Tale of Woe - RADEON 85KLE and ME

[Tahir2]

Hi everyone.

I need a bit of advice here, I am not too proud to ask for help afterall.

I have a Radeon 8500 (Supergrace) LE and it has been working fine until about two weeks ago a little before the new Catalyst Drivers appeared.

My Radeon 85K (R200 from now on) has been misbehaving badly. It locks up on booting at times, sometimes it is fine. I get a grabled image on boot up or streaks running down the display if it manages to make it into Windows XP.

This was a very rare problem two weeks ago happening say once a day and now it happens everytime. Sometimes I need to take out my R200 and place it back in for the system to successfully boot up into Windows XP.

I do not have this problem with my old Savage 4 which is running fine even now. You may all point out to the Drivers for the Radeon but the only problem there is that this strange behaviour happens in Windows ME too on really old drivers (I dual boot). Also it happens before ANY drivers are loaded at times too but this is a lot more rare. With my Savage4 my Windows XP so far is fine and no problems are being exhibited.

I have also placed my R200 in an old K6-2 system and it seems to be working fine there too however I need to do more testing on that system.

Now does anyone have a clue what might be causing this problem. Originally I thought the sole blame lay with my R200 but now I am thinking perhaps it is a power issue, AGP issue or motherboard issue. It is definitely not the OS' fault nor is it the Drivers.

Help me... I cant return this card to the place I bought it from until I am sure it is the R200. Bummer I can't really play any games with this Savage4 and the 2D display is a joke (I think I have been spoilt).

..... any tips greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Misae

P.S on a different note good/bad I got myself a Sony Trinitron 19" monitor and it rocks (but not with the Savage4 tho').... buggery.

 

[Randell]

Misae what motherboard have you got? Can you list your full system specs as well please just to double check anything else.

Is your system overclocked in any way? What bios, AGP settings have you used etc.

I wonder if SMARTGART has buggered up your AGP settings.

 

[Tahir2]

System Info Version: 2.2
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP
Processor: AMD AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+ @ 1.46 GHz
Graphics Card: S3 Graphics Inc. Savage4
Total Physical Memory: 512 MB
Free Physical Memory: 322.48 MB
Motherboard Manufacturer:
Motherboard Model: VT8366-8233

It is an EPoX 8KHA+

I am reluctant to blame the motherbaord as I have had it for a few months and there were no such problems, and the Savage4 has not exhibited the same problems once yet.

It may be SMARTGART but how can I totally get rid of that once the Catalyst Drivers are installed. I am not positive but I think I began developing this problem a day or two before installing the Catalyst Drivers.

Yes I do overclock but I also have been running at default clockspeeds and fail safe defaults on my motherboard which caused the exact same problem with the R200.

 

[Doomtrooper]

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[Nagorak]

Hi everyone.
I have a Radeon 8500 (Supergrace) LE and it has been working fine until about two weeks ago a little before the new Catalyst Drivers appeared.

If this started happening before the new catalyst's appeared, then it cannot be a driver issue. It almost sounds like you have a bum card. You may wish to contact Supergrace and see about getting it RMA'ed as defective (they should have a 1 year warranty on it). Also, if you're overclocking the card be sure to clock it down to stock.

How well is your case ventillated. Even not overclocked, current CPUs and graphics cards put out a lot of heat into your case. If your case has poor ventillation try opening the side. We're entering the hottest months of the summer, so that could easily explain why you're just now running into problems. I know my temperature sensor is running a lot higher recently, thanks just to higher ambient temps.

 

[Randell]

Th eonly thing is I would do anything to solve it without RMA'ing that card. The latest Supergraces are not the same quality as the original batch that was available last November if that was when you got it.

 

[Pete]

Try changing the following in BIOS: AGP 2x, AGP Aperture 64MB, Sideband Addressing/Fast Writes off.

It may not be getting enough power from your PSU.

Your case may be too hot, or at least the space around the card is. My Voodoo 2 would begin garbling textures when it got too hot, and sometimes just locked up.

Or, finally, you may just have a defective card, in which case an RMA is your only option. If it's locking on startup, this or a faulty MB/PSU is more likely to be the cause than heat.

 

[stevem]

This is all AFAICR... There are issues with the Epox (VIA) mb & R200 cards, notably ATI built. Search for "infinite loop problem". The "series" affected appears to be those with green/blue marker color on the caps. Black "series" is OK... There is a solution in flashing the affected R200 boards with a new bios build 7008(?). This bios is from a 3rd party manufacturer (Sapphiretech 8500), so should work OK in your board, too. You may find more info @ rage3d and www.radeon2.ru. I believe dual monitor support is lost by flashing to this fw, but the results are complete stability...

Good luck.

Just found the link...
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=e05532b50f4e77b8c0c7a8394f2fe34c&threadid=33621685

 

[Tahir2]

Hi guys thanks for the tips.

Here is what has happened. After installing the gfx card in my old system I tried my best to make it exhibit the same problems but it refused to do so. I knew then it wasnt the gfx card itself.

Installing a Savage4 in my gaming system also failed to produce the problem. I had previously checked the PSU but this time when I checked the ATX connector 4 pins seemed to have been fried. Also I notived the +5V had shot up to 5.45-5.49V which is really too high.

After replacing the PSU and installing my Radeon 8500LE I have seemed to have fixed the problem.

Looks like it was the PSU - a 400Watt PSU but generic make. I am glad it didnt fry anything and the Radeon 8500LE crashing all the time actually saved my butt - got to the cause of a possible PSU frying before it happened.

Again thanks for the tips and well I learned a small lesson at least... check your PSU all the time..

P.S I dont overclock all of the time and my case is very cool like I said. Never leave the case completely closed anyway as temps sky rocket when I do that. I have a Delta on a Silver Mountain so the CPU is cool and the Radeon 8500LE is never even warm to touch on the backside of it.

Cheerio for the help again... I am so glad I figured this out instead of embarrassing myself be returning a perfectly good gfx card.

 

[Tahir2]

As a bit of fun I ran 3DMark 2000 on my AMD K6-2 500 system with 64MB PC100 RAM;

Savage4: 1126
Radeon: 8500LE 2249

And ran the Savage4 with WinXP drivers (I am not sure they were running through AGP) and tried to play Dungeon Seige on my gaming system... specs = DDR 512MB AthlonXP 1600+ etc;

First menu/titlescreen:
Savage4: 8 fps
Radeon 8500LE 70 fps

3DMark 2001 displayed too many visual problems but was getting very low fps (about 8-12 fps) for the first test anyay so I quit it.

Just FYI

 

[Tahir2]

Thanks stevem but I ruled out it being the actual R200 a while back.
So glad it wasn't that and it is a good job I have a few spare PSU's lying around.

 

[Matt Burris]

I've noticed that PSU's are getting pickier lately with the modern graphics cards these days. The day I got a GF4 Ti4600 for reveiw, I installed it, and about 8 hours later my PSU died. It was a generic 300w. I replaced it with an Antec 350w and it has worked perfectly fine since then. Then I find out the the Ti4600 has a minimum requirement for a 350w PSU. Doh! It's a shame that we have to start upgrading our PSU's when we decide to upgrade to a powerful video cards these days.

 

[Doomtrooper]

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