Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 128Mb (Non-Pro)

Hi, I brought a Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 in the summer and whenever I play games, after about 10-15 minutes the game completly freezes and I have to restart my comp. I have mailed Hercules and first they suggested that I needed more power to the card but I have a 431W Enermax PSU and the requirements for it was 300W. Then they said that it is probably because of cooling but I believe I have plenty of cooling, but nevertheless I ran it without the side of the case on but no effect. I have SP1 installed and the latest drivers installed. If anyone can help it would be cool and if anyone has had the same problem.

-Dwarfer

Are you overclocking at all? if so then revert the videocard back to it's default settings and see if it is more stable.

Also have you tried cleaning out the drivers and re-installing them?

if not then try my suggestions below on how to re-install cleanly.

First go into safemode
Remove the old ATI control panel and ATI display drivers from add\remove panel in control panel.

Then run Drivercleaner to clean out the old drivers
http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

restart in normal windows
Press cancel when windows informs you it has found a video controller
(You will have to do this twice)
And now install the new drivers
http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html




I prefer the Omega customised drivers
(cause they have overclocking, artifact tester, 9700-9800 mod & custom settings)
You can get these from here.
http://www.omegacorner.com/index_ati.html

To install omega drivers you leave your existing drivers on, but just un-install the old ATI control panel then run the omega driver package and restart PC.


Also if you can list the motherboard and other components you have in your pc, perhaps then me and others from here can help you more. ;)

You should also check your bios to see if fastwrites are turned on, if it is then turn it off. (Supposedly does not increase performance having it on and can cause instability when turned on)

Also try AGP 4X instead of 8X
And also try your memory timings lower, cause if they are too high that will cause instability as well.

Also if you have not try a new BIOS as they sometimes fix incompatibility between the motherboard and components i.e. video

Thanks, I shall try what you have suggested. Also I have not tried to OC it yet because of this problem and and I have only just installed the drivers from scratch (from formatting) so the drivers are as default. I have a MSI KT3 Ultra-2 mobo, Athlon XP 1800+ CPU and 1GB RAM. Cheers.

-Dwarfer

www.memtest86.com -burn the app to cd, stick it in and restart ur comp, goto bios, set cd as bootable, test for an hour.

prime95 - use google to find, his runs from windows, run the torture test and leave it a few hours

any errors in memtest will mean either ur mobo, cpu or ram cant handle the speed there at, but it tests the mobo and ram the most.
errors in prime95 within the first hour mean ur system isnt stable.

if u get errors then u can play with the FSB in bios, lower 5mhz at a time till everything works again. this will make ur comp slower slightly but it will be stable.... do u know if ur cpu is a palamino or a tbred? with paliminos you cant increase the multiplyer without modifying the cpu, but with tbreds the mobo should be able to change it. (with a palimino u ucan chnge it, but when u restrt the screen wont come on, and there may be bleeps, so ull have to turn it off and reset cmos to get it working again)