Radeon Causing Monitor To Shut Off

[imported_Fly_Guy]

After having a P3 620MHz for 5 years, I upgraded my box this weekend to a P4 3.0GHz, 512 DDR400, and an ATI Radeon 9800 128MB. I've gone through ALL the tutorials here and read everything, but my problem isn't mentioned. I've tried all the driver versions and various combinations of settings for 2 days now and nothing works.

Basically, at random points throughout my flying, my screen will just shut off and my computer must be restarted. Sometimes the screen will shut right off, and others the image will just lock up. It's very random and I can't seem to find out what's causing it. I think it may lie in the "VPU Recover" feature, but even with it off I still have lockups. I can't for the life of me discover what could be happening. My PC is a homebuilt, but the specs are very similar to the Dell Dimensions etc. that everyone else has for running FS9.

Another interesting thing to note is that my FS menu bar dropdown items sometimes "stack" on top of one another. Instead of dissapearing when the next menu is selected, it just appears on top of the old one. Again, this is very random and confusing as hell.

If anyone has ANY ideas that might be of assistance, I'd really appreciate it. but like I said, I've tried all versions of the drivers from 3.6 to 3.10 and I've gone through the tutorials and such, but still nothing.

[Bigshot]

What new motherboard did you use and what's the rating on your Power Supply??

[imported_Fly_Guy]

400W Power supply and a P4 Titan by Gigabyte Tchnnologies.

I used the splice connector to go off my hard drive power for the video card, but would it make any difference if I just took an available wire from my main power supply? Are you thinking that the card isn't getting enough power?

[ahmedmumeni]

The 400w power supply should be more than enough ... have you installed ALL the drivers for ALL your components?

[imported_Fly_Guy]

Yes, and I called ATi Tech. Support and the guy had me increase my AGP slot voltage by +0.1V and it really helped alot. I still get the VPU error though, but my main problem is solved.

Is the VPU error a popular thing, or am I the only one getting it?

[Tabs]

Nick,

I bought a 9800 Pro yesterday and I had nothing but VPU Recover errors - I couldn't even get a game to load on it, it was crashing in Windows 2D within about 45 secs of booting. I pulled it out and put the old GF3 back in and everything worked flawlessly again. I'd done a full reformat with the 9800 in there too, and that still didn't fix it. I'm about to go return the card - makes me really mad after how many good things I've read about this card. I think the GeForce FX image quality looks like #####, so I guess I'm just going to wait until ATI gets this issue solved or until Nvidia comes out with something better.

Ryan

[Bigshot]

You'll get a lot more quality help at the www.rage3d.com tech forums. The guys over there know ATI cards frontward and backward.

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Is the VPU error a popular thing, or am I the only one getting it?
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The most common cure for this is to turn the recovery feature off. Run 4xAGP with fastwrites off. You'll find both under the smartgart tab in the ATI control panel. Make sure you've gotten all the Nvidia files off. Get the driver remover program from www.driverheaven.net . Check out the Radeon Driver forum over at rage3d. Some folks have a painful experience switching from Nvidia cards to ATI cards; but it's a small percentage that do. Those who do and struggle with their systems till they get it right are usually very grateful they stuck with it.

[imported_Fly_Guy]

Ryan,

Stick with it. I know the problems are a pain in the #####, but the quality is unbelieveable. I had the exact same problem you have. The card isn't getting enough power, either through the slot (can be fixed in your BIOS) or from the powe cable. WHat power supply are you running?

And Bigshot, thanks for the link. I'm in the middle of something right now, but I'l ldefinitly give the forums a thurough read-through!

[Tabs]

I returned the card last night... :(

I think my motherboard is just too old and doesn't have enough features to support it - I can't even set the AGP slot voltage on it.

I'm gonna try to upgrade my mobo/CPU/RAM in the next two months and then I'll probably get the card again - just don't have enough money right now to do both.

I'm looking at two options right now for the upgrades:

1. Going with an Abit NF7-S 2.0 and trying to find an unlocked XP 2500+ (I think we might have some at the store I work at), putting a good fan on it and OCing it to 3200+ - apparently you can do this with hardly any temperature rise at all according to ocforums and the reviews of the chip on newegg. AMD recently started locking the multiplier on these chips because so many people were doing this and they weren't selling enough real 3200+s.

2. Waiting a bit longer and getting the Athlon 64 3000+ - only thing I'm worried about here is that the mobo chipsets are still first generation and probably won't be as stable/reliable as the XP chipsets like the Nforce 2 Ultra.

Ryan

[imported_Fly_Guy]

Why not just go with a P4? Sure, maybe they don't respond AS WELL to overclocking, but it can be done, and when it does work, you're laughing.