Help - problems with new ATi Card

[Skii]

Austin - you might be able to help with this m8

I'm sure it must be me and not the new card, but I've just installed my 9500Pro and benchmarked with the Catalyst 3.7 drivers, about 10500 in 3dMark 2001 - not brilliant.
(2200XP. 1Gb 2700 RAM)

Anyway, when I try to install any type ov overclocking utility my PC throws up a serious error and goes into safe mode

Can anyone tell me a)what drivers I should be using b) how to install them and c) how to overclock this card

cheers

Skii

[TiG]

Whats the message Skii, It might help us determine what the fault is...

TiG

[Skii]

well basically when I tried to disable zonealarm firewall, the PC would lock up and go into safe mode saying I'd had a device failure

Now, I've started from scratch - completely uninstalled all drivers, and installed the latest Omegas.

My card shows a stock speed of 276/270, yielding 9850 3DMarks (2001)

325/300 gave me 10-11000 3D marks - thats about the best i can get at the moment

[luke313]

Thats way below what you would expect from that card. I would have suggested that you may have aa and af on, but if you've done a complete re-install of drivers I doubt thats what is causing it. The only other thing that may be the problem is some leftover stuff from your old cards drivers, but you say you've 'totally uninstalled them'. Maybe a reformat would sort it out, but that would be a last resort, and if games are working well (I assume they are) then why bother??

[Austin]

It would seem a problem with previous gfx drivers, esp since you just upgraded the gfx card. It's very common, even if you fully removed all traces of your previous card and drivers it can still not be enough, the drivers are often so optimised and agressive that they screw things up esp when it comes time to upgrade. XP2200+ runs at 1.8ghz 266FSB, easily powerful enough with a card like 9500PRO to run games beautifully but esp in benchamrks like 3Dmark2001 having < 2ghz and esp only 266FSB (and PC2100 speed unless KT333/400) will hurt your overall score.

I'd suggest using the Omega based CAT3.7 (I haven't used the newer ones yet) which among other things also have a built in o/c'ing tool. Before you go ahead you should patch the drivers which are located automatically unzipped when you run the EXE, usually to C:\ATI\blah blah. This enables you to o/c without the drivers trying to screw things up or secretly RESET your clock back to default when you game/benchmark. You can flash the gfx BIOS to never require any patch but it was more than I was willing to risk. If you do want a BIOS that's known to be 100% compatible with Connect3D Rad9500PRO let me know.

PATCH = http://download.guru3d.com/pafiledb....on=file&id=680

Just to quote my 3Dmark results with a Barton at 2.0ghz 400FSB. Again I simply installed the o/c patched Omega CAT3.7 drivers and left things at default (ie all high quality) except when using AA+AF which I enabled again at QUALITY rather than perf from within the drivers.

9500PRO (conservative 350/300):
3Dmark2001SE = 14500
3Dmark2001SE 4xAA+8xAF = 8750
3Dmark03 = 4200
3Dmark03 4xAA+8xAF = 2000

EDIT: Other results for comparison (may be older drivers than CAT3.7).

9500PRO in 3Dmark2001 no AA+AF:
Barton at 2.0ghz 400FSB & 9500PRO stock (275/270) = 12630
Pally XP2000+ at 1.67ghz 266FSB & 9500PRO stock (275/270) using safe AGP0x (ie disabled) = 10400

Flashing the 9500PRO so you never need a patch to o/c:

http://home.mindspring.com/~warp11/
(Warp11's 95pro128.bin)
Make a bootdisk with the files on then boot from it.
Type atiflash -s 0 old.bin (save your current BIOS to disk).
Type atiflash -f -p 0 biosname.bin (force flash your new BIOS).
Wait patiently and then restart.

[Kezzer]

Well in all ATi cards you may get completely different scores to what other people get. Look at my sig, i only get 16k in 3d mark 01 with my FSB right up etc.

[Skii]

Well - cheers for the help peeps, but in any case Games performance is VASTLY improved

i'll try that patch later , cheers Austin