Lines poll weeks ago, sonehting like 30% of the people who responded had the issue and could not get it to go away without using the STUPID DVI to VGA adaptor.

A number of people with 9700 Pros and xyz motherboard can't seem to run some games in 8X AGP mode.

This is not all 9700 Pro's with these issues. But enough to make you say hmmm...

Charles.

[KAC]

works fine.. just one or two probs here and there but those are fixed already!

NWN and Unreal Tournament Powered games like undying and Rune.. I will post screenshots to explain the problem since I cannot explain it like this!

[Alchemy]

could some one make this kinda poll over at nvnews?

[Furious]

Originally posted by cvearl
I guess it did not quite go as planned. At this point only 65% of respondants are problem free. Now don't some dumbass fanboy come sayin "all those ones with issues are just more dummer cause they dont know how to set up a system. Thier just n00bz and suxor" Most people that are in this forum and were smart enough to buy a 9700 pro have enough brains to "Install and expansion card" at least the basic install that is expected. Insert card. Install XP. Install Chipset Drivers ect... But then to have to tweak for nights on end and still not have the issues resolved is inexcusable. I know this is not everyone. But I along with many others out here are still fighting "small" issues that wont go away.

When I did my Faint Rolling Lines poll weeks ago, sonehting like 30% of the people who responded had the issue and could not get it to go away without using the STUPID DVI to VGA adaptor.

A number of people with 9700 Pros and xyz motherboard can't seem to run some games in 8X AGP
mode.

This is not all 9700 Pro's with these issues. But enough to make you say hmmm...

Charles.

Not surprising. My "problem" was minor and it was the cold boot problem. It ended up being the motherboards fault as a flash fixed it. Therefore I voted for minor problem.

If you add up the no problem and the minor problem columns I'd say the R300 has done a fine job for a new piece of hardware. Keep in mind that it's the first 8X AGP card and that many of those 8X problems are the chipsets fault and not ATi's.

92% minor or better is, in fact, amazing.

[Furious]

Originally posted by Kuja
I can't remember if it was happening before I took the shim off, and I thought it was limited to OFP and a driver issue.

As it turns out, it happens in Vice City, OFP and CS.

Well I'd say you have a bad card. Whether or not it was caused by altering the board or not we can't say because you don't remember when it started.

Hard to blame ATi for that one I'd say.

[saidin]

I have had minor problems, with my second 9700pro. The first card's fan and heat sink were not put on well and the core over heated. It did really funny things. 2D text would scramble (especially with a black background) and in 3d, things would decay rather quickly. I was not bothered by this problem, becuase when manufacturing in large volumes, some of the products will be defective. My new card has been great. Only minor problems that drivers, tweaking, etc have fixed. Overall, I must say I am satisfied with the ATI experience.

[delirium121]

I have a gigabyte 9700pro

regular readers will know whats coming

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Ready ???


The fan failed and cooked it
ran ok for little while after
but then the coloured squares appeared on the boot up screen....

overall i have loved this card...but damn £300 for 6 months peformance. and countless agpX8 probs

ran fine on agpX4 with fast writes etc but that is not the point
anyway i have friday afternoon off at which point i am going be ringing round and shouting...

anyway for anyone considering getting a gigabyte 9700/9800pro...dont

[Furious]

Can't you just RMA it?

[croc]

First off, I have a ATI-built 9700Pro and run it on my ASUS CUSL2-C mobo. I tried everything under the sun and moon to get rid of the "cold boot' problem -- no video per POST signal and no signal to monitor until WinXP starts or unless I hit reset before windows. Finally RMA'ed late last Fall but ATI checked it out and said No Problem -- sent me back the same board, basically telling me that it's my proble, noit theirs, that the card doesn't work as advertised. Tried al the suggested fixes both before and after the RMA but concluded that it is the old board and need to get a new one -- so have been waiting for the dust to settle to get a new ASUS i865 or i875 board. In the meantime I just let it start up without video and then hit reset if I need to get to BIOS or wait for windoze to appear -- love the image quality and enjoy that card greatly otherwise.

Got ready to buy new board only to find out that the 9700 pro card I have isn't recommended for the ASUS boards because ASUS says 9700 card must be PCB PN -30 or higher and mine is -11.

So I guess I have been royally screwed -- bought a card that only completely works for a limited range of boards. I find it hard to get too enthused about paying out more money for yet another 9700 card -- and not knowing whether the retailer may send me a card that doesn't fit the requirements for a current ASUS board. I would get a 9800 card, but then there is no guarantee that it would work on my current board while putting together the new system. I am more than a little irked that ATI NEVER let anyone know that the cold boot problems limited application to a variety of boards and that they expected mobo manufacturers to addres the problem with BIOS upgrades, etc. Also, in spite of reading a number of posts on this and other forums as to the 9700 not working on many CUSL2 or TUSL2 boards. ATI never bothered to ever admit that to me in correspondence or otherwise, but instead laid this to P/S insufficiencies, etc. Likewise, I see no effort on ATI's part to identify those boards which require specific revisions of the card in order to function well as in the ASUS P4C800 etc. Given the other, admirable ways in which ATI has emphasized consumer service on this forum and in driver development, I am pretty miffed. Also, while I can live with the quirks of a black screen cold boot, I am not inclined to pass this 9700 pro on to my GF or kids with the CUSL2. They get my previous tried and true 8500 cards.

In the end I will just have to face the music and get a different card, even though I bought this one in October with the transition to a P4 board in mind.

My US$.02 [plus the cost of the card...].

[Furious]

I had the cold boot problem too originally on my KR7A-133R. Fortunately Abit fixed it with a bios update even though they initially denied it was their problem.

Personally I never found it to be a big deal when I did have it but it's nice it was fixed.

It's too bad that some motherboard manufacturers feel the need to not stick to the AGP specs and won't (or can't) fix problems with their motherboards.