Like several others I found my brand new AIW 9700 Pro exhibited waves of strobing 'dark' lines across the screen at exactly 60Hz. At other frequencies the screen patterning disappeared. Unfortunately if you tried video capture, tv-mode or tv-output the problem recurs.
One solution was to pull the auxilliary power cable from the AIW 9700 after bootup is completed. Believe it or not the graphic card continues to work and the problem instantly and completely disappears! My original conclusion was that a better power supply might be needed, or additional filtering on the power lines to the auxilliary power plug on the AIW card. However neither solution worked. Not did switching motherboard and cpu (I tried several).
In the end, and in desparation, I asked ATI to help me. They gave me an RMA without any bother whatsoever and, fifteen days after the card reached their american point-of-contact, I had a brand new exchange card. The new card was clearly different from the card I shipped to them. It has two additional heat-sinks, a change of components around the auxilliary power supply, a new master heatsink on the GPU and possible rework on the board (although I'm not sure of this last point).
The replacement card worked absolutely perfectly. In addition garbled startup screens became rock steady and sporadic crashes disappeared. Suddenly I am getting the quality and reliability I expected. It is truly an amazing and wonderful card.
Conclusion? ATI enclosed a letter stating the card I returned was found to be subjectively perfect. This was a nonsense. I have installed several other AIW cards and this was the first time I've seen this fault. When I searched the net for a solution I found several other reported instances of the exact same issue. So I must presume either ATI's testing is at fault or ATI is in fault denial mode. Either way, if you have a card which exhibits the problems I experienced, I recommend you consider asking ATI to replace it.
ATI's service yielded me a perfect card with no grief and no arguement. My confidence in ATI's products is restored. My only concern was in their attempt to deny the card I sent them worked poorly. However this often happens in the video card market!
One solution was to pull the auxilliary power cable from the AIW 9700 after bootup is completed. Believe it or not the graphic card continues to work and the problem instantly and completely disappears! My original conclusion was that a better power supply might be needed, or additional filtering on the power lines to the auxilliary power plug on the AIW card. However neither solution worked. Not did switching motherboard and cpu (I tried several).
In the end, and in desparation, I asked ATI to help me. They gave me an RMA without any bother whatsoever and, fifteen days after the card reached their american point-of-contact, I had a brand new exchange card. The new card was clearly different from the card I shipped to them. It has two additional heat-sinks, a change of components around the auxilliary power supply, a new master heatsink on the GPU and possible rework on the board (although I'm not sure of this last point).
The replacement card worked absolutely perfectly. In addition garbled startup screens became rock steady and sporadic crashes disappeared. Suddenly I am getting the quality and reliability I expected. It is truly an amazing and wonderful card.
Conclusion? ATI enclosed a letter stating the card I returned was found to be subjectively perfect. This was a nonsense. I have installed several other AIW cards and this was the first time I've seen this fault. When I searched the net for a solution I found several other reported instances of the exact same issue. So I must presume either ATI's testing is at fault or ATI is in fault denial mode. Either way, if you have a card which exhibits the problems I experienced, I recommend you consider asking ATI to replace it.
ATI's service yielded me a perfect card with no grief and no arguement. My confidence in ATI's products is restored. My only concern was in their attempt to deny the card I sent them worked poorly. However this often happens in the video card market!
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