Display corruption using a Radeon 9600 Pro under WinXP. Help!
 

Last August I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro card and it worked fine.

Last month I further upgraded my machine with a new motherboard,
memory and processor and upgraded to WinXP at the same time.
Since then I've had a lot of trouble with my display.

If I install the old drivers that came with the card then the
display is clear but the display drivers crash a lot.
If I install the latest Catalyst drivers, they don't crash but I
get display corruption consisting of yellow streaks on text when
I scroll the display, also if I move a window it leaves a trail
of yellow and blue dots behind it.

The yellow streaking does not appear instantly, if I boot the PC
up the display is clear for a minute or so then the streaks
gradually appear and get worse.

I've tried tweaking various parameters using but nothing seems
to affect it. Even turning hardware acceleration off entirely
does not get rid of the streaks.

I've tried all the Catalyst drivers from the latest one back to
3.6 and also the latest Omega driver with no luck.

My motherboard BIOS is up to date.

Does anybody here have any idea what's going on? Is there some
sort of known incompatibility with my motherboard? I've searched
on the web but found nothing that looks relevant.


The spec of my system is:

O/S: Windows XP Home SP1.

Video Card:

PowerColor 128 DDR

Radeon 9600 Pro
Driver Provider ATI Technologies Inc
Driver Date 28/02/2003
Driver Version: 6.14.1.6307
This driver came with the card. It gives a clear display but
crashes a lot. More modern versions of the drivers produce the
display corruption.


Motherboard: Abit AN7 nForce2 (Socket A)
Processor: AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2800+
Memory: TwinMOS 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200

Disks:

Maxtor SATA 160GB (System disk)

IDE Channel 1 Master IBM 120 GB
IDE Channel 1 Slave IBM 40GB

IDE Channel 2 Master DVD Writer.


--
Colin Wightman

I've tried all the Catalyst drivers from the latest one back to
3.6 and also the latest Omega driver with no luck.

My motherboard BIOS is up to date.

Does anybody here have any idea what's going on? Is there some
sort of known incompatibility with my motherboard? I've searched
on the web but found nothing that looks relevant.

What size power supply are you using? I had similar problems until I
upgraded my PS from 300 to 450W.

Tom Lake

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 15:30:19 GMT, "Tom Lake"
wrotf:

I've tried all the Catalyst drivers from the latest one back to
3.6 and also the latest Omega driver with no luck.

My motherboard BIOS is up to date.

Does anybody here have any idea what's going on? Is there some
sort of known incompatibility with my motherboard? I've searched
on the web but found nothing that looks relevant.

What size power supply are you using? I had similar problems until I
upgraded my PS from 300 to 450W.

Tom Lake

Hmm, my power supply is 300W. I never even considered that
possibility.

I'll try disconnecting the DVD drive and the 2 extra hard disks
and see what happens. If the display is ok after that then it's
time for a new power supply.

Thanks.

--
Colin Wightman

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 16:35:22 +0000, Colin Wightman
wrotf:

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 15:30:19 GMT, "Tom Lake"
wrotf:

I've tried all the Catalyst drivers from the latest one back to
3.6 and also the latest Omega driver with no luck.

My motherboard BIOS is up to date.

Does anybody here have any idea what's going on? Is there some
sort of known incompatibility with my motherboard? I've searched
on the web but found nothing that looks relevant.

What size power supply are you using? I had similar problems until I
upgraded my PS from 300 to 450W.

Tom Lake

Hmm, my power supply is 300W. I never even considered that
possibility.

I'll try disconnecting the DVD drive and the 2 extra hard disks
and see what happens. If the display is ok after that then it's
time for a new power supply.

Thanks.


Ok I've tried disconnecting my DVD Drive and two other hard
disks. I'm still getting yellow streaks on the display though.

Which does not necessarily prove much of course.

Looking at my motherboard manual it says that 300W is a minimum
requirement, so it would make sense to upgrade the power supply
anyway.

My MBoard has two power supply connectors - a big rectangular
one and a small square one beside it. Since my current power
supply only has a connector for the rectangular one, I was
assuming that they were alternatives. Since the computer
actually runs without the square connector being used I thought
no more of it. Is this significant do you think?

Do modern power supplies have connectors for both the power
plugs on the main board?


--
Colin Wightman

Since the computer
actually runs without the square connector being used I thought
no more of it. Is this significant do you think?

Do modern power supplies have connectors for both the power
plugs on the main board?


--
Colin Wightman

Yes Colin they do. Another user of the AN7 posted a similar issue recently
on a mobo group and this was resolved by getting a better PSU. Good luck.
Shawk

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 19:43:55 -0500, "DD"
wrotf:

The additional 4-pin power supply connector is for Intel Pentium-4 based
motherboards, most manufacturers provide it by default so that their PSU's
can be used with either sort of CPU.

I can guarantee that your 300W PSU is not providing sufficient power for
your computer, in fact you were probably straining it with your older
system. A PSU is the most-ignored and most critical component of your
computer, you definitely want to get at the very least a good-quality 430W
one, from a well-known manufacturer such as Enermax, PC Power & Cooling,
Thermaltake, et. al. You not only want enough power to run all of the
components of your system, you want some breathing room so the PSU is not
running right at the edge of its capacity, or it will deteriorate over time.

Here's a good article describing power supply units and how to find the best
one for your needs, and the right manufacturer :

http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20040122/index.html


DD



Thanks for the advice.

I've just installed a new Enermax 460W powersupply.

Sadly I'm still getting display corruption. For the first few
minutes everything seemed fine. Then yellow streaks started to
appear again.

Is it possible that the video card is overheating?

The rest of my system does not seem to be very hot. The
processor is running at a steady 43C and all the fans are
running normally






--
Colin Wightman