[Siborg]

Hi

I have just upgraded from a Geforce 4 MX440 64Mb card to an ASUS A9550GE (ATI Raedon 9550) 256Mb card.

Since the swap over, I have been experiencing alot of temporary monitor blackouts (1-2 seconds) in windows. But the real problem is when I try to run some of my favourite games. Here's what happens with these games:

Halo (trial) - Fails To initiate due to some "exception"

GTA III - Fails to initiate at all

Doom III - Runs good. However, after playing it today for around 35-45 minutes, it locked up. The lockup is the same as the games listed below and I will dexcribe more about the lockup below.

Star Wars: Battlefront - A bit touch and go. Certain maps it runs ok. Other maps (for those that know the game) such as the battle of hoth always lockup. But, like Doom III, after playing it for about 35-45 minutes, it locked up.

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Now, with the lockup different things happen, but always eventuate to the same thing. The majority of the time the graphics will just freeze where they are. The sound will jump. This happens for about 10-20 seconds, then the monitor goes on standby (as it does when there is no signal sent to it). On other occasions, particularly in Star Wars: Battlefront, I get a complete jumble of colored pixels, and the monitor goes on standby. In one instance, the computer just restarted and my windows resolution changed from 1024x768 to 800x600 (or the one below, I can't remember).

I only bought the card two days ago. This morning, I rang the place where I bought it from and they suggested formating and re-installing windows. I needed to do that anyway, so I have done that and I am still experiencing the same problems.

This is greatly annoying because with my old card, even though it is much slower than this new one, had no problems at all. I must also say that the performance of the games, in particular Doom III, has increased significantly. The problem is instability.

I have checked in the device manager and it shows no problems or conflicts with any hardware. I have also installed all of the drivers that came with the card, including Direct X 9.0c.

Please help me... This is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to my computer in its history... And there have been quite a few things, believe me.

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Off-topic: I am a new user and I think this is a great forum!

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oh yeah, here are my system specs as well:

Amd AthlonXP 2000+ @ 1.63 Ghz
512 Mb RAM
80 Gb Hard Drive
120 Gb Hard Drive
Gigabyte K7 Triton GA-7VM400AM(F) Motherboard
VIA KM400A Chipset

[Siborg]

oh yeah, here are my system specs as well:

Amd AthlonXP 2000+ @ 1.63 Ghz
512 Mb RAM
80 Gb Hard Drive
120 Gb Hard Drive
Gigabyte K7 Triton GA-7VM400AM(F) Motherboard
VIA KM400A Chipset

[Siborg]

wow.... Alot of people have problems with their computers!!!

[Siborg]

i think i fixed it... I changed the AGP speed in SMARTGART from 8x to 4x... The graphics are alot more stable and i am not experiencing the lockups I used to.

But i'm not sure what or how this AGP speed thing works... Can anyone explain this for me, please?

[lionelhutz5]

Depending on what your motherboard supports, it is often best to allow your graphics card to run on the mobo's highest compatible speed (that is if the graphics card supports that too - that's why on the box of cards, they say like 8x AND 4x compatibilty for mobo's that have a max of 8x or 4x AGP) to avoid system instability, and thus worse graphics and possible lockups.

[Siborg]

Depending on what your motherboard supports, it is often best to allow your graphics card to run on the mobo's highest compatible speed (that is if the graphics card supports that too - that's why on the box of cards, they say like 8x AND 4x compatibilty for mobo's that have a max of 8x or 4x AGP) to avoid system instability, and thus worse graphics and possible lockups.

thanks for the info.
My mobo is 8x compatible and so is the graphics card, however it runs unstable when i run it at 8x. I have been running it on 4x for two days now and have not experienced any of the problems i described in my first post.

[lionelhutz5]

Huh. Lemme a day to think..work now. But interesting to hear...