ATI/ASUS 9800 XT 256 RAM Patches & Tearing

[gary2]

Danny: I'm replacing my 9600 Pro with a 9800XT sometime this week and will let U know if I have the same problem. My initial suggestion is to take the card back to where you bought it and try another to see if it is specific to that card. By the way it does help to add a few vital stats about your 'puter.
;) Gary

[dannyair]

That would be great if you could shed some light on the situation. I can't take my card back now. It's too late. I'm really hoping a new driver will correct it. It only happens in FS2004. After writting my post I realized that the flickering and tearing isn't just in blue skies and blue ocean but everywhere. It just happens that most of it goes away in low visability.

Computer Specs are:

P4 3G
ASUS moBo 800
1G DDR Ram
Sound Blaster Live
350 watt brand name PSU < you'll need this as opposed to a generic brand to operate the 9800XT (uses mass power)
ASUS/ATI 9800 XT 256 Ram Vid card
Sony 19" LCD

Thanks,

Danny

[javelin]

I don't get a long vertical line with an obvious differentiation between a light and dark color.
I do or did, as you stated , get the different colored square or rectangular patches over the ocean. These patches occur mostly at dusk or dawn scenarios and I figure it has something to due with the sim. having a hard time doing just that- going from a lighted area to a dark one in a short amount of time- must really churn up the CPU? I was mostly noticing it while landing on aircraft carriers- again at dawn or dusk. But that was before I cooked my CPU and VC. Lately I have been trying to land the F-104 at Seattle and have not been out to sea. But while flying around Seattle lately I have not noticed anything wrong with my system. That is right- nothing wrong with it. Even flying around the bay at Seattle- no patches in the water.
But I will go out tonight and try a carrier landing at dusk to see if I get the patches and let you know the results.

[javelin]

I assume that your P4 3ghz has the 800 FSB?
Also, exactly what kind of MOBO do you have? Is it the same as mine? If it is I might be able to help you with some of the settings. I have read the system manual for the MOBO that so many times that I can recite from it.
Do you have 2 sticks of RAM or one? If you have 2 are they the same type- etc.? That may make a difference?
Also, it looks like you might have the same kind of monitor as me? Read the manual that can with the monitor- mine states that you can't go above 60hz for any setting. I tried to go higher and my system became unstable. If I need to reboot the system now I get a message from the monitor stating some problem it is having for about 4 minutes and then it fires up- and I figure it was because I tried to go with a higher rate above 60hz?
Little things seem to add up- good and bad- which brings up another question- what OS do you run? There are many tweaks for XP which I could recommend.
And since I am baba'ln along here- I had a post about 4 weeks past about the 8X pipe setting on my card. Problem was that I could not lock the 8X pipe setting with the SMARTGART control option with the ATI Catalyst software. When I set it and rebooted it would go back to the 4X setting. Anyway, that post must have caused quite a mess because it was taken off of the massage board and I only got to read a few replys and a few of them were rather heated. So I do not know if it is running at 8X or 4X or whatever X? Like I stated it seems to be working good now. But what if I am truly running only at 4X- is this limiting the power of the system? Will 8X make it run twice as fast? I'll need to post this question again I guess- but right now my life revolves around landing that "BEAST" F-104- wadda #####!

[dannyair]

Hi Javelin,

Yes my P4 3ghz does have 800 FSB. I have the Asus 865PE motherboard. I have 2 sticks or ram and they are both kingston strips. My manual for my monitor doesn't specify the verticle resolution but I switched the monitor settings to allow for 75 Mhz refresh rate. I did this by changing the monitor settings to fool XP into thinking I have a generic monitor. Otherwise it won;t let me go past 60hz That did make a huge difference but slowed FS down a lot. It's still fine though. Your problem with your monitor may be directly related to the power supply. Just a guess as I had to replace mine with a brand name (I can't tell you which one) and now it works fine. Sometimes I wouldn't even get a monitor signal. I think because the vid card uses so much juice. It fixed the problem for me anyway.

I'm running Win XP Pro with service pack 1. I have all my vid card settings at defult. I found it runs beter that way but I'm open to suggestions. I've tried many different setting changes. The flickernig and tearing only happens in FS2004. I think I'll instal FS2002 and see if I get the same results. My guess is that a newer driver may fix this as it seems isolated to FS2004.

Thanks!

Danny

[javelin]

I went out to sea last nite and I still have the patches occuring.
I read another thred in thr FS2004 forum and one person suggested that turning OFF water effects cures the patch syndrome. I'll try that tonight.

I have my MOBO users guide with me and I will now reference from it:

For dual channel DDR DIMM sockets the sticks must be set in certain slots in order for the dual channel to function correctly. Again, you may want to check you setup?
DDR DIMM Type PC3200 will work at 400 frequency with the 800 MHz FSB which is the best it states- but there are faster sticks on the market now.
In your BIOS setting, at least on mine, there is an option for an IDE Configuration and it should be in the Enhanced Mode to run Windows XP correctly.
Under CPU Configurations, at least on mine, there is an option, to enable “Hyper Threading Technology”.
Under Chipset options, at least on mine, there is an option to give first priority to a AGP or PCI graphic card slot. Use the AGP/PCI option. Under Graphic Aperture Size you have several options to choose from--from 4MB up to 256MB. I have read in the forums to use anything from the 64MB to 256MB setting- so you will need to experiment with this setting? Under the MPS Revision use the 1.4 setting for Windows XP.

[javelin]

Went to sea again at dusk and adjusted the slider on the ocean/sea setting and it help somewhat to put it in the lower setting but I could still see faint retangular patches. If this starts to make a wad in my pantties I guess I'll start bugg'n ATI and Microsoft but for now I am complacent.
Sorry if I have not been much help.
For me I guess it is back to trying to land that 104.

[gary2]

Danny: A bit later than I predicted but have the 9800 XT 256Mb installed now and ran a bunch of flights under various settings. I cannot replicate anything which even hints of patches and tearing.
I'm overwhelmed by the results I'm getting with the XP. Everything maxxed out but no AA applied in FS9 and letting the application govern the settings entirely. Didn't think I'd notice much of an improvement over the 9600 Pro but this one knocked it's socks off.
Wish I could help.
Gary


Win XP
P4P800-D MB
twin 80GB's in raid 0 config
Intel 2.8 GHz
1 GB DDR RAM 400MHz PC3200
Radeon 9800 XT 256MB (Cat 3.9)
ViewSonic A90f
450W P/S

[dannyair]

Thanks Gary. I don't know why I'm having this problem.

Thanks for letting me know.

Danny

[TheFlightMan]

Danny,

My first guess would be a problem with your video driver or FS9 itself, you might have a corrupted file. Try uninstalling your driver and reinstalling it again. Another thing you need to be aware of is that Asus tweaks the ATI driver to their needs. Hence, a driver released by ATI might not support all the functionality found in an Asus card. If you read your card's manual, it will state that they recommend you use Asus drivers for the best results.

I don't know which driver you are using, Asus or ATI. I have an NVidia card from Asus and it always takes them about a week or so after NVidia comes out with a driver for them to post it on their website. ATI has just released new drivers about a day or two ago, you might want to check Asus' website to see if it is already there. If that is the case, uninstall your current driver and install the new one. Don't use any tool that uninstalls the driver for you, I find them to be more of a problem than a helper. Again, I don't think you have a hardware issue, your problem is related to software.

TheFlightMan

[Bigshot]

Probably nothing to do with the video card. Check you motherboard bios version. Check out this guys cure. He had a similar problem.

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=121&topic_id=160415&mesg_id=160415&listing_type=search

Here's another one:

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=121&topic_id=166207&mesg_id=166207&page=

[dannyair]

Thank you for your advice. I'll try it. I've never done it before so I'll get someone over to the house to help with it. I'll post my results as soon as I can. I'm leaving town for a week so I may not be able to get it done until January but I will post my results. Thank you very much for helping. It is sincerely appreciated.

Danny

[Deanthebean]

Danny, I have almost identical setup to you and the same motherboard and the ATI 9800 pro 128MB Video card.

I just built it a week ago and FS2004 ran fine for one week. Now it is doing this tearing thing. There are also dots runing around inside textures on aircraft or in the distance.
Often the display will go blank and I will have to reset.

As yet I havent been able to update the bios as the Asus site has been too busy.

I have been thinking why this was fine and then suddenly started happening all of a sudden. Or why other users do not seem to have this problem at all.
All I can think of that has changed has been several updates I made from Windows update (not critical ones). If there is any possiblitiy of some change in the system causing this it would be interesting to know.

Also if a BIOS update worked for you and if you used the BIOS update utility to do it and how that worked out. I dont have a floppy drive so will either have to use the update utility directly on the internet or boot from CD ROM. This will be a new experience for me.

Thanks,

Dean.

[dannyair]

I know much has been mentioned about ATI's 9800 Pro video cards flickering and distorted menus. I have the XT version (ASUS) which has more RAM so it is different then the ATI 9800 Pro in some ways. I believe I may have a different problem.

The problem I'm having and I'm not certain others are experiencing with their 9800 XT or even 9800 Pro cards, is the random tearing or patches and lines that keep flickering on and off randomly. It's really annoying.

I have installed the Catalyst 3.9 drivers and made adjustments from everything to anything. Same with the display settings within FS2004.

While I have not been able to completely eliminate these random patches and tearing completely. By process of elimination I have noticed that they are much more apparent in blue skies and the blue ocean. If I change my weather to low visibility then the patches and tearing seem a lot less noticeable. Changing the weather setting's maximum visibility or sight distance makes no difference. As long as there is blue in the scenery the card has trouble. Again it's not completely isolated to just blues. Even in 1/8 mile visibility there’s still a few patches and tearing. Not nearly as much.

It's hard to capture the patches and tearing in a screen shot. I managed to capture one massive patch. Most often you just see patches that look like narrow long stripes or rectangles. Screen shot attached.

Is this the same problems all the 9800 users are experiencing or is this an 9800 XT problem only? Anyone else have similar findings? ATI tech support is avoiding me like the plague.

Many Thanks,

Danny