Radeon 7200 and XP

[azparrothead]

I want to caution all of you who are thinking of getting an ATI Radeon video card. They are having serious problems with Windows XP, and have been unable to correct them. I have been working with their tech support for weeks on a problem that has been crashing my computer on a regular basis (long distance to Canada, BTW!). According to Microsoft the problem is: "This issue can occur when the display driver is caught in an infinite loop, typically waiting for the video hardware to become idle. This usually indicates a problem with the video hardware or with the display driver not being able to program the hardware correctly." When I take Microsoft's advice and set my hardware acceleration to none and deselect Enable Write Combining I am able to use the video card without problem. Of course, I also have a pretty worthless card at this point!

My rant here is with ATI's tech support. Because of their assurances that they could fix this problem, I kept the card beyond the 30 days that I could have taken it back to the store for a refund or exchange. Now they still can't fix the loop, they don't do refunds, and I'm out about $60 in long distance charges dealing with them. They do say that they are "accelerating" my case (whatever that means!). If you do get a Radeon video card, take it back to the store at the 1st hint of a problem. DO NOT RELY ON THEIR SUPPORT TEAM!

 

[tenoc]

Thousands of people are using Radeons with XP without problems.

Check the fora at rage3d.com for help with yours.

 

[Doh!]

I'm one of the thousands.

 

[Rand]

I sell and build Radeon based systems daily under WinXP, no unusual issues at all.
Regarding the infinite loop error, that's not an ATi specific problem. It applies to virtually all mainstream garphics cards under WINXP, though it's occurs most frequently with nVidia boards and is a relatively rare occurance on ATi based cards.

 

[azparrothead]

It may be that there are people using radeon cards with XP without problems, but there are problems! And ATI tech support is absolutely useless in correcting software issues (has to be software, I plugged in 2 7200's with the same effect)! As to nVidea cards, I just put one in my system and it is running at full speed with no hang-ups, whatsoever.

I guess my feeling is, if ATI has problems with some OS's, or motherboards, or whatever, just be upfront about it and don't pretend that it's never happened before and is completely not your fault!

 

[Wolfsraider]

<< It may be that there are people using radeon cards with XP without problems, but there are problems! And ATI tech support is absolutely useless in correcting software issues (has to be software, I plugged in 2 7200's with the same effect)! As to nVidea cards, I just put one in my system and it is running at full speed with no hang-ups, whatsoever.

I guess my feeling is, if ATI has problems with some OS's, or motherboards, or whatever, just be upfront about it and don't pretend that it's never happened before and is completely not your fault! >>



perhaps your being mad is warranted but as already pointed out above the infinite loop error is not ati
specific and if you read other posts (use google it's your friend)you will find there are fixes for the infinite
loop for almost every setup both nvidia and ati

getting mad is natural,but before i spent 60.00 on my phone i'd try finding a fix on the free web as that's where you will find the Right Drivers to fix it and well nuff said

good luck in your quest

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

I must insist you go to www.rage3d.com (the forums section) for problems such as this!

Also, try the new 6058 beta WinXP drivers!

 

[azparrothead]

Thanks for the info about RAGE3D forum. It seems that the infinite loop problem might be caused by low power output. My system has an Enermax EG301P-VB PSU @ 300W. Ampage for 3.3V output is 28. Shouldn't that be enough to handle the vid card? I also have a DVD-ROM and 1 512MB DDR RAM chip. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.