Problem with ATI Radeon 9600XT

[Twilling]

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.

 

[fredtam]

What board?
Updated drivers?
There have been many fixes for Links in the last few drivers sets.

 

[Twilling]

Asus P4B 533
1 Gig DDR 2100
P4 1.8Gig
Maxtor 60gig
Creative Soundblaster live MP3+
Leadtech Winfast video capture card
ATI Radeon 9600XT with Cat 3.10 and Rage3d tweak utility

Sorry I didn't post my system specs earlier, thanks for helping me.

 

[vailr]

Video problems MAY be from the soundcard drivers.
Try uninstalling and removing the sound card, then see if you have the same video artifacts.
Also check for the latest SB drivers.

 

[fredtam]

Rage3d tweak utility

Is it OCed at all?
Does it happen in other games?
Have you tried changing to 4X (your mobo may not properly handle 8X or need a bios update to do so)
Are fast writes on?
Also where an when does it happen? Artifacts or tearing? Is Vsync on?.

 

[Twilling]

The Video card is not overclocked.

I've tweak serveral settings, V-synch, AA, AF, Texture, Mipmap, and truform are all set to application control. My Mobo only support 4X and by default is set to 2X. I have played with both settings on Fast -write both on and off and it doesn't seem to effect my system at all.

A more detailed description of the problem;

When starting Link 2003, the program will go through the game startup up process, notice hardware accerleration by Radeon 9600 and proceed to the start screen where I can select different menus. Sometimes the text on the menu screen have a few artifacts. As soon as I select career mode and start playing a round, the greens have triangular shapes all around, (looks like garbage left on the greens!) and then my screen will split in two when I setup for a shot, like it's about to crash any second. Instead of trying to play a round I just exit links because I'm afraid it may crash the whole system.

Thanks for helping .

 

[cockeyed]

You might try DL'ing the Omega Driver and see if that works any better. They are basically the ATI driver with some extra tweaks. I've used them in the past and the work well. Yesterday, I ordered a Powercolor 9600 XT Ultra for a new machine I'm building for someone else, who only plays Tiger Woods 2004. He is currently using a Ti4200 in his present machine, so I hope I won't have the same problem. I also play TW2004 using a ATI 9800(CAT 310) but have no problems. Try the Omega's, you can DL them HERE.

 

[Twilling]

Thanks cockeyed, EA products seem to work well with ATI, I have Tiger Woods 2003 and Madden 2004 and they work quite well. I just downloaded the Omega drivers and I reading information on how to properly install them. I will remove ATI drivers using drivercleaner, delete the ATI folder on the root "C " dive, reboot and install omega drivers. Someone suggested reinstalling Links 2003 and updating the sound card drivers. The sound card (Creative Lab Soundblaster MP3+ series) is using the WDM drivers from Microsoft and works well and I am satisfied with it. I don't think reinstalling Links 2003 is an option for me, I have close to a 100 courses installed and I play career mode in which I have Links 2003 tweaked and modded with all the latest utilities, and it took me over a year to do this along with building my player profile.

 

[ronnn]

can't you uninstall the game and save player profiles , etc?

 

[nick1985]

driver cleaner

 

[fredtam]

You do not need to uninstall the old ATI drivers to install the Omegas. Only the ATI control panel.