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Bizarre problem - ATI 1950 pro

Associate
Joined
16 May 2007
Posts
3
I've got a problem with my setup that's been baffling me for months now. I have the AGP version of the HIS x1950 pro 512mb ICEQ, on a win xp system (2gb ram, skt 939 Athlon X2 4600+).

The card was working fine when I bought it last July, and then around Christmas after I moved my computer from uni to home (that screams hardware issue) I started to get BSODs being caused by the graphics card (I don't remember the specific error now). They'd happen at fairly random times, rarely while playing games but fairly often when just browsing the net. I searched everywhere for some sort of solution and in the end tried installing some old drivers from the HIS website. This completely fixed the problem (I have no crashes whatsoever), but leaves me with terrible performance ingame, with a very jerky frame rate. Ive tolerated this crippled machine since then as I've been in my final university year and a non-crashing pc that allowed me to work but not game was more useful to me than one that would crash every few minutes.

Now uni is over I want to get the problem sorted, but can't think of a reason why the card would seemingly work fine (apart from it's performance ingame) on a set of old drivers, but not on any other. I can't say I've tried every set of drivers, but I've tried a good number. I installed the latest ATI drivers the other day and thought the problem was fixed, giving me very good performance in mass effect. However now the problem is back, meaning I've had to revert to the old drivers which make mass effect pretty unplayable.

Sometime within the first 30 minutes of having my computer switched on, the monitor will just turn off like it's lost signal, but the computer will still be running in the background (it hasn't crashed at all, I can still change track in itunes using the keyboard). I'm not getting the same BSODs as before but I think they were down to enabling/disabling the GPU recover in the control center. The only way to get anything to display on the monitor again is by hard resetting.

Anyone got any ideas? Is the graphics card just broken in some respect? The fact it works (ish) on one set of drivers makes it look like a compatability problem.

I use drivercleaner when changing drivers and my power supply shouldn't be the cause, I have a OCZ GameXStream 600w. I don't think it's overheating either, the temperature isn't high.

I'm considering just replacing it with the HD3850, but I'd obviously rather fix the problem, especially as there's no guarantee another ATI card won't have the same issues.

Thanks.
 

C64

C64

Soldato
Joined
16 Mar 2007
Posts
12,884
Location
London
I had a sapphire 1950 pro do the same thing from day one it was the vrm area overheating there was no cooling for it
may i suggest placing a fan pointed toward the vrm area which is the end closest to your hard drives or where the power lead plugs in if it doesn't happen anymore you know what the problem is.
 
Associate
Joined
8 Oct 2006
Posts
1,672
i wonder if its some kind of over heating issue, diff drivers can set the fan speeds at diff amounts it seems. do you have catylyst control center installed ? if so check the temps my 1950pro starts to randomly crash when it gets close to 80c. i installed aprog called ati tool and you can set fan speeds in that and gave it clean wich initself knocked at least 5c of the temp.

secondly there was some known problems with ati drivers and the agp version of 1950pro. the drivers effected i think started at 7.8 i assume theyhave sorted that now but not sure what version the prob was fixed at. try something around 7.7 if you can.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Nov 2007
Posts
13,101
Location
Enfield
I had an MSI X1950 last year and it was cack. I didn't get bluescreens; just a loss of monitor signal after 20 minutes of gaming. Then I bought a new motherboard and the problem stopped completely, but when I changed case a few months later it came back again. These cards seem to be a bit badly designed.
 
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