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I just bought a Sapphire HD2600XT AGP today and I am having MAJOR issues

Q

Qkhanh

Junior Member
I'm starting to come to a conclusion that I am screwed when it comes to this new card I purchased. I was hoping to get a bit of an AGP upgrade from my 6600GT until I get a new laptop, but so far my experience has been frustrating to say the least.

There seems to be a huge driver issue with this card.

Every game I've played so far has crashed/froze/or just had didn't display anything but a black screen with audio still going in the background. For example Medieval Total War 2 shuts off my entire computer once I start a battle, GTR2 finishes loading a race but the graphic of the track from the loading screen is always present, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. freezes my PC completely within a few seconds of playing, Sins of a Solar Empire is a laggy POS on this card.

I've tried installing the 'hot fix' but the 8.1 drivers won't install for me, I have the latest Omega drivers installed.

Is there anything else I can possibly do to help my card actually play games?

I'm also wondering if ATI is supporting this card or not? Will it always be like this? I've been scouring the net on a variety of forums and many topics seem to be from November or January with a few recent ones, and I'm surprised this type of issue hasn't been resolved very much.

Any comments appreciated.

Oh and my PSU is not an issue.
 
The 8.2 from ATI shows: (For PCI-E) and no option for AGP.

I'm a little confused though, if I installed the latest Omega drivers would I have to uninstall that to install 8.2? If there were a 8.2 for AGP which I'm probably not aware of.

Thanks for the comment daveybrat
 
I am afraid that it'll be always like that.. Actually I was amazed they even made an AGP version of 2600 XT. If you are still under store warranty, return the card and keep the 6600 GT until you get your new lappy. Retire the AGP rig to a surfing/e-mail rig or a server.
 
Try running something like ATITool artifact tester or 3DMark06 or RTHDRIBL to test for card stability. If it's not even passing those then it may not be the driver. Are you sure about your PSU? What PSU is it?
 
I have a 400W ThermalTake which I'm not exactly sure is the exact specifications at the moment but was pretty sure all the numbers matched up on how they should look when I installed my card.

The 2600XT cost $127 canadian, the 3xxx model was a bit more than $100 more than this card if I remember correctly.

"I am afraid that it'll be always like that.."

I'm pretty shocked to hear that. I just tried running Crysis and the intro and all other cinimatics were choppy as hell, the audio was also skipping a lot. This is just the intro videos(like the Nvidia and Crytek logo). I find it hard to believe Sapphire or ATI I suppose would even release such faulty a product.

Didn't they test this product out before releasing? I'm by far not the only one with these issues, one can see by just doing a small google search. There were 2 other people in the store at the time that were in line a head of me to purchase a 2600 model, just thinking that they also have the same frustrations as me.

I wish this experience would be more similiar to what I experienced from upgrading my ATI 9600 to a Nvidia 6600GT, there were virtually no issues during and after installation and I was enjoying the upgrade fully.

What I really wanted to play was Medieval Total War with atleast most settings on high, which I could not do with the 6600GT. It was the first game I attempted to play with my 2600XT and the first few seconds was so eye-pleasing, I've never seen my favourite game in such visual clarity, but then it all fell apart when my entire system shuts off suddenly marking the beginning of my desperate search for a fix.

I'm not too sure if I should return it tommorow(the store is about 2 hours away from my house *sigh*) or just wait out more of the 30 day warranty and hope there is some kind of fix.
 
well Im not sure if this would work for you since my card is a lot older, but Im running the omega drivers based on 7.10 I think.
 
Try what I suggested in my previous post to see if it IS the card that's the problem. If it's failing in those stability tests then return the card. No amount of driver fiddling will work if the card is faulty.
 
I've tried out RTHDRIBL

everything was fine and working at 50FPS when the window is fully maximized with the Real-ime HDR IBL
 
Try running 3DMark06 as well for stability testing.

Uninstall the current driver, run driver cleaner, reboot, then install the AGP driver from the link that clandren provided. Also make sure your motherboard chipset drivers are up to date as well. Which motherboard and CPU do you have?
 
Thanks for the help guys.

The new Sapphire drivers clandren provided were the first drivers I used, after that I used the 'hot fix'.

Some games are working now, like Crysis can play pretty well until I leave the game and my whole PC shuts off. Oblivion runs fine from start to finish, haven't tried Medieval since I'm not in a mood to have my computer crash again this late in the night.

I honestly do not believe it could be an isolated issue on my end, with the hardware or software provided.

http://www.sapphiretech.com/en...p?t=18262&page=1&pp=10
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7350

and the Visiontek forums too have people with all the same issues as me. The phoronix thread gives me hope though, looks like an AMD/ATI worker is regularly posting in the thread giving updates on the issue.
 
Originally posted by: Qkhanh
The 8.2 from ATI shows: (For PCI-E) and no option for AGP.

I'm a little confused though, if I installed the latest Omega drivers would I have to uninstall that to install 8.2? If there were a 8.2 for AGP which I'm probably not aware of.

Thanks for the comment daveybrat
Click to expand...

Sapphire Agp HD2600xt for Windows Xp 32bit (8-4_xp32_dd_60999.exe)

How to enable install driver from official ATI?
1. Download the driver
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Select -> Windows XP -> Radeon -> Radeon HD 2600 Series (PCIe)
and select Option 2 Download -> "Display Driver"

2. Run "8-4_xp32_dd_60999.exe" but not install the driver
let it just extract to C (C:\ATI)

3. Put in CX_60999.INI & INSTALL.INI inside (C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-4_xp32_dd_60999)
Download here: http://www.real-ts.org/2600/INI_file.zip
Mirror: http://rapidshare.com/files/111551607/INI_file.zip.html

4. Put in CX_60999.inf inside (C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-4_xp32_dd_60999\XP_INF)
Download here: http://www.real-ts.org/2600/INF_file.zip
Mirror: http://rapidshare.com/files/111551809/INF_file.zip.html

5. Lastly run setup file from C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-4_xp32_dd_60999\Setup.exe

I use ATI Tray Tools instead of Catalyst Control Centre,
this offical driver is work perfectly on my PC!

zip password: http://www.real-ts.org
 
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