Asus Radeon 9800 XT

[neonplanet40]

Hey all just got this card there on wednesday. Ive been having problems where it has been crashing during games and smartdoctor pops up and there is red writing but i dont get a chance to read it before it goes bac to saying ur graphics card is ok. Tonight i was running 3D Mark 2003 and the screen kept flickering black for no reason then it jus rebooted. I really need help on this as i have no idea whats wrong. for the G/card i also got an Antec 480watt Trueblue PSU so that i would have no power problems.

Im running the latest Drivers and 480watt PSU, 2200xp, 512 corsair ram, Abit at7 Max 2 mobo.

Any ideas would be gr8 ppl because as u can imagine after spending £500 on psu and g/card and then it crashing it does tend to piss u off.

Im also on windows XP Pro

[Austin]

Even though you have one of the best PSUs going it doesn't mean it can't develop a fault, although I seriously doubt it is the culprit. Best thing to check first is that everything is running stock and within spec (ie PC2700 at 333mhz). I'd suggest trying the latest mobo BIOS too and check through the BIOS for safer settings perhaps (record them so you can change back). Try reseating the card and try a diff power connector (pref diff part of the PSU). Did you fully remove any old drivers or do a fresh install when you upgraded? Do you have another PC to try the card in just to verify it isn't faulty? Best of luck.

[Stoo]

Did you uninstall and install the drivers properly?

[Ravens Nest]

Check all connections are in properly, also give all your components a push to make sure they are in properly.

Dont do any overclocking until your machine is stable (if you do that is )

Check the wires for Power, reset are the right way around (easy mistake to make)

Try changing the bios settings from AGP X8 to X4 or lower
Make sure fast writes is OFF (ATI cards dont like it on, except some 9600 pro's)

Turn off video memory caching and system caching, as that can effect your videocard.

If this does not work then try your Corsair ram at a safe memory timing and if this fixes it then slowly raise this till it crashes again and the lower a little.

Turn off CPU throttling if you're motherboard has it.

Check your heatsink is installed properly, my pc kept crashing until i reseated it properly and reduced the amount of thermal compound i put on it to a much smaller amount.

Hope this info helps you neonplanet40.

[neonplanet40]

nothing is overclocked i think its smartdocter cause i turned it off and it works now lol. but i mean wat gd is putting in a utility if its gonna screw it up. thinkt hey need to sort that out

[Ravens Nest]

At least you've found the solution and it wasnt to difficult , i always seem to check all the complicated stuff first and then 9 times out of 10 it's something that takes 5 minutes to fix

I seem to find half the problems are things that run in the background or in the bottom right corner of the taskbar..

Good to hear it's all sorted

[neonplanet40]

yea peeps thanx for the help. wat becnhmarks should i be expecting now? i got 6000 in 3dmark 2003 and 33450 in aquamark
should i be getting more?

[Austin]

Sounds pretty perfect. 6000 marks in 3Dmark03 is very sweet. You can also run 3Dmark2001 but of course that doesn't truly test superb gfx card like the 9800XT. For a rough idea in 3Dmark03 (inc XP2200+ all stock) Rad9600PRO tend to score 3000ish, 9700 score around 4000ish and 9700PRO/9800 score around 5000ish. When you're done benchmarking be sure to always enable at least 4xAA+8xAF (if not 6xAA+16xAF) and use all the highest quality settings, esp since your CPU (though more than fine) is obviously inferior to the gfx card.