9800 Pro Trouble

[Davilam]

Build own systems but not the most technical person...

Bought a 9800 Pro around Feb 04. Installed card and experienced a few problems with artifacts but nothing that stuck around. Current situation is major artifacts including 1 inch wide bars running vertical on screen(artifacts and what they look like vary). Not sure if colors matters so have seen mostly blue but yellow and recently red as well. Here is what I have done so far.

- Turned computer off for hours to allow everything to cool off.
- Changed power cable to card. It isn't chained to anything else and never was.
- Tried earlier drivers. Versions tried so far have been 3.10, 4.5 and 4.9
- Re-installed ti4200 to verify problem was 9800 Pro. Not a single artifact with ti4200. Played with it for hours. After re-installing 9800 Pro artifacts were back.
- Verified that the cards fan is working.
- Left case open for more air flow.

The last 2 boots with 9800 Pro gave me a screen that was a total wash. I couldn't read a single piece of text. Any help/ideas people have would be appreciated.

Small Rant : Never again ATI. Back to nVidia until I have a problem with their cards (none yet).

 

[Davilam]

Forgot to mention that I never overclocked the 9800 Pro

System is AthlonXP 1800, 1 gig of RAM, MSI K7T Turbo2 mb

 

[mauiblue]

I had the same symtoms when I first installed my 9800 Pro 256mb 256bit card. Vertical color bars and unreadable text. This was back in July of this year. I had to RMA the card. I got it back within in a little over a week (I live in Hawaii) after sending it to ATI. No problems since.

BTW, I would understand why you would not like ATI after your situation. Even though this is my first ATI card and it was DOA, I still like ATI just because of the good customer service I've had with them and the quick turnaround when I had to RMA the card. Good luck.

 

[Davilam]

Thank you mauiblue. Might end up doing that. :[

 

[Davilam]

bump, thanks