New Radeon 9600XT

Twilling

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
221
0
0
Hello everybody,

I recently upgraded my video card from a Gainward GF4 TI4200 64MB version. This card seemed stable and snappy most of the time and I was pleased with it's performance. I play mostly Links 2003, Madden 2004 PC, Home World 1 and 2 and Chessmaster 9000. All of a sudden I started having problems with the card booting up. To verify the card was bad, I recreated the problem in another desktop and the same thing happenned, no video post or bootup.

So after much research I broke down and got a ATI Radeon 9600XT, primarily because of the slight edge in image quality. I wanted a main stream card that was popular. After installing and booting my system (after uninstalling all nvdia drivers using drivercleaner) I tested my new card by firing up Links 2003. From what I could tell, there are visual artifacts in the startup screen as well as during gameplay. I am extremely upset about this! I have never had a problem using nvidia cards and I remember back in the nvdia glory days that stability was always better than ATI and that's why I was exclusively nvidia for the past couple of years. I never had this problem until I installed this ATI card which doesn't seem to be much of an upgrade in performance or image-wise!

These "artifacts" appear during gameplay and cause the screen to become distorted.
I hope someone can offer some sort of solution to my problem when playing Links 2003. I play this game the most and I hope someone who had a similar problem can help me, Thanks.
 

Blastman

Golden Member
Oct 21, 1999
1,758
0
76
Well, if nothing is playing without artifacts then try a complete reinstall ? reseat card ?etc.

If that doesn?t help then sounds like it ?may? be a defective card.
 

Pete

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
4,953
0
0
I'd try a few things off the top of my head, assuming the artifacts aren't green lines throughout the screen (which probably means defective video card RAM):

1. Verify FastWrites are off in both your MB BIOS and Display Settings ATi SmartGART tab.
2. (Re)install the latest version of DirectX.
3. Uninstall the ATi Control Panel, reboot, ATi drivers, reboot, use Driver Cleaner to ferret out any loose nV and ATi video driver ends, then install the latest ATi drivers.
4. Reinstall those same ATi drivers again if the problems persist.
 

kylebisme

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2000
9,396
0
0
you could just need to uninstal and then reinstal the game. sometimes the games get configured to work with the card in the system at the time of instal.
 

techwanabe

Diamond Member
May 24, 2000
3,145
0
0
Did you grab the latest drivers? Could be a bad card, but I'd pull and reseat the card, make sure you have the latest drivers and if you still have problems, RMA it.

I am in exactly the same boat you are, my GF4-Ti4200 crapped out after a couple months and now I'm running on an old Radeon 32DDR until I get a replacement card. I don't want to spend a lot of money after being sapped by Christmas, so I'm looking at:

Radeon 9600 Pro, or a
Radeon 9600 XT

I agree with the consensus that it wouldn't be worth me "upgrading" from a 4200 to a 9600, but since my GF died, I'm looking for a replacement which is slightly better... and since it has similar FPS performance + superior AA & AF performance + DX9, that seems to be the logical choice.