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2 year old Radeon 9800 Pro starting to crash..help

I

issueboy

Junior Member
My system;

3ghz pent 4
abit ICG7-Max3
1 gig Kingston ddr
ATI 9800 pro 128 meg
350 watt antec ps
80 gig seagate sata hd
creative sb z regular

About a month ago I came home and my monitor was blank with a small block saying out of signal

Rebooted and didnt think much about it.

I would get this occassionally and started to get concerned.

Couple of weeks ago I finally got time to play my Warcraft 3 and when I went ot boot up I got a looping signal and a crash.

Did a google and found this crashing has been a problem for many others but I have had this game and my system for over a year and often played it for many hours straight with no problems. Played Doom 3 and other 3d graphics game with no problems and my system stable as a rock.

No I cant get past 2 minutes of warcraft 3 and crashes.

So....I figure I have some kind of software problem so I go to ATI help...no help even with me dumping my video drivers many times and going back to old ones....working my way up to the latest drivers and all of them do the same crash.

Hmmmm.....My regular business and desktop applications work fine but #d is a no go.

Curious, I open up my case and find a major dust aand stuff. I clean all the fans, take out the video card...clean it up...reseat the card in its agp slot.

Boot back up and ...volia!.....My Warcraft 3 worked for about 2 hours but I have pinsized sparkle artifacts in the dark parts... but it plays. Then I had a black screen and the signal out of sync message again but no game crash.

Soooooo......I figure either my video card has picked up a heat sensitivity, my motherboard has gotten heat sensitive or my power supply has gotten flaky.

What do you guys think?

I was going to buy another video card (always looking for a reason to do that!) but this Radeon 9800 pro is a good card and would hate to chuck it if I don't have to.

I need a process of elimination. Maybe start with the power supply? then move to the video card and then the motherboard. The motherboard will be the pain as I don't want to have to reuild my system.

HELP!!
 
Would the heat problem on the video card cause the small little sparkle effect and the signal shifts, crashes etc?

This is the first heat/age related problem I have ever had in all these years of building systems.

 
I had something similar with my old 9800 happen. Random times monitor would lose signal, wouldn't resolve until reboot. I kept temps perfect, underclocked, kept the inside of the case emaculate, and even stroked the 9800's heatsink to put him to sleep at night, and it still happened. It got worse and worse until eventually the card stopped working altogether, and I verified it to be the video card, not any components. I get the feeling it comes from over clocking a little too much, or the core getting too hot for an extended period of time, because my old 9800 had a faulty hs pin, that came loose, and left the entire hs dangling by one pin (not doing its job whatsoever) My RMA just got back on it today, the replacement, while it obviously is a refurb, runs better than my old card ever did. I got the r350 core, which was a little disappointing, but thats what the old one was too, so its not like im pissed about it.

If it is the same thing that happened to mine, you may as well RMA it now, because it WILL get worse. If you have a spare vid card laying around, it wont be bad waiting for the return (2-4 weeks)
 
oh, and if you do RMA, be sure to call and request expedited handling on it, you will shave 2+ weeks on return time. good luck
 
Thanks..

I did submit an RMA just now.

I had planned on taking this card and just moving it to my daughter's machine (she has an old Geforce 2 right now) so I guess I will go ahead and purchase a new vid card (probably a Geforce 6800 regular) and hope I can get this card back or equal for my daughter.

Thanks
 
It took Ati over a week to ship-out a refurb for me after they received my defective card. You will probably get an email sometime Mon with a CSR#
 
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